When a member of the family has been away for a few weeks and then is home for a brief weekend before Easter there is a temptation to be accepting of whatever it is that she wants for her tea on the first evening back.

She wanted pizza. And almost immediately there was a debate as to whether there was enough time to make some dough from getting back from work, giving it time to prove and then to make a good thick tomato sauce for the topping.

In the event there was time for all of these things. The dough was made before I got home and the various toppings were cooked, chopped and laid out, ready to be cooked in a vey hot oven.

The pizzas were very good and I might have written more about them but have found myself befuddled over the last half hour over an argument with the youngest member of the family as to the difference between an objective and subjective viewpoint.

I suspect she was right.

So slightly to my surprise early Wednesday morning I found myself walking round a property and eyeing up its potential as a palace for the sale of good Irish cheese.

Afterwards someone sent me message ‘Any Scope? or too big/expensive?’ and I was bound to reply “All three!”

It was very big. Three floors; basement, ground and first, stretching back from the street. In the basement there was a strengthen piece of glass covering on the floor with a do not dive in sign. This was a well and turns out the place had once been an ink factory and the water had been used for the ink. The building was late Victorian and there was something of a warehouse about the place.

The ground floor still had the old wooden floor. It was rough and scuffed with use but looked intact and good enough to scrub up. The ceiling was held up with heavy grey ironwork and there were high windows going down one side of the room and at the back.

The first floor had a vaulted ceiling with the same heavy ironwork. It had the same windows and although they were covered up it felt light and airy. It didn’t take too much imagination to clear away the factory fittings and to put down a bar at one end and then a series of tables and chairs and groups of people sat round eating and drinking.

But then there was an awkward dark mezzanine floor, a tatty small kitchen and an internal office that had been created out of plaster board and plastic.

The place itself was expensive and there would be a heavy cost in doing anything with it. And then when all the ‘it’ had been done would there be enough people to come and make it work. There are only a limited number Irish cheeses it is possible to sell in a week.

We shall see.

Saturday morning and getting my head around the food for Sunday all I could think about was the fact we had too much Sumac in the house.

I am reasonably sure that the first time I heard about Sumac was watching one of the early Nigella Lawson programmes on the TV, back when she was good. I bought some then and now if I see some in a shop I will buy it again just so I don’t run out.

But for the last few months there has been a packet on the side waiting to get opened and so today we had a go at it.

The International Store was selling chickens with feet on. The man behind the counter offered to chop them up for me but I reckoned that I had knives as sharp as his.

I found the cleaver and cut two chickens into four pieces each.

A large metal tin then went on the oven and the chicken pieces were turned in the hot oil until they started to take on some colour.

As the chicken was done it was taken out of the pan and replaced with a mixture of onions, spring onions and garlic. The Sumac was stirred in and as the onions wilted the chicken was put back on top with a generous grinding of pepper salt and more of the Sumac.

We ate it half an hour later with salad and yogurt and roast potatoes.