Is there any more comforting food than smoked haddock.

We had some last night with potatoes and spinach. The potatoes came from the garden. I had dug them up a month ago and since then they had kept themselves hidden in a paper sack in the cellar.

The potatoes were parboiled and drained.

I then cooked the haddock, bringing some water to a simmer in a large pan, and then sliding in the fat haddock and letting it warm through until I could peel away its skin.

The pan was then drained and the haddock put to one side whilst in the same pan I sweated away an onion and a leek. I was careful to keep the water. I may have stirred in a crushed clove of garlic but it wasn’t needed. I managed to find some saffron lurking in the cupboard and I crushed this up and added it to the pan.

Once the onion and leek had started to take on colour I stirred in the potatoes and then the water in which the haddock had cooked. Once that was simmering it was left for a few minutes more to take on its flavours. I then added the spinach, it had been drained, cleaned and chopped, it had to be pushed down amongst the potatoes so it could start on its disappearing act.

A pot of double cream was then added and stirred in along with the flaked haddock.

It all deserved a good bottle of white wine and it had it!

Thursday evening was bonfire night and we went to watch our fireworks in Birkenhead Park. We had to wait for an hour for the fireworks to start. With the rain that had been coming down all day it could have been a case of damp matches. There were a few thousand people gathered round in a great circle to watch. For most of the hour all we could see were a few men in high visibility jackets waving torches and the green light of mini lasers sweeping round blinding the odd passer by. There were plenty for fireworks in the distance but none in Birkenhead Park.

As we waited one the children started to complain and worry about the cold and her homework that apparently still needed to be done. She kept counting diown the minutes before she would be off storming up the hill to be home but then halfway through one of her minutes the fireworks started and the sky erupted into light. She was quiet then but behind us a far younger child decided that he needed to be home in bed and a long way from all the loud bangs. He wailed all the way through. A high pitch moan of “I don’t like it I want to go home”.

The fireworks were still pretty good.

Saturday morning and slightly unexpectedly I found myself giving advice on the proper construction of a chestnut roaster. I was in the grocers and Kazim had had a go trying out his new roaster earlier that morning. He had not been able to get it hot enough and the chestnuts had taken too long to cook.

I peered at it as if peering into the bonnet of an unfamiliar car, I poked at the metal and put my fingers to the holes that had been punched into the metal fire pit on legs and the round sheet metal lid.

“It needs more holes” I said as if there was a danger I knew what I was talking about. “It needs more holes and they need to be bigger”.

Kazim and I stroked our chins and discussed the merits of gas against charcoal and the cooking time for chestnuts. He hopes to have a better go of it next week. In the meantime a small pressure cooker bubbled behind us – a lunch of stewed onions and tomatoes.

Saturday afternoon and we spent twenty minutes in a dark room watching a naked marble statue talk us through her starkersness lips and eyes fluttering light as she clothed and undressed herself and her soft voice went on, asking us questions about what we were watching. We were in the Williamson Gallery and almost missed what we had come to see – mostly because we didn’t have much idea of what it was. It transpired it was a light projection onto the marble statue that made her eyes and lips move as she spoke. There was something spooky about being in the room with her. She kept perfectly still but the flickering light brought her to life and it felt as if there was someone else in the room with us. I hope they don’t turn her off at night and she can continue talking after we have all gone home.

Sometimes it is difficult to know what to do out in the garden. I had an hour or so out there this afternoon.

In anticipation I had spent some time in bed through the morning turning over in my mind what tasks were out there to be done. As I lay I also took it upon myself to wonder why my tomatoes had done so badly whilst the chillies had done so well. Looking back at it at the end of the day it appeared that the chilli crop next to the tomato crop had won out about 10 to 1.

There were plenty of leaves to be swept up and I duly did a bit of that. They were tipped into a large bag to be left for the next few months until turned into mulch. But looking up at the trees there were still as lot mores leaves to come down and it was difficult to summon up enthusiasm for a task knowing that no sooner was it done then it would be needed to be done again.

The beds are still heavy with the foliage of summer. I spent some time clearing that but a lot of it was still green and in the warmth that had gathered under the fog it felt too early to be hacking everything back. From the bits that I did chop back I disturbed a frog. It had obviously grown since the summer and had me jumping back as it scuttled out from where it had been hiding.

The hour or so’s worth of gardening done I made supper. A sweet sour curry of chicken with spices and dried apricot. The best thing about it was being able to make use of the packet of Jaggery sugar that has been on the side in the kitchen for the last six months. I had obviously  bought it for something and then promptly forgotten to use it. Arguably sugar would have done just as well but it did add a heft of sweetness to the roasted spices.

The best thing about roasting the spices was tipping them into the mortar and taking in the arid smell they gave off as I crushed them with the pestle.

Yesterday at the grocers I saw that Kazim had taken out the window at the front allowing the shop to spill out onto the pavement facing Oxton Road and then back inside the shop the colours crossing over from one side to the other.

Kazim  told me his plans for next Saturday. He has a friend,  a welder, and he had made him a stand out of metal to roast chestnuts on. Kazim is going to set it up outside the shop in the middle near from where the window had been taken out. He wasn’t hoping to make any money but he thought it would be a good way to bring people into the shop and to make the area more interesting.

We discussed if there were any recipes for cooking roast chestnuts beyond heating them up in a pan with holes over hot charcoal. He had heard that the French have a way of letting them stew in red wine and then splitting them before they went on to roast. We agreed that it would be best to keep it simple.

So if you are near Birkenhead next weekend you should go along for a bag of roast chestnuts. I am sure they will be good.

This morning, Sunday, the world has been shrouded in fog. It has soaked up whatever sound there is and all is quiet apart from the tapping of keyboards. The trees are yellowing and shedding their leaves and it feels like the first proper day of autumn. Maybe we will light a fire this evening.

In the meantime is has been a good morning for eating bacon, drinking coffee and thinking about The Unthanks.