I forgot to mention that Courtney Barnett was pretty good.

She broke the cardinal rule and changed over guitars as she went along but as both of them made a pretty good noise it stopped mattering after a while. So long as you can make a good noise out of it I am happy and she more than made good noises. There was some Neil Young in the noise that she made but then as she headed into the final stretch and she played Pedestrian at best and then Nobody really cares if you don’t go to the party she hit a grungier stride that brought a big smile to my face.

Saturday afternoon and there were two crabs sitting in the salad drawer of the fridge in the basement. Wards have started to take over a large part of the aisle that they occupy in Birkenhead Market. The stall on their right has now got a vast lobster and crab tank installed in it. They are bathed in a blue light. A live crab provides a good opportunity to get your hands dirty and indulge in some proper cooking.

I had woken up thinking of crab. One of my favourite recipes is crab with linguine – just cooked pasta into which a mixture of crab meat, lemon juice, garlic, chilli and olive oil is stirred – but that felt too light for a Saturday night. After some digging around I found a recipe for a crab jambalaya which was sold to the kids as a kind of paella.

The two crabs were cooked in salty water for twenty minutes. After being allowed to cool I went at them with a nut-cracker and picking tool listening to Talking Heads and with a glass of beer to hand.

Forty minutes later I was left with a pile of brown meat and white meat and suitably dirty fingers. The detritus went back into a pan with some olive oil and after it caught some colour water was added and simmered for twenty minutes or so to make a rough crab stock. I was determined to wring every once of flavour out of them.

The dish was straight-forward to make. Onions and sweet peppers were cooked down in olive oil. Garlic and chillies were stirred in along with a bay leave. After some more cooking I stirred in a couple of cups of the tomato soup that was left over from lunch, rice and the crab stock. A lid went on and I sat down and read the paper for twenty minutes. The heat was turned off and it was all left to settle for 15 minutes whilst I read some more of the paper.

It went down surprisingly well.

When I get round to writing a book about the food that I cook from the K & N the greengrocers on Oxton Road it will start with a recipe for tomato soup.

Most Saturday mornings they will have a box of tomatoes for £2.99. They maybe a bit rough round the edges but if they are going to be cooked within an hour or so of coming home they don’t need to be too fine. So long as they are giving of their juices and are cooked with something that will boost their flavour they will be worth every penny.

I bought a box this morning and we have just finished some of the cooking of it for lunch.

Olive oil was heated in a large pan before I tipped in a couple of chopped onions, a chopped aubergine and some garlic and chilli. This continued on a high heat until it all started to soften and brown. Flavouring was added in the form of a few sage leaves, a bay leave and a good spoonful of caraway seeds.

I then tipped in the tomatoes.I cut some of them in half but I would have been there for the rest of the day if I had tried to do the lot. Once they were in the pan I stabbed at them for five minutes with a long spare knife. This was just enough to get them going.

The soup was done after 45 minutes and just needed go through a mouli to extract the skin and seeds. I then put half of it through a sieve to make it a bit smoother.

We ate it with chunks of day old bread and feta cheese.

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Outside the wind blew. All day long and it feels we have not got through it being dark yet. So we will be sitting inside listening to Bill Ryder Jones.

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Given the glut of horseradish in the garden it is only right that I should eat some. We had it last night.

Halfway through the afternoon I braved the wind and rain for five minutes and grabbed a fork from the garage and dug at the roots through the sodden soil walking away with half a dozen straggly tubers. I could smell them as I walked back into the house.

Of course the only thing worth eating with horseradish is beef. I came prepared and picked up a small joint of topside from Claremont Farm along with a sack of potatoes. I also picked up six fat razor clams and a kilo of mussels. I was planning on a feast.

I started with the horseradish, washing off the wet soil and then peeling them. It was only as I started to grate them that it’s pungency got me, a sharp hit in the back of the nose and then the eyes started to water. I ended up grating them my eyes closed to try hold back the tears. Once it was all grated I stirred in some creme fraiche and put it in the fridge to keep.

I then started on a sauce for the mussels and clams, sweating down an onion with fennel, garlic and a couple of bay leaves. Once that had cooked down I added a couple of handfuls of chopped cherry tomatoes and a good glug of white wine.

Then the potatoes. They were peeled and sliced and layered in a buttered dish with a litre of cream, garlic, thyme, salt and pepper.

The potatoes went into the oven first to cook through. The beef was prepared by being rubbed in olive oil and given a good coating of salt and pepper. After half an hour the beef went into the oven with the potatoes.

When we were ready to eat the beef came out of the oven to rest. It had been in there for about an hour.

The sauce for the shellfish was warmed through and the razor clams were laid on top their white bodies lolling in the heat. After a couple of minutes I added the mussels and put a lid on the pan until the mussels had open and were cooked through.

In their dish the mussels and razor clams were seasoned with some feta cheese, chopped parsley and more salt and pepper.

Once they had been finished were ready for the beef. The horseradish worked well and had the appropriate heft about it.