Roasting the lamb in the barbeque worked well last night. I took out the rack and piled the coals up either side leaving the centre clear. After 20 minutes it had built up to a fierce heat and I put in the roasting tin with the lamb lying inside it. They lid then went on and I left it for an hour whilst we drank beer and ate the very good mustard flavoured pork scratchings.

I checked it before we sat down to eat the roast aubergine with feta cheese. I could hear it sizzling as I walked outside. There was a blast of heat as I took off the lid and a thick smell of lamb fat and roast garlic. All I could see by was the orange glow from the coals and In the dark it was difficult to tell how it was doing. It all smelt good though.

I turned down the heat by half closing the air vents in the lid.

Half an hour later I went outside again with six overripe tomatoes that I had cut in half. I squeezed and smeared them all over the lamb and then left it for another ten minutes.

I then took it off the heat and lifted it out of its tin and put it to rest on a carving tray covered with a piece of foil and a tea towel.

The potatoes then went on the table. I had roasted those in the oven with red peppers and a couple of salted pickled lemons. We also had some fennel with parmesan. Four fennel bulbs quartered, softened in olive oil and then water. It well with the lamb.

Still feeling stuffed and there is a bit of the lamb left for sandwiches in the week if I can avoid picking at it.

Well we are almost ready for the evening.

There was a brief cock up first thing when I pulled into the car park of The Community Centre in New Ferry and was able to remind myself that The Farmer’s market is the second Saturday of the month and not the first. I parked there anyway and got the leg of lamb and chicken from Edge & Sons. The chicken is for tomorrow’s lunch and has spent the day steeped in a sweet tea flavoured brine.

I have stuffed the lamb with rosemary and garlic and provided it doesn’t pour down with rain over the next hour or so I am going to roast it in the barbeque. The recipe comes from a book of Tuscan cooking called Beaneaters & bread soup which I picked up a couple of years ago in the Oxfam bookshop in Oxford.

It is full of robust artery bursting cooking; things like sweet & sour wild boar and ribbon pasta with a duck sauce. They suggest that ten minutes or so before the lamb is taken away from the heat it is smeared with halves of ripe tomato.

Before the lamb we will be eating aubergines with garlic, olive oil and feta and some sour dough smoked bread from the grocers.

In the grocers this morning I chatted again to Kazim. He was asking about the law and if I enjoyed it. ‘Do something else’ he said. ‘ Do something you enjoy.’

We’ll have roast potatoes with red peppers with the lamb and after that plums.

There has been a glut of plums this year and the branches of the tree are hanging down heavy with the,. I have cooked them in red wine and sugar flavoured with cinnamon and a few bruised pepper corns. I then cooked the wine down to a syrup.

We should be full at the end of all that.

Of course one of the problems with bacon is that you need a sharp knife to slice it and one of the problems with a sharp knife is that it will jump in the hand and try and take a slice off the end of a finger. So the bacon slicing was interrupted as I ran upstairs to put the finger under a cold tap to wash the blood away and then cover it with a thick plaster.

Apart from that mishap the bacon is going down well and is about to be put between two pieces of toast. At which point I will hit the old Brown Sauce debate. If the bacon is so good why should you be covering it in Brown Sauce and smothering away the taste? (And by the way it can never NEVER be Tomato Ketchup. Ketchup with bacon is almost as bad as Ketchup with eggs.) I think the answer lies in not using too much. The Brown Sauce should not overpower but should lurk about discretely in the background adding some sweetening notes.

Well that was a bit of a thrill. Walking into the kitchen and there is a smell of bacon. Smell of bacon I have made. It has been in the fridge downstairs for the last five days and now it looks like bacon, smells like bacon and even tastes like it. If there is going to be a criticism then it maybe a bit salty. I will give it try with the bacon eating kids over the weekend and see what they think.

In the meantime it is Friday evening and I felt like a one pot meal. There was a free range chicken going cheap in the supermarket so I picked that up with the intention of doing something vaguely Spanish with it after the excellent meal we had at Lunya last night.

I took a couple of lardons from the newly made bacon and started to heat them oil. As they sizzled I chopped up the chicken and threw that in. Chopped onions, garlic and three whole green chillies were thrown in and stirred about with a good spoonful of paprika. I then peeled a couple of potatoes, quartered them and pushed them down amongst the chicken. It was then a question of adding some wine, a tin of tomatoes and letting it cook for an hour.

It is all about done and I am going to eat it now.

Thank you Peter for the Cava.

Listening now to David Byrne & St Vincent. A good birthday treat for myself.