Last night we had a confusion of sisters, nephews, nieces and grand-parents round for supper.

It was, of course, a Tuesday evening and so there wasn’t a huge amount of time to manage the journey back from work and the space needed to make some good food. The intention was to have a BBQ. But in the event the weather was too grey to make it a convincing one.

Time was saved by me making a piri-piri marinade to go with a bucket load of chicken. It went down so well that it is perhaps worthwhile rehearsing how it was made. All credit should go to the Morito cookbook from where the recipe came.

The only hardship in the cooking of it was the roasting of a couple of red peppers and chilli peppers until black and blistered, letting them cool and then going through the mess of denuding them of their skin and seeds. Once peeled they went into the Magimix together with:-

• a good glass of white wine
• a couple of tablespoons of white wine vinegar sweetened with sugar
• a dried red chilli pepper
• ground coriander
• 8 fresh bay leaves
• some crushed garlic
• oregano from the garden
• paprika
• olive oil
• salt and pepper

and was all whisked up into a thick bright red liquid which was then smeared over a mixture of chicken wings, legs and thighs. Slightly smugly the Morito book says they neber marinade anything for less than 24 hours. My chicken was in its red mix for 48 hours and tasted all the better for it.

The chicken was cooked on the BBQ but I misjudged some of the timing and so as to avoid our all eating sometime after midnight it was finished off in the oven. Some things just need time to get right.

We ate it with a chopped vegetable salad, salad from the garden and new potatoes. It was followed by a salted liquorice courtesy of The Good Things Cafe.

I had hoped some of the chicken would be left for my lunch today but a hungry nephew finished it all off.

Now we are girding loins and getting ready to make the drive tomorrow evening to Holyhead and then the mad overnight drive across the centre of Ireland. We should arrive in Ahakista early Friday morning as dawn is starting to crack across the sky behind us and the fishermen are pulling up with their cars against the pier for their days work.

We will soon be eating in The Good Things Cafe and drinking black pints with men with beards and sloughing off the skin of the daily grind.

We are all looking forward to it.