Son thought that getting into college for his Art Foundation Course next year would be a shoe in but it still felt like a good excuse for us to share some steak and chips.

A good plate of steak and chips is almost one of my favourite meals. I am not actually sure what the favourite meal would in fact be; some days it could be a half tin of cold Heinz Baked Beans eaten out of the tin with with a fork and on others a bacon sandwich with brown sauce, or mackerel cooked less than an hour after being hauled out of the sea over an open flame

But if I am sat in a restaurant and struggling to make a choice I will invariably go for the steak and chips. And if I am at home with the son and need to make something for us to eat then there is not much that goes down better.

So that is what we had this evening although it turned out the interview was not quite the expected shoe in.

Half way through I got a phone call from son wanting clarification as to what grade he got for his English Language GCSE. He had managed to convince himself that he had done no better than an E which meant that despite the excellent art he would be off making his way in life as a life-guard. I, of course, had no idea what grade he got but felt confident that it was along the lines of a C. He went back into the interview armed with this new information and all was sweetness and light and a place was offered.

I picked up the two steaks on the way home. Pepper corns were crushed and rubbed in and they were scorched each side for a few minutes in a very hot pan. Whilst they rested some of the last strong alcohol I could find in the basement was flamed and cream was stirred in before before being poured over the steaks.

They were very good.

I sat out the interview in The Belvedere pub with a pint. I was the youngest person in there. Probably just as well it is not round the corner. I would be there every night almost as old as all the others waiting out their time.

Last weekend in The Observer magazine Jay Rayner wrote a review of some restaurant in London that was doing nothing else but roast chicken and still managing to get it wrong.

It reminded me of a restaurant we went to in Madrid years ago that did nothing but roast chicken and cider. Of course this was no good for the vegetarian amongst us but she was reassured that they did great chips and she would be able to fill herself on those. However something got lost in the translation and the chips arrived in a plastic packet and there was an embarrassed silence for a couple of minutes whilst we digested the fact that some of us were going to eat a half chicken on a plate and one of us was going to eat a packet of crisps.

Sometimes I think I am still getting over that evening.

In the same article Jay Rayner let out that his favourite way of roasting a chicken was to spatchcock it, smear it in garlic and lemon juice, throw on some fennel seeds and olive oil, and put it in a hot oven for an hour.

What he didn’t warn against was smearing the garlic in with your hands after having spent an hour in the garden wielding a pair of secateurs against all the ivy so that I was left with a couple of burst blisters. The garlic got in under the blisters and it has been a while since I have felt such focussed and intense pain.

We had the chicken this evening and he was right. Two of us were there ready to tear it apart with our fingers.

We ate it with rice cooked on the basis of the the half recommendation from Kazim yesterday.

Soak good rice for an hour. Drain. Boil water. Add rice to water and cook for about four minutes. Drain rice. Melt butter in bottom of pan. Split a pitta and place over the melted butter. Tip rice back in the pan slowly. Put on very low heat with a tea-towel under the lid. After about half an hour the bread will be crisp and the rice perfect.

As for the chicken “spatchcock it so it’s flat and toadlike, then heap on fennel seeds, lots of crushed garlic, salt, olive oil and the juice of one lemon. Roast that on high for an hour.”

All good cooking should be capable of being distilled down to a few words.

Listening to Sleater Kinney. There was a time when the two best best bands in the world were a three piece and a four piece – all women. Sleater Kinney were the three piece.

Almost twenty years ago when we moved to Liverpool about the only place to eat in the city was Pizza Express on Victoria Street. The Pizza Express is still there but there are a lot more places to go get something to eat. The only problem on a Saturday evening is finding a table.

Last night three of us ended up in Slim’s Chop Express on Seel Street having been halfway down and back up again Bold Street looking for for somewhere that would have us.

We ate and drank well. Short beef ribs that had been slow cooked for seven hours, prawns, a pulled pork burger and chips, lots of salty chips. I enjoyed myself working out what music was playing and drinking beer.

The beer was Beavertown Gamma Ray American Pale Ale and came in a multi coloured can. It was the second good beer I had drunk out of a can over the course of the last couple of weeks. Lets hope that the beer I am about to start brewing in the basement tastes half as good.

Half inspired by the food from last night I have rescued a piece of smoked gammon that has been lurking in the bottom of the freezer since a Christmas about three years ago. It is now bubbling gently in a couple of litres of Coke courtesy of a recipe by Nigella for White Trash Ham. It should make good sandwiches for the week.

And that is a picture of the the last rose we had growing in the garden.

There was plenty of good bread left over from Thursday evenings delivery from the Bread Circle so we turned some of it into toast and had bruschetta for lunch.

Te was easy to make. Half a chopped red onion, some squashed garlic, one grated tomato and two finely chopped tomatoes then olive oil and plenty of salt and pepper – all mixed together.

We ate it with mushrooms fried in oil, some sliced lamb and four lamb kidneys cooked so they were still pink in the centre. Ideally the kidneys should of had some sherry with them but there isn’t an open bottle in the house.