Furtling around in the freezer last night I realised that was down to my last packet of bacon from last summer. On the last Friday of every holiday we will make a trip to Bantry market to stock up and buy cheese and bacon to take home with us.

The bacon all comes from the Gubbeen stall and my favourite is the Maple Cure. I think I have talked before about the umami smell as it cooks and perhaps the best bit, the sticky residue that is left in the pan once it is cooked. I suspect that it is not good for you to wipe a finger through the bacon grease to pick up the black nicks of maple syrup that have leached from the bacon as it cooks but it tastes very good.

Unfortunately the last of the Gubbeen was not a Maple Cure. It was a Gubbeen Unsmoked, cured with juniper, pepper, hebs, cane sugar and salt petre. Galen and I shared the packet. Two pieces for him and four pieces for me.  I had mine in a toast sandwich with HP Sauce.

Jane Grigson has a recipe for mackerel with bacon. It appears in the first edition in her book on Fish Cookery but for some reason does not, as I recall, appear in the later revised edition.

She suggests taking fillets of cold cooked mackerel, remove the skin. Cut the bacon into strips and fry lightly in a little butter. Leave to cool. Lay the mackerel fillets onto slices of buttered bread, put some mayonnaise on top and then arrange the bacon across it.

I have not tried it yet but will do next summer.

This afternoon we have spent time in the garden raking up the last of the autumn leaves, chopping up logs for the fire and cutting back the ivy that has managed to creep up over the wall by the veg patch. We are back inside now and it is trying to snow. The fire is on and we are listening to old records.

The four quail I bought earlier are now cooking on the oven. It is another recipe from the Ottolenghi book – quail with tamarind and apricots. I started by rubbing them down with a mixture of ground cumin and fennel, dried chilli, salt and pepper and putting them in the fridge for a couple of hours whilst I made supper for the rest of the family

For this I used the last of the spinach from the garden. It looked a bit straggly but having picked what I needed there may be enough left for something else next week. I had to give it a good soaking in cold water to get rid of all the bugs and soil splashed up by the rain. I then cooked it in the water that was left. Once it had collapsed I refreshed it in cold water again and then squeezed it out until I was left with a tennis ball size ball of green. This was finely chopped then mixed into ricotta cheese and mozzarella, salt and pepper and an egg and stuffed into cannelloni. These were all laid into a shallow dish and covered with tomato sauce.

The only tamarind I had was some paste in the fridge in the basement. I brought that upstairs together with the quail. The quail were browned off in olive oil for 15 minutes and then put to one side to rest for a while. The recipe said raisins but we didn’t have any so I used some dried dates instead. These were thrown into the hot pan with some dried apricots and thyme which had a few seconds to take before I seethed it all with water and half a glass of white wine. A teaspoon of the tamarind paste went in and it all tasted raw and uncouth. The quail went back in and a lid put on and it was turned down to a simmer.

By the time it was done it was delicious. With quail it is difficult to get away from them being small birds not much bigger, and who knows how much tastier, than those that strut around the garden, but there is meat on them. I started with knives and forks but only lasted a few minutes before my fingers were delving in pulling leg and wing from breast and dipping into the gravy which by now had become a deep, velvety and good. There was the sweetness of the dates and apricot, tempered by the heat of the chilli and all held together somewhat unexpectedly by the tamarind. It all made for very good finger food.

There was another strange John Peel moment on the drive from The Farmer’s Market and Andy’s Aquatics. The ipod was on shuffle again and as we left the house the song from the Six by Seven came to an end and John’s voice was in the car again. 

At Andy’s Aquatics we bought gravel for Galen’s new second hand fish tank and talked fish in a dad way with the man behind the counter. “Yes if its bigger see you will need a new pump and a new heater, you need to keep them warm. Bring it in and we’ll have a look at it and we will see what we can do.” God I am so stupid when it comes to tropical fish. Why is that? It all sounds expensive but Galen’s baby fish are getting bigger and they need a new home and if they get a new home then he will need some new Cardinal Tetras as company for the sole survivor of the last lot that we bought.

Reluctantly Galen came into The Farmer’s Market with me as every good son should who has just had £10 worth of gravel bought for him. We got a chicken for lunch tomorrow, 4 quail for me to eat tonight, two minute steaks for lunch and a pack of ox-tails for stew later in the week. I assured Galen that he would like them but I am not sure he was convinced. We also bought bags of dirty carrots and potatoes.

On the way back a new song came on with unpleasant detuned guitars, drum machines and shouty vocals about the lot of ‘the workers’ and suddenly we were listening to The Three Johns and it was 1985 all over again. What was that doing on the ipod?

The steak sandwich was good but chewy.

A long time ago I shared house in Oxford on Green Street with Sue Sharpe. Sue had spent time living in Italy and complained that there was no point going out for an Italian meal in Oxford as it would only be a cruel disappointment after the food she had eaten there.

I think she may have enjoyed the meal we had at Da Piero last night. It was the third year we had eaten there on 10 January courtesy of Mum & Dad’s wedding anniversary. In the discussion after the meal there some who thought there last night had been the best meal ever and for others the thought there had been a slight slip in the quality. Whatever slips there might have been it was still by far the best food to be had on the Wirral, simple and true.

My starter was a crab salad. A great ball of crab meat mixed with mayonnaise wrapped up in two leaves of red radicchio, the bitterness in the leaves cut through the sweetness of the crab. I could have licked the plate if there had been anything left to eat.

Main course was duck with a sweet red onion marmalade. If there was a slip up it perhaps came with the meats. Although they were good they did not bounce off the tongue shouting out just how good they were. But it must be difficult getting that right, as there were only a few people in there and making sure it was all perfect on a quiet night would require some dexterity. The side dishes could have been the highlight, a mix of sauteed mushrooms, chopped white endives with dressing, peas with pancetta and herbs, lentils and spinach. There was not much left.

Not all of us had pudding. I just about managed a cold chocolate dessert and a small glass of grappa.

I am looking forward to going there again in a few weeks time.