I am conscious that it has been quiet from here over the last few days; a combination of a busy few days during the day and a busy weekend.

The good news is that there has been food and we ate well over the weekend telling all who were interested just how good Bobby Womack was.

We were out Friday night eating a roast leg of venison that had been marinated for a long time in red wine before being put in the oven. It was excellent, rich and gamey, and reminded me that I have recently been given a rabbit that is now resting in the freezer and waiting for me to do something constructive with it. Feelings run high in the family over the eating of rabbit (we had for a short while a pet rabbit called Cookie) and I suspect that I might even have difficulties persuading Galen to join me in eating it.

Saturday lunchtime was pitta bread stuffed with falafel, lamb, yogurt, onions, tomatoes, cucumber and lashings of hot chilli sauce. The kids were able to pick and choose and were just about all able to choose something they liked. The falafel were made using a dried chickpea flour mix from The International Store which looks a bit like the dried stuffing mix I seem to remember from a long time ago. Once it is mixed with water it needs 20 minutes or so to thicken up and you can then use a very neat falafel shaper to scoop out the mixture into just the right flat pat shape to be dropped into a shallow pan of hot oil.

Saturday might we had friends to stay and we enjoyed a long slow meal. I like a meal that starts with a drink and some crisps, then moves on to something more substantial to nibble (in this case chorizo and pedron peppers), and then on to soup and the start of the meal proper.

The soup was a beetroot soup with black cumin from the first Moro cookbook. The black cumin came from The International Store and apart from the price seemed fairly similar to ordinary cumin. The soup was flavoured slightly with sherry vinegar which helped to cut through some of the richness.

We then had cod pan fried and roasted in the oven, with saffron flavoured rice, chickpea salad and some more of the kale from the garden which just seems to keep on giving.

Then it was roast quince with honey and cream and to finish a great block of Tasty Lancashire and an equally great block of Double Gloucester.

We were replete at the end of it.

I did the washing up listening to Don’t Stand Me Down by Dexy’s Midnight Runners which just keeps on getting better and better.

As some of you may know I will be 50 later this year. Sam Cooke died more than a half century ago, the year before I was born. Shortly before he died he recorded A Change Is Gonna Come. I am not sure if Bobby Womack played on the single but he talked about it last night.

It came about halfway through the concert and he had already done Harry Hippy and Across 100th Street. There was a slight worry that he was going to run through the hits and leave the stage after half an hour with the audience pleased that he had done some of the songs they had come for but still wanting more. But it went on for longer than that and the turning point was when he started to sing about Marvin Gaye and the band moved into one of those bits from What’s Going On where there is not much more than a saxophone and Marvin’s voice sighing to the heavens and Bobby Womack got it just right and it was a heartstopping moment.

It was after that he started to talk about Sam Cooke and playing guitar with him and then he started to sing A Change Is Gonna Come and suddenly we were hard up against those fifty years and all they contained and the history bound up with the song and at the same time we were watching a 69 year old man on stage singing as if he was half his age but held back by the frailties of his age but in full knowledge of all those other changes to come.

The concert took a change after that. All through there had been an aide who had stood at the back of the stage and occasionally moved forward to pass on some water or make sure there was a stool for Bobby Womack to sit on. At first it felt like a slight James Brown gesture but as the concert went on it became clear that he was hardly able to stand until he was being supported by one of the backing singers, his daughter, and the aide. But still he would not stop singing as if through sheer force of will he could keep the voice going.

He was carried off stage still singing and the audience was shouting for more and so he forced himself out again still carried on the shoulders of his helpers. He stood to the side of the stage in front us singing an old gospel song until spent again he was helped off the stage. The band clapped themselves off the stage.

The house lights went on and people started to edge out to the exits and we started to shuffle out of our seats. As we did so the voice came out again. He didn’t make it back onto the stage but we could just about see his black cap at one of the doors by the side. Somehow he was still propped up and the voice was as powerful as it had been at the start. The band came back on unsure of what was going on but plugging in away and they started to play with him until the song was done.

An extraordinary night.

A few years ago I read a book about Sam Cooke called Dream Boogie: The Triumoh of Sam Cooke by Peter Guralnick. It was a great book and it made me re-visit the live LP I was given some years ago Live at the Harlem Square Club 1963. One of the great live albums. It is easy to pocket Sam Cooke into the deceptively light pop of his singles like Wonderful World or You Send Me but on the live album you can see where Rod Stewart  got it all from. There is something lascivious and insistent about the music and the immediacy between the singer and his audience.

At the end of the book I got to thinking that Peter Guralnick should next be writing about Bobby Womack. 

Bobby Womack features heavily in the life of Sam Cooke. The band he was in with his brothers The Valentinos were mentored and produced by Sam Cooke and they released their first records on his label. Bobby Womack married Sam Cooke’s widow. Not only is he one of the few living connections with the people who sang then but over the years he has written songs for and had connections with some of the very best music.

He is playing in Liverpool tonight so much of the day so far has been spent doing homework and listening through all the CDs and albums I have. So far that has been about 4 hours of solid Bobby Womack.

In between I have made a chicken curry to eat before go out and been for a walk round the garden to see what is coming up. There is some tidying up to do outside but it has been wet and windy so it will have to wait for another weekend. The garlic I planted last year in September is coming up well and there are still some beetroots that need eating up. As always there is a glut of cavolo nero. I will need to look up some recipes to use it all up.

Last night we ate a seafood pasta sauce with feta cheese. I had bought a couple of large bags of good pasta the previous week and one of them still needed eating. There were a reduced number of children in the house and the one that we were left with was happy to eat whatever was put in front of him.

I had been to Wards in morning and bought eight large un-peeled prawns, a handful of monkfish cheeks and and a large red mullet which they filleted for me.

That evening I put a large pan of water on to boil for the pasta.

As that heated up I dealt with the prawns. This meant peeling them and taking off the heads. I then heated up some olive oil in a small pan and threw in the prawns’ heads and shells. I used a wooden spoon to press down on the heads to squeeze out whatever was in there. As they turned pink and started to seethe I pour a glass of white wine in and let it cook down for a while until I was left with a thick, intense red sauce at the bottom of the pan.

The rest of the dish was done as the pasta cooked.

I started by warming some olive oil in a large frying pan. I threw in garlic and a few thin slices of chilli. As the garlic started to take on some colour the prawns went in. As they turned from grey to pink the monkfish cheeks went and then a handful of halfed cherry tomatoes. That was all stirred round and left to cook for a couple of minutes.

The red mullet went in then cut up into good sized chunks. Once the red mullet was in I had to stir more carefully so as not to break the fish up. There was half a tub of double cream in the back of the fridge and I poured that into the pan and poured in the liquor from the pan with the prawns shells.

The pasta was almost done now but before draining it I pushed some small nuggets of feta cheese down amongst the pieces of fish and added salt and plenty of pepper and a handful of chopped dill.

The pasta was ready and I drained in and then returned it to its pan. Half the sea food sauce was then stirred into the pasta with more pieces of feta.

It all then went into a serving bowl with the rest of the sauce on top and a final sprinkling of chopped dill.

We were running our fingers the bowl to finish off the sauce at then end of the meal.

After that we sat down and watched Jamón, Jamón.