Having set myself up with a good cigar on Monday evening the week has been beset with worry on account of my failure to bring a box of chocolate into work to help everybody else celebrate the birthday.

It matters not that September has been a prodigious month so far and that every day there has been a fair selection to be had from the other birthdays that have been celebrated. I have felt a prick of guilt as the greedy hand has been dipped into the box of Celebrations, the Roses and the chocolate chip cookies.

This evening I have started on making amends and a good twenty minutes has been spent putting together an assemblage of sugar, butter,eggs, flour and raisins. These have all been stirred into a half pint of Guinness and are due to be spending the next hour or so cooking slowly and filling the house with a good smell.

Baking with beer. There can be no complaint.

Let us hope I remember to take it all out of the oven and bring it with me tomorrow morning with a sharp knife.

No pictures but this tasted so good it is worth noting down what went into the making of it. I tried to find a recipe but nothing seemed to fit what I was looking for so I ended up throwing it together as I went.

A robust Friday night meal for one.

• a trimmed piece if sirloin steak chopped into mince sized pieces
• a small sliced onion
• a thinly sliced piece of lemon grass
• a couple of chopped garlic gloves
• a finely chopped knob of ginger
• a teaspoon of prawn paste
• just over a teaspoon of sugar
• fish sauce
• a couple of sliced chillies
• a bunch of basil
• juice of one lime

Put some rice on to cook.

As the rice is cooking fry off the onion in very hot oil in a wok until starts to crisp up. Put to one side.

Heat the wok until it is smoking then tip in the beef and stir for a minutes. Whilst it is still pink tip in the lemon grass, garlic and ginger and stir for another minute.

Check if the rice is cooked. If it is drain and put to one side.

Add the prawn paste to the wok and stir in. Then add the fish sauce. It should all be cooking fiercely. Add the sugar and let it cook through briefly.

Stir in the chillies and then the basil. The basil should fall back into the sauce. Once it has done so it is ready.

Season with the lime juice and eat with plenty of rice.

It was slightly depressing to walk round the old Cain’s Brewery building and to see it stripped of almost every thing that might be required for the brewing of beer.

The odd sign was still pinned to the walls and the stonework still declared Higsons and The Brewery Tap was still open. They even had behind the bar some polished, unopened bottles of Cain’s Lager but they were not for sale and even if they were they were well past their use by date. It was nice to see them.

The last time I had been inside the large canning room it had been to walk out on to a deck overlooking the room so I could watch as thousands of cans of beer were sped along conveyor belts to be packed into the back of lorries. There were no cans left and the building had been taken over by art for the Liverpool Biennual.

Earlier we had spend an hour or so looking at more art in Toxteth. Here an old reservoir had been opened up and filled with green laser beams. Whilst the green beams were impressive it was perhaps more interesting to be inside the reservoir and able to look up at the curved edges of the Victorian brick ceiling and the black iron columns holding it all up.

It was the same in the Welsh Streets where a great block of grey stone had been placed halfway down one of the streets. It was strangely effective but not as interesting as the faded colours in the shuttered old houses and the poetry and song lyrics that had been pinned to their locked doors.

Saturday evening we had a BBQ and I cooked pork ribs. They were marinaded in a sauce of my own devising. This started by me putting a couple of chopped onions, same garlic and tomatoes through the food processor and then adding some flavourings to the sludge which basically meant  pouring in whatever I could find in the cupboard – this included some runny honey which had gone hard, a couple of different types of chilli sauce, tomato ketchup, soy sauce, lots of salt and pepper, some vinegar and another dash of ketchup for luck. There may have also been the dregs of a couple of bottles of BBQ sauce that had been lurking.

This gloop was mixed in with pork ribs. I poured some over some chicken wings as well as the vegetarian alternative. A couple of hours later when I came to light the BBQ there wasn’t as much charcoal as I had anticipated. This may have worked out for the best as there was just enough for me to be able to maintain a consistent low level heat sufficient to cook everything but not burn it.

We had the pork ribs with rice’n’beans and salad and good company.

There is an art to the cooking of Irish potatoes all of which geared to boiling them to the point they are cooked but before you are left with a watery mush in the bottom of the pan that is good for nothing but throwing down the sink and starting again. The tipping point only takes a second or so. A moments distraction and it may be too late and they’re done for.

This means it all comes down to the timing. Of course there is no chance that two different pans of potatoes will be done at the same time so there is no point setting a rule down in minutes and seconds. Vigeilence and the continous promp prod with a sharp knife is needed.

One potential solution is to do away with all and and work on the basis that they will be done in the time it takes to walk up to the pub and bring back a couple of pints.

Worked out fine yesterday evening. I must try it again.

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