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.

We celebrated an anniversary last night and drank champagne that was thirty years old. It tasted slightly sweet and biscuity. Strange to think it has been in there so long.

I still have in the basement a bottle of wine from 1978. I was given two cases of it as a birthday present and for a long time we would have a bottle of it with lunch on Christmas Day. But now we are down to last bottle we have kept it to one side in the half expectation we should save it for something special but with a worry it might be heading towards vinegar. We shall find out one day.

The meal itself was a mixture of things from the Morito cookbook with perhaps the highlight being a kilo of mussels cooked in a thick garlicy tomato sauce with feta cheese and dill followed by lamb chops that had been marinaded in garlic and ground cumin cooked on a hot grill.

The only part of the meal not from Morito was pudding – a bowl of liquorice ice-cream. We had eaten it in the summer at The Good Things Cafe and the recipe then appeared in the Gubbeen cookbook I got given for Christmas.

The recipe suggested using Panda liquorice bars and rather to my surprise I found them in the supermarket.

I have got an ice-cream maker but it wasn’t big enough for the amount made so I made the ice-cream by putting it in a plastic tub and nestling the tub in a corner of the freezer. I then had to remember to go to the basement every hour hour or so to stir it up with a fork to break up the ice crystals. It was a good opportunity for cooks treats licking the fork after each stir.

There is some left as well for us to finish off tonight.

The weekend was a quick spurt down to Brighton to drop off the eldest for her next term at University.

Unfortunately we got down there too late to wander about the lanes (and buy more music – which is what I normally aspire to do anywhere we go) but there was time for a few pints of beer and a good meal.

We had the beer in a pub called The Ponds at the top of Gloucester Road. It doubled as a Thai restaurant on the first floor.

For most of the time we were in there the only company we had was a man with a glass of white wine who kept going out on various errands, accompanied by the barman on one occasion, which left us alone, potentially, to help ourselves to the beer. We didn’t but on the next round the barman recommended that for my next round I should try a mix of the Landlord and Doom Bar before handing back too much change and shaking his head with a don’t bother when I tried to hand it back.

Sensibly I avoided the temptation of the next round and we left the pub for something to eat and a walk down to the prom to look at the sea in the dark and the lights of the pier.

Back home we were wanting a quick cheap supper. I was able to pick up a couple of pork chops and so we had those with potatoes.

The potatoes were peeled and chopped into rough chunks and then put into a hot oven with a good dose of oil.

In the meantime the chops were slathered in more oil, garlic and paprika. Once the potatoes had taking on the first touch of colour the chops were laid on top with a good seasoning of salt and pepper.

It went back into the oven until the chops were cooked and the potatoes done so they could easily be run through with a knife.

It was warm and sustaining on a cold and quiet Sunday evening.

And now the in house the Christmas tree and the lights are down and it is all that little bit quieter again as we settle into the routine of term time.

New Years Eve and one child was out. The other two were asked what they would really like to eat and both said pasta with tomato sauce. So that is what we ate.I spiced up the sauce with red peppers and capers, olives and chilli and when the verdict came through it was declared a good one.

So as not to miss out on what we all really wanted to eat I made myself a few platefuls of good seafood as follows:-

– four oysters, shucked

– a dozen prawns, peeled and fried in very hot oil with plenty of garlic, salt and pepper

– 2 scallops fried in bacon fat with crispy bacon

– half a dozen large clams cooked in white wine with garlic and parsley.

All very good – especially with the bottle of Orval.

Having polished that lot off we went on a search round the house looking for a cocktail shaker. It was eventually found in the attic. But before then we had to turnover the basement during the course of which we came over a few boxes of beer glasses and my collection of chopsticks.

New Year’s Day and we are entertaining so an industrial amount of falafel mixture has been made. Falafel become a lot more straightforward when you realise that what you should be using is dried chickpeas that have been soaked over night and left at that.

To the soaked chickpeas I added chopped dill, parsley and coriander, pulped garlic, crushed coriander and cumin seeds.

This all goes into the Magimix until you are left with a rich green sludge which should have the consistency of cream cheese.

I may need some help with the frying of them later.

Having done that I rewarded myself with a thick Gubbeen Bacon Sandwich.