Enfant terrible chef Anthony Bourdain's new cookbook looks set to focus on something we should all know: that a man's place is in the kitchen.

The celebrity chef plans to base his latest recipes around family and entertaining at home, and wants blokes to get back behind the pans in their own homes, not just professional kitchens.

I have known this for a long time. When I was a child, it was far better for everyone if my father cooked the nightly meals – primarily because he could cook.

My mother, on the other hand, had only a handful of dishes in her culinary repertoire, all of which came under the slightly sinister sounding banner of "savoury mince", which was minced beef and whatever she could find in the fridge. This is the woman who used to make my school cheese sandwiches three months in advance and then freeze them… mmm, freezer burn. So dad cooking was not only normal in our house, it was preferable.

I was a little upset to discover, then, that my own kids recently scoffed at the idea of me making them dinner. It was then that I realised I had dropped the ball when it came to cooking at home.

'EVENT COOKING'

I was never a great cook, more an enthusiastic amateur who would watch cooking shows, decide to cook something that was way above my skill level, and then go about massacring it.

I developed this interest in what I like to call "event cooking" for the same reason men do many things - to impress women, more specifically, my now-wife Adrienne. It must have worked as she stuck around and had kids with me, but I think she liked my cooking in the same way that American teenager likes the 'DadBod' - it is non-threatening and makes her look good.

Once the kids came along, I slowly exited the role of making evening meals. It was gradual, it was unintentional, but the result was that my wife did far too much of the heavy lifting and my kids were getting a skewed view of how the chores in the house should be split.

Let's be honest, we men drag the chain when it comes to housework in general, with a recent study from the States showing that women do 1.7 times the amount of housework that men do. Now, even if you take out the unnecessary chores like organising the spice rack alphabetically and cleaning the toilet, that means we really need to up our ante when it comes to household duties, and I was going to start with regaining my time cooking.

EYE OF THE TIGER

Picture a Rocky-esque montage, but instead of running the mean streets of Philadelphia, I am teaching a three-and-a-half year-old how to fold dumplings; Rocky's one-armed push-ups are replaced by pizza dough that refuses to rise; and instead of climbing those famous steps and punching the sky, I am getting dizzy from smoke inhalation after setting fire to a pot of cooking oil and shooing the kids out the front door while the room clears.

But the end result is the same: I am once again a useful member of the household cooking team. I stick to a few winners, like scratch-made pizza night, fish tacos and a great fish and chips recipe I stole from my wife's grandmother. It is not all "event cooking"; I do a mean beans on toast, too.

There is simply no downside to dads being in the kitchen more. Our kids see a fairer division of chores, our partners get a fairer division of chores, and it is simply the right thing to do. (Also, we get to cook meals with the smallest amount of vegetables required by nutritional laws.)

For dads in the role of breadwinner, it's a lazy default to also become a housework dodger. A good start is to get into that kitchen and rattle those pots and pans.