Last Christmas we went to Spain for a week and various sins were visited upon a very fine leg of Spanish ham. Probably the first sin was our failure to identify if it was a Serrano or Iberico ham. Secondly the first carver fed the thick layer of fat to the feral cats outside when he should have kept it so it could act as a protective skin to be laid back over the exposed ham once the carving had been started. After that a number of us hacked and sliced for the week without any great regard to what we were doing so long as we came away with a few clean sllces. The knives were blunt and inadequate and there was no attempt to work out the lie of the bones, to trim round them and to make sure that each slice was made up of the right combination of creamy melt on the finger fat and dark pink meat.

Last night I was given an opportunity to make amends and was sent along to a ham carving master class at Lunya.

Early evening in Liverpool in late September. It was light but quiet enough to be able to pick up the odd moment in Liverpool One without some shopper wandering about.

Inside Lunya I settled down at the bar with my first bottle Er Boquerõn – beer made with sea water. I was about half way through the glass when I was called upstairs for the start of the masterclass.

The U-shaped table was laid with about a dozen places and in front of each chair there was a plate laid out with three different types of ham, each a different shade of pink and with a different grade of fat running through it. There was a temptation to tuck in at once but I gathered that we were to wait. There were about nine of us on the course and we were joined by three staff from the restaurant there for an update.

Our master carver was Mario Hiraldo Regalado of Ibéricos de Huelva. He took us through a slide show with pictures of the various types of pig that make up the different hams, the curing process, the distinctions between the various hams, the acorns that make up the best food for the pigs, the ground that they roam in, the parts of the ham and pictures of neatly laid plates of sliced ham and a hall of shame showing the damaged wreaked on legs of ham by inconsiderate carvers. The hall of shame struck a particular note with my memories of Christmas.

As he spoke plates of food were brought out, bread with tomatoes, padron peppers and squid with mayonnaise, cheese and quince paste. As he spoke we nibbled into these and I found myself in a silent battle of politeness with my neighbours on the table as to who should have the last piece of squid and the last piece of cheese. I won both times. They were too polite!

We also tasted the ham on the plates in front of us; working our way through the two types of Serrano and fishing with the Iberico, the fat melting in our fingers as we lifted it from the plate.

The talk over we were shown how to go about carving the ham. The different knives for each job with their varying thicknesses and strength and the importance in keeping each cut flat and straight and achieving the right mixture of fat and meat.

We laid the meat out carefully on red and white pieces of greased paper. As I switched between knives (minding my fingers) so as to be able to trim away the layer of thick yellow fat on the outside of the ham and to then carve with a long thin blade I thought back to the mess we had made of it last Christmas.

We got to take home with us what we had carved and went on to be given a run through of two Spanish wines and a bone chilling dry yellow sherry.

I am chewing on a piece now, breaking down the mixture of fat and meat, so the just melted fat starts to cover the back of my tongue and I can feel the taste of it all in my mouth.

Friday night and I cooked for Homebaked. It was an evening for providing some good food and drink to the people who give up their time to work in the bakery and those that like to come in and say hello.

I was able to get most of what I needed for the cooking from either the veg shop on Oxton Road or The International Store a few doors down.

I was unsure of both the numbers and exactly how the cooking could be done on the night so it seemed like a good idea to make a vast pot of stew and then have some couscous, salad and bread to go with it.

I found a recipe for Lamb Harira which could easily be doubled up and then doubled up again to feed the masses.

I started last weekend first by soaking overnight and then boiling for an hour or so a couple of kilo of dried chickpeas. Having cooked them I kept the water they had been boiled in.

Monday evening I bought two legs of lamb from The International Store which had been cubed into bite sized chunks. That was all put into a couple of large plastic containers to marinade overnight in a mixture of grated ginger, garlic, bay leaves, onions, paprika, cinnamon, and turmeric.

Tuesday night I cooked the lamb, browning it first over a high heat in a wok and then tipping it into a very large pot. Once the lamb was browned I covered it with white wine, tomatoes and the water from cooking the chickpeas. It was all brought to a simmer before I tipped in half a packet of brown lentils and half of the chickpeas. The other half of the chickpeas were mashed up and then tipped in as well to thicken the sauce. It then took a couple of hours to cook through before being cooled down and stored in a cold fridge to mature for a couple of days.

Thursday night I made the veggie alternative harira which was more or less the same as the lamb harira but without the lamb. Clever stuff!

Friday afternoon I made a basin of tomato salad. A box of plum tomatoes from the veg shop chopped into rough quarters, mixed with a couple of sliced red onions, pomegranate seeds and molasses, olive oil, dill and chopped walnuts.

At the same time I made the couscous pouring the dried grains into large metal bowls, placing a large pat of butter in the middle, pouring over boiling water and then covering up with clingfilm for ten minutes and then fluffing up the grains with a fork and seasoning with salt pepper and parsley

That evening I heated the stews through on the range in the Homebaked bakery and then took them in the back of the car to the venue where I think they went down okay.

Four or five years ago I bough some horseradish to plant in the veg plot. It was only a piece of dried root about 6 inches long. I thought I could plant it in a quiet corner and if I was lucky there would be a scrape of horseradish to go with some been come autumn. It grew well the first year and we had a piece of roast beef to eat with it in October.

Since then it has been difficult to get rid of. Every piece of the spilt root is enough. This year I made a concerted effort to eradicate it. When i dug over the patch in spring I made sure that every last vestige of root was pulled out sometimes digging down a foot or more to get to the end of it. Over the summer I have pulled out every shoot as soon as it broke through the surface and made sure that I got the root as well.

It hasn’t worked. Four weeks away and it is everywhere. The whole patch was overgrown and gone to seed the remaining courgettes gorged heavy monsters.

As I pulled at the vegetation all I could smell was the  nose tingling horseradish and the pepper of nasturtium.

In the meantime we have been left with too many apples than we know what to do with, the trees are bent double with them, and I have starting on preparing to cook for a big meal later in the week.

I didn’t have too much difficulty finding a recipe.

I started off with Jane Grigson’s Good Things and rather to my surprise it wasn’t there so I moved onto her Fish Cookery and there it was. A mixture of crab, eggs, cream and cheese in shortcrust pastry.

I looked around to see if there were any others but those that I found introduced too many complications. Simon Hopkinson had tomatoes and and saffron in his and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall just had too much of everything.

At Ward’s Fish I was about to buy two dressed crabs when it was pointed out to me the whole crabs were better value. Even better I could put on some music to listen to as I extracted the meat. So I bought two fat Loch Fynne crabs.

Back at home as I pulled the crabs apart and teased out the small nuggets of white meat I was reminded of a time in Ireland seven or eight years ago when Kevin and Julie came to stay and I cooked up a large pan full of crabs and Kevin and I spent the best part of an afternoon pulling them apart and turning them into crab cakes.

We will have the tart with potatoes and salad from the garden. Having made the tart it was nice to turn the Jane Grigson’s book over and to see where it had come from.