First Saturday of the month and part of my morning routine is a trip to the Farmer’s Market in New Ferry. This last Saturday there was a nice man on the way in proffering a taste of his cider. Having tasted the five different varieties he had on offer I felt obliged to buy of litre of dry cider he had been keeping in old whiskey barrels. There was another that had been kept in old rum barrels and I should have bought some of that as well.  That will be for next month.

There was more cider inside and I persuaded myself to buy some more, so I now have three litres of cider in the cellar waiting for the right time to be opened. Should give me a chance to use some of the cider cups I have down there from a holiday in Brittany of about seven years ago.

After the cider I bought a free range chicken, a bunch of dirty carrots and some green beans. No cheese this month as the fridge is groaning with the stuff. As well as the cheese from Ireland there is still a half a ball of Edam to get through and a nice looking lump of Garstang Blue.

The chicken was roasted for Sunday lunch having been stuffed with an onion and herbs from the garden including some tarragon. We had it with some of the Kilcrohane potatoes we brought back from Ireland. There is a knack to boiling these potatoes. Take your eye off them at the wrong moment and they turn to mush in the pan. I got these just right and the crisped up beautifully in the hot oven.

There was plenty of chicken left so I picked every last shred of meat from the bones. I threw the carcass  into a pot of water together with the onion and herb stuffing and boiled it slowly all for half an hour. Strained it and put the stock in the fridge.

It only took 20 minutes to cook up a fricassee with all this earlier this evening.

I fried a finely chopped onion in some butter and when it was soft added a squashed chopped clove of garlic. Once this had cooked through for a few minutes I stirred in a tablespoon of flour and cooked that through for another few minutes. I then added the stock slowly and brought it all to a simmer. If there had been any white wine I could have thrown in a glass of that. Once it was simmering I stirred in the chicken and heated it through. Taste and season with plenty of salt and pepper. Before serving I added some chopped parsley. If I had not finished off the tarragon the previous day that would have worked well. As would a glass of the cider that is still in the cellar.

We ate it with boiled rice The Flaming Lips playing quietly in the background. There should be lots in The Flaming Lips for the kids to like so I am hoping that if I keep it in the machine for a few nights one of them will twig and ask me what it is.

I got five new cookbooks for my birthday and last night we cooked out of one of them, Polpo, a book of Venetian cooking.

In the early part of the evening it was warm enough to sit outside around the new firepit.

We started with cicheti a type of finger food, two or three ingredients held together with a cocktail stick.  We had cherry tomatoes, mozzarella and a basil leaf drizzled with olive oil and seasoned with salt and pepper together slices of grilled fennel wrapped in an anchovy fillet with dill. We also had a plate of sliced smoked sausage from Gubbeen.

We came inside after that and had a plate of beetroot slathered with a walnut and pesto. There is plenty of the pesto left to have with a plate of pasta during the week.

We followed that with a great plate of lentils, cod cheeks and salsa.  The cheek is the tiny pocket of meat just below the eye about the size of a scallop. Wards sells them in 500 gr packs. I have not had them before but I will have them again. They will taste good breaded and fried.

Andrea then finished us off with a bowl of poached autumn fruits and cream.

For those who had any room left we are a small Durrus cheese.

Washing up this morning listening to Jack White and Jim White.

On our last day in Ireland we caught about twelve mackerel. I smoked most of them and once they had cooled wrapped them in foil and put them in the back of the fridge. I remembered to pack them the next morning and they came back with us on the ferry to Holyhead. We got back to Birkenhead about five in the afternoon and that evening we had a takeaway curry.

Monday was first day back at work and the first shower for a week washing away the rust off an Irish tan and then back to an office and the slow grind of a computer screen.

That evening I cooked another kedgeree. It was not as good as the one we ate on the beach one evening in Ireland sat around a fire, food always taste better like, but it wasn’t bad and there was not much left at the end of the meal.

The mackerel had survived the journey. Unwrapping it from the foil and peeling the skin off the fillets brought home how much oil there is the fish.

We won’t be having mackerel again until next summer.

Whilst we ate we listened to the new James Yorkston. Some of us have been waiting almost ten years for Ella Guru to make a new record. This maybe the closest we will get. Kath with Rhodes  could be the track of the year – a softly spoken wooze of a song.

Back home from Ireland with a fridge full of cheese and sausage. The next post should contain a more detailed list of what there is.

We motored out yesterday after lunch to catch mackerel. There were three or four boats in the water on the point off Owen Island.  The sea was unsettled and the boat unsteady in the water and I thought that we would come away with nothing especially when the lines became caught under the boat. But then the lines tightened and pulled under the water and the mackerel started to bite. We just allowed the boat to drift in the wind until it came into the lee of the island.  in that twenty minutes we caught 12 fish and those were the ones that we kept. We could of easily had had twice that number.

A few days previously the talk in the pub had been about the lack of fish and how the torrents of rain over the previous two months had put too much fresh water into the bay. they were right about the rain. Even in the middle of the bay the water had a brown peaty look to it. But we had caught plenty of  mackerel with there not being a day when we came back with an empty bucket.

After gutting the fish I left three in the fridge for Dad to have for his Sunday supper. I smoked the rest to take home to eat on Monday evening. By this time it had started to rain, a thick unrelenting drizzle which made packing over the afternoon easier.

That evening we ate in Arundel’s and then walked in the dark and rain to The Tin Pub. The walk is only a few hundred yards but the trees close round the road at night plunging it into almost total darkness. As you walk you could be convinced that you are about to to be lost in the night. The effect is heightened in the rain, all the wet pressing the vegetation ever closer around you.

The pub was quiet for a Saturday night. Cora played card tricks with another girl behind the bar. As we finished our first pint our famous neighbour came in. Without the music and people we got into talking and were able compare journeys across the country to get to Ahakista.

There were slow heads in the morning as we packed the car. It had stopped raining by then but the ground was sodden with what had come down in the night. The water was as high as the night we had arrived and the same holes in the pier gurgled and plopped with the flow around the the slipway.

The fishermen had yet to leave the pier and the gulls seemed to stalk it more confidently as if the start of the fisherman’s day somehow diminished their hold over the territory. Maybe they were waiting for us to leave.