At last winter has come – there is a hint of snow in the air and the wind is sharp and cold. I spent an hour outside in the garden this afternoon and half way through a gentle rail of hail fell for five minutes or so the hard pieces of ice slipping down the back of my shirt.

Strange then that this evening I turning to something to eat from the summer – roast peppers with cream and prawns over pasta.

I was in Liverpool this morning and decided to go out of my way on the way home to pop into Delifonseca on the Dock Road. We eat so much pasta but mostly it is the same packets of the same shapes we can buy from the supermarket. Sometimes it is good to get something a little different. So I picked up a packet of thick ribboned pasta that looked like it would go well with a creamy sauce.

As I drove back home I thought over what would go with it. There was a small tub of cream in the fridge and a red pepper left over from a stir fry cooked over last week. Roast red peppers would go with the cream and a few prawns would add a bit of pink bite to it all.

Any good book on Italian cooking will tell you that if you are mixing your pasta with fish then  there is no need for cheese. Cheese and fish don’t mix. But that is because feta cheese comes from Greece and not Italy. If the Italian cheese-makers had hit upon feta there would be no stopping them eating with it with their fish.

So –

– water was put on to boil and three red peppers went under the grill.

– once the skin on the peppers had started to blacken I turned them over with my fingers, going back to them to turn them over again until they were charred all over.

– by the time the peppers were done the pan of water was at a roiling boil. I left it like that and took the peppers out from under the grill and put them in a bowl that I covered in cling-film.

– the pasta went into the pan of boiling water and I spent five minutes pulling the black skin from the peppers, scrapping away the seeds and saving with the soft flesh any bit of juice that I could.

– five minutes for the pasta to be done and the prawns went into a pan of hot oil. I added some garlic and gave it all a stir.

– the peppers went into the pan with the prawns and garlic and I broke them up with a wooden spoon.

– there was still some bite left to the pasta. Just enough time to pour the cream over the prawn and pepper mixture and stir in half of the chopped feta cheese.

– the pasta was drained and put in a large shallow bowl and the prawns and peppers were slathered on top.

– it was all finished off by the other half of the chopped feta being scattered over.

It was all eaten and we are now listening to Gladys Knight & the Pips.