It is funny how a recipe can stay with you.

Almost twenty years ago I was given as a birthday present Sophie Grigson’s Meat Course. I am not sure I have looked at it much since then but one of things that I have made on a regular basis is her receipe for Mango Salsa to go with some spiced grilled chicken breast.

I made it last night again and looking back at the recipe this morning it was good to see that I had followed it exactly.

• 1 ripe mango peeled and chopped into small cubes
• 1 small red onion finely sliced
• 1 red chilli finely chopped
• a crushed clove of garlic
• juice of a lime
• olive oil
• salt
• a handful of finely chopped coriander leaves

Mix all together in a bowl and leave to stand in the fridge so the flavours get to know each other.

In the meantime cook your chicken breast – or for last night – pork chops and veggie burger all done on a small BBQ.

Eat with the salsa piled on your plate with some basmati and wild rice as the sun goes down and you listen to your youngest daughter tell you tales of Cornwall.

I have been up to the attic and forced open one of the windows that has been closed ever since we moved in 15 years ago and crawled halfway out onto the roof to get a a view  across the trees into the western sky and just about caught Venus and Jupiter in line.

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OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

So tonight is one of those rare evenings we can open all doors at the back of the house and they can stay open until the sun has gone down and bats replace the swallows in their frittering around the trees.

It wasn’t quite so warm last night but all the children were away for forty-eight hours. More chance than any design they had managed to deposit themselves on almost all available options for the Celtic fringes. As has been reported already the oldest is in Ireland – in the meantime the other two have taken themselves of to Bude in Cornwall (the youngest for a school trip) and somewhere in North Wales (the middle one).

So with the new found freedom we took ourselves off for a walk along the old sandstone wall that runs north from Parkgate. It was just us and the birds and a few dog walkers. The dog walkers seemed appropriate given the joke just heard on Just a Minute around the topic of ‘a fork in the road’ and the Irish for dogging.

As we walked the full force of the evening sun was hidden amidst a bank of clouds but it gave out a clear distant light that picked up the mark on the horizon of Hilbre Island and the yachts on their side that lay in front of it.

Back home we finished off the cold sea trout, new potatoes and mayonnaise. The sea tout was almost better second time round.

Later in bed I filleted through the books on my bed side table and found that last year I had bought myself a How to Fish book on sea trout and read about them until the early hours.

After an ill-tempered sleep last night I tried to catch up this afternoon in the hammock.

I was close to it when my body forgot where it was and I tried to turn over and almost found myself on the ground. Before I could get back to it I felt the first drops of rain and beat it back inside.

Before that I spent some time de-cluttering. First to go was the 12 month pile of post that has been gathering on the table in the hall. It was then onto the fridge which yielded three opened half empty tins of sweet corn, three jars of almost empty red pesto, a full jar of pickled chilli slices and two half full jars, two half full jars of grain mustard and two half full jars of mayonnaise. There was also a small tub of yogurt with a use by date of September 2014 and various tubs and jars covered in a grey layer of mould.

No doubt they will all be back this time next year when I get round to doing it again.

To make up for all that bad old food we had a wild sea trout this evening cooked on the BBQ.

It was presented to me yesterday morning as an offer that was too difficult to refuse. A modest monster of a fish that just needed to be roasted for an hour or so before being eaten with a good sauce.

The sauce was a sala verde mayonaise from the Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall book on fish. I started off making it in the food processor but that split badly so I had to set to work again with a strong right hand and a whisk. Turns out that initial failure works well as we were left with a thick unctuous lubrication that was almost good enough to eat by itself.

There will be enough sea trout for fish cakes tomorrow. In the meantime we are listening to devastating flamenco.