The house is back together again and all of a sudden it feels as if we are on a more even keel.

I was sent out this morning to pick up the Christmas tree and I used as an opportunity to slip into The Farmer’s Market.

In a week or so’s time I will be drubbing up all the horseradish from the garden so this was an opportunity to acquire a large lump of beef to go with it.

I managed to avoid the temptation to buy myself a double rib and let the nice people behind the counter cut in half for me. It looked god enough to eat then and there. Some of us will have it for lunch tomorrow.

Driving across the Wirral the sun was in my eyes and the hills of North Wales hung low in the distance. Coming back I was struck by how the great cathedrals of Liverpool loom over the landscape.

We had pizza again this evening and it was a lesson in how these things come in differently. Last time i made pizza it was the best I ever had had. I tried to do it all the same this evening and it wasn’t quite as good. The dough was just not quite chewy enough.

It still went down okay and the Christmas Tree is up and in the background we are listening to Perfume Genius.

After all that it was strange to find a picture of Carbery Island for sale.

The spicy prawn rice went down a treat. There were one or two mutterings about the spice but it all got eaten.

With the eldest daughter having started at university there has been a need to start thinking on how to cut down on the weekend beer consumption and save some money.

The home brew shop in Birkenhead has, hopefully, provided the perfect solution. Make my own.

I had most of the equipment in the basement so all I need was a tin can of malt and some brewing sugar.

It has been fermenting for the last week and this evening we decanted it into a barrel where it will sit patiently for the next couple of weeks.

It should be ready for Christmas

I suspect that there are few better ways to throughly piss off the neighbours than to have a large bonfire in the garden. You can stoke it with damp leaves so that great billows of grey acrid smoke waft over the gardens on either side of and those at the back. Given the weather it was a wet fire that only sporadically burst into the flame. The rest of the time it glowered and then billowed out some more smoke. So far as I could tell noone had their washing out.

The West Cork garlic I planted at the end of September is starting to sprout and I must have left some cloves in the ground from what I harvested in the summer as there are other odd green shoots poking out of the ground. The rest of the plot is dominated by horseradish. I suppose you could do worse than grow nothing but garlic and horseradish. I am sure it would keep you healthy.

I have lit the fire inside this afternoon but it is only me sitting in front of it. Maybe if I sit here long enough someone will join me.

In the meantime our early supper is cooking. It is another recipe out of the Persiana – Spicy Prawn Rice. I suspect there will be some criticism that it is a little too spicy and a bowl of yogurt and cucumber salad may not be enough to still the complaint.

It was straightforward to make. A packet of basmati rice cooked in boiling water for five minutes then drained. Raw prawns cooked in the mixture of garlic, ginger, chilli, ground coriander, cumin and fenugreek. Oil in the bottom of the pan then layers of rice and prawns. It is on the stove now slowly steaming.

We will eat it listening to strange Christmas records. Starting with Leon Redbone.

After last nights chilli and garlic there has been a need for something soothing and easy on the tongue. So when soothing calls is there anything that does it better than smoked haddock, cream and potatoes.

I half had those things in mind when I came across a recipe in Diane Henry’s Food From Plenty for a smoked haddock stovie with fried eggs and mustard sauce.

Having looked it up I am not sure how close to a true stovie this was but it tasted alright despite the various things that went wrong.

The dish itself was basically a large fish cake made with potatoes, boiled leeks and smoked haddock cooked in milk. There was some grated horseradish from the the garden  for a warming background.

I overcooked the potatoes so they were too mushy but that didn’t matter too much.

What did matter was me burning the cream whilst I talked socks by the front door. I was able to rescue it but I could taste that it had been burnt.

I then managed to split the yolks of a couple of the fried eggs.

Notwithstanding the various things that went wrong we ended up with a plate of comforting food all bouyed along with the smoked haddock.

We ate it listening to The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band going through their paces with The Circle Will Be Unbroken.