As promised this evening we ate out of a book called Medina Kitchen.

It is by Fiona Dunlop who also wrote a book called New Tapas which is a tour around Spain and its more modern Tapas bars and the food that they serve there. It has at least two recipes that I like to cook on a fairly regular basis being slow cooked squid in a red wine and tomato sauce and salt cod paella. The squid has featured here in the past and the salt cod paella should be on here soon.

Medina Kitchen follows a similar format as it spends time in the kitchens of various women in Marrakech, Fez, Tunis, Carthage, La Goulette and Tripoli. For some reason I have not cooked from it before but I picked it up yesterday when thinking about something new to do with the chicken I had bought from The Farmer’s Market. My eye was caught by a recipe for steamed stuffed chicken from Fez and then I saw recipes for chickpeas in a tomato snd herb sauce, sweet potato with raisins and an aubergine salad. All that sounded as it had the makings of a good lunch so we were on.

I had only been able to buy a small chicken but it was just the right size to squeeze into the steamer. I stuffed it with a mixture couscous, onion, chicken liver, garlic and coriander. It cooked in just over an hour and I was careful to make sure the water didn’t dry out.

The sweet potato was made by sweating a couple of onions in oil and then adding saffron and water and cooking the mixture down before adding the sweep potato cut into chunks and the mixture being cooked through until done and then at the last minute I stirred in a good hand-full of golden sultanas. Some chopped parsley was stirred through before it went onto the table.

To keep the kids happy we also had some roast potatoes although I sprinkled them with some crushed coriander seeds and cumin as they cooked.

The potatoes went down best. We will have the rest cold tomorrow evening.

Listening now to the wind and Miles Davis in almost full on electric mode looking to run some voodoo down.

Although it is starting to get warmer there is still a coolness in the air and then the sun comes out from behind one of the grey clouds and suddenly there is a lightness to the air and heat against the skin.

I have been in the garden this afternoon. The first job was to put up some netting around the few remaining onion shoots in the hope that they can pull though after the fat bastard chicken got most of them.

Then I pulled up the remaining calvolo nero from last year which as all gone to seed and tidied up a couple of the beds ready to plant out the beetroot next weekend. It took me thirty years to develop a taste for beetroot and now I find myself looking forward to when it will be ready to eat. Particularly the yellow ones that seem to be doing very well in the greenhouse.

Tidying up the beds involved pulling up some thick shanks of horseradish.

Then it was time to repot the dahlias.The tubers have spent the winter in an old Sayer’s  tray in the basement. They are starting to shoot so they are now all in pots ready to be planted out in a month or so’s time when the bluebells and daffodils are done.

Finally I planted out some of the potatoes which have been chitting in the basement. They have gone into a bag made from old fish meal sacks.

This evening we are going to eat a variety of dishes out of book called Medina Kitchen. It is a book of North African cooking I was given a few years ago. I am not sure I have cooked out of it before but it should be good.

Last night we ate pizza and this morning I delved into the freezer to finish of the Gubbeen bacon I bough last summer. It made a particularly good bacon sandwich. We are back in Cork next week ans I will be able to stock up on some fresh supplies.

Two weeks ago I was standing proud as the onion seeds I had planted towards the end of February were starting to sprout and there were four rows of thin, very thin, green shoots to admire and the promise of more to come.

I went out this evening to have a look and there were hardly any of them left. Back in the Kitchen I looked out of the window and there was a fat bastard pigeon waddling on the veg patch poking around for some other seedling to pull up. It looked good enough to eat and there would be some appropriate come-uppance if having demolished my onions it should end up on my plate. It may be time to invest in something gun like to exact revenge.

So this evening I have lathered some out of date lamb from the supermarket with the remains of the Mojo Rojo sauce that has been maturing on the fridge for the last week. That has now been in a hot oven for just over an hour and we are about to eat it with a bottle of good red wine.

Listening to the new album by The Afghan Whigs. I think I may have blown the speakers which is just as well as the kids are telling me to turn it down.

You can’t put a mackerel back together again once it is out of the water. It may be kicking against the light and air and trying to thump its way back to the sea but for all that wild energy and fight its is done for.

Half the life will have gone from it in the effort made to get off the hook. You can’t see them there in the black of the water but as you are pulling them in with the orange line falling in a pile in the bottom of the boat they will be swimming in every direction the power in their tail can take them to get away from the cruel sharp piece of metal.

Once they are out of the water they will bump against the side of the boat and they are then in your hand. Each knock and touch scrapes away or disturbs their fine scales and if they went back into the water then the sleek ease by which they move will have been lost.

In the water each fish is one small part of a great shoal that moves through the water as one. If a fish is taken from that and spat out in the air before falling back in the sea again how will it ever find its place back in the shoal which by then will have moved on.

Once you have the fish on the hook it is done for and you might as well keep it.