Unusually I have spent the day at home today. At the start of the day I was required to sit in to wait for the return of a hopefully working dishwasher and then for British Gas who were going to sort out the hot water, which has been intermittent. I had vague plans on staying in front of the this thing and making a new start on the book about mackerel but there were telephone calls to be made and emails to be answered and by the time I was ready the dishwasher and British Gas had arrived and the morning was gone.

Over lunch I picked Galen up from school and then sat on him all afternoon for revision.

For supper I wanted to make something that all the kids would eat and enjoy. Byrons is due to be opening in Liverpool soon so I suggested burgers. The girls rejected burgers but said they would eat some chicken in a bun so long as there were chips as well.

The only real effort required was in making breadcrumbs. As always there were some stale pieces of bread to be had. It was just a question of hacking off the bits that looked mouldy before putting them into the Magimix. Some good mince was then mixed with a handful of breadcrumbs, thyme, salt, pepper and a good few dashes of Worcester Sauce. This was all squidged into appropriately shaped patties and left for a while to rest.

In the meantime I coated two chicken breasts with some more of the breadcrumbs and flavoured them with paprika.

A shout then went up to the kids, ‘Ten minutes to go, get down here to help!’

That was ignored of course and so I shouted again, ‘Unless you get in here its going in the bin,’

They came slowly and got out their plates. There was no need for knives and forks and we ate at the food greedily with our fingers.

My supper this evening was some of the leftover chicken from the roast we had on Sunday. I made a salad with good chunks of the chicken, green leaves and croutons with a dressing that again included some of the Spicy Red Currant Jelly that has been sitting in the back of the fridge for years. The croutons were made with slices from stale French stick that I threw in the oven with some olive oil until toasted. The kids were good enough to acknowledge how good it looked but were happier with their plates of spaghetti.

The chicken had been a one pot roast. I par boiled some potatoes and tucked them around the chicken damped it all down with some olive oil and gave it a good dusting of smoked paprika, salt and pepper. It all went into a medium over for about 90 minutes. Halfway through I mixed in two sliced red peppers and three heads of fresh garlic.

The only complaint from the kids was the lack of gravy.

It has gone cold again and the wind that has been whipping up from The Mersey has lowered the temperature even further. Despite that the sun has been out and during lunch there was nothing but blue sky overhead.

We have been home alone now for almost 48 hours and so far the sharp knives have not been out. Most of the family have settled down into rhythm of revision and the exams start tomorrow. There will be a release of pressure once they are finally underway and the end is in sight.

As the evening glooming gathered up around the house I looked out of the window over the garden and against the black silhouette of the trees I saw the the quick sharp flicker of a bat. Its flight was jerky and indistinct. It was lost against the dark and then flickered again.

The Romans used mackerel to make garum, a fermented fish sauce similar to fish sauce.

According to a 1^st century BC Roman poet Martial, the preparation of garum involved securing “the blood of a still-gasping mackerel,” which was mixed with salt, and left to ferment for as long as three months. As well as mackerel, prawns, sardines, anchovies, tuna, salmon, red mullet and oysters were used. There is a temptation to think of all this as little more than a mess of rotting fish but the use of the word fermentation should tell us that there is more going on. It was important to use fresh fish. Enzymes in the gut of the fish reacted with the salt, producing an acrid and potent smelling brine. There were different grades of garum with some writers having mackerel as producing the best with tuna second.

The fermentation took two to three months and was carried out on an almost industrial scale. The importance of salt meant concentrated in areas where there were salt pans – Barcelona  was famous for its garum.

The residual liquid was strained off, and carefully bottled and sealed. The result? A condiment similar to the Thai fish sauce you can now buy in most supermarkets and the acrid, foul smelling prawn paste it is sometimes possible to buy from Siam food markets. I once had a block of this I kept in a plastic container in the back of the fridge. It hid there for years, to be taken out occasionally if I was making a curry. Lifting the lid would release the smell, dark, pungent and peaty. Only a small piece was ever required and its taste would sit deep in the background of the dish adding an earthy fecund, grunt to the flavour.

The mackerel was well known to the ancients, and those taken near the Island of Paros were particularly celebrated. The famous fish-sauce called garum, made from their entrails, was invented by the Greeks. 

Closer to home we have Worcester Sauce, made from rotten anchovies, producing the same deepening of flavour to a shepherd’s pie or dish of macaroni cheese.