which I picked up in my local food market, the lovely Dublin Food Co-op in Newmarket Square, along with a bunch of beautiful flowers from the Sonairte stall for just €5…

…just cos they always make me happy and remind me that it actually is summertime, sunshine or no sunshine.

Back at home, while snacking on a bit of Oisin Farmhouse goats’ cheese on seeded rye bread (also both from the Coop), I had a browse through three of my favourite cookbooks: Yotam Ottonlenghi’s Plenty, Madhur Jaffrey’s World Vegetarian & Sally Butcher’s Veggiestan for some ideas. (That’s Sally with her book…)

Sally Butcher with her Veggiestan cookbook

Then I put those aside and cooked.

I softened some shallots in a bit of butter and rapeseed oil, added some grated ginger, sliced garlic and red chilli and various spices from the Patel gift set a friend gave me. Together with a booklet of (mostly meat-based) recipes, the set includes various ground and whole spices and several spice blends or ‘masala’. I wanted something tangy so went for a generous pinch each of ground cumin and coriander  and twice that of their tandoori masala blend. I cooked those gently for a couple of minutes until it was smelling really good and then I tipped in the guts of a tin of chopped tomatoes, spooning out the flesh and leaving behind some of the excess juice.

While this cooked away, I roasted slices of the aubergine drizzled in a little rapeseed oil, grated half a cucumber into a colander set above a bowl to drain and cooked off some quinoa (I could have gone for rice but quinoa ticks the box as both a grain-like accompaniment and a source of protein). Once the tomatoes had lost their rawness, I added a little more grated ginger, to be sure to have an upfront ginger heat as well as the background flavours. (This is something Irish chef Paul Flynn recently said he often does for one-pot dishes to ensure layers of flavour, adding the likes of garlic as a base and a final seasoning.)

Finally I finely chopped some fresh mint and mixed this with the drained cucumber and some natural yoghurt, seasoning well with salt and pepper. Then I built myself a little bowl of nutty quinoa, tangy sauce, roast aubergine and minty raita, and tucked in. (I was too hungry to take a photo, sorry!) Warming, cheering and wholesome, it was just what I had been wanting.

And what of my leftover cucumber water?

With the sun dancing in and out just enough for it to feel like a sort of summer again, I mixed myself up a salad of kiwi and galia melon and dressed it with the cucumber juice, a small squeeze of lime and a swirl of Highbank Original Irish Orchard Syrup. This apple-based syrup that is one of my favourite condiments going, being an Irish-made sweetener made from indigenous produce that brings extra flavour while it sweetens. The dressing worked really nicely, the cucumber giving a lovely fresh lift to the melon. I reckon it’ll taste even better tomorrow.

Without the kiwi and lime the same salad would probably make a great accompaniment to Parma ham, or diced very small along with a tart green apple could work really well with some smoked mackerel too. I’ll be trying it again as the mood takes me.

p.s. for those of you who really prefer to cook with recipes, here’s what you need to make the above:

for the roast aubergine with gingered tomatoes

1 aubergine

1 tin chopped tomatoes

3 shallots, finely chopped

2–3 garlic cloves, sliced

1 red chilli, sliced

1 thumb-sized piece of ginger, peeled and grated

1/4 teaspoon ground cumin

1/4 teaspoon ground coriander

1/2 teaspoon Patel’s tandoori masala

for the minty raita

1/2 cucumber, grated and drained

2 handfuls mint, finely chopped

2–3 generous tablespoons natural yoghurt

for the melon and kiwi salad with cucumber, lime and apple syrup dressing

1 small galia melon

2 kiwi

3–4 tablespoons liquid drained from grated cucumber

1 very small wedge of lime, or to taste (go easy)

Highbank Orchard syrup, to taste (about half a teaspoon)

And store-cupboards are made for days like these. Look what I found in mine.

Traditionally used as a dip for bread and olive oil, za’atar is a tangy herb mix (oregano, thyme, sumac and sesame seeds). It made a really tasty addition to my mushroom risotto, made with the ends of a couple of packets of dried porcini and shiitake mushrooms rescued from the back of the cupboard. I added the za’atar once the onions had started to soften and sweeten nicely, and before I added the soaked mushrooms followed by the carnaroli rice.

Once the rice was nicely toasted I threw in a generous splash of white wine and cooked that off while I transferred the mushroom soaking water to a saucepan (leaving the gritty bits at the bottom of the original bowl). I topped it up with boiling water and threw in a spoonful of Marigold Swiss vegetable bouillon powder to round it out a little, and then added the resulting mushroom stock ladle by ladle.

I finished it off with a slick of Palestinian olive oil, a pile of grated Parmesan, a handful of chopped tarragon, a load of black pepper and a seasoning of herb-infused salt picked up from a singing butcher in Panzano on my holiers.

Not bad for nothing but an onion. I like days like these.

Tomato, fennel, pink peppercorn soup with Highbank Orchard Syrup

Isn’t there something they say about necessity? and mothers?

Well if you’re like me, you probably aren’t a big fan of recipes. I mean they have their place and all. I like to read them, just not necessarily while I’m in the kitchen. And I like to get ideas from them, but then prefer to do it my own way. I think it’s part of why I made such a bad dance partner when I went to Cuba – my head wanted to follow my dance partner but my feet wanted to do their own thing to the music.

But the truth is that half the fun of cooking is making it up as you go along. And some of the best discoveries are made by accident. Take today. I book-ended my day with two fine home-made meals (well, mini-meals really), both featuring crushed pink peppercorns because I had run out of black peppercorns. Both mini-meals also featured treats picked up from a super stylish showcase thrown by Odaios Foods in Fitzwilliam Square yesterday.

For anyone not involved in restaurants / delis and who don’t know Odaios, they are suppliers of some very fine foods indeed. Think Kettyle beef and Burren smoked salmon, Arbutus bread and Coopershill smoked venison, Belvoir cordials and Cornish Sea Salt, Valrhona chocolate and Rude Health Organic foods.

I went. I ate. I spoke to lots of fantastic people about lots of fantastic products. It was, in short, heaven – compounded by the fact that:

• (a) the sun was shining,
• (b) there was gourmet pizza from a charming man in a van with a wood-burning oven inside it*,
• (c) it was at the end of a long long day,
• (d) it all took place in tipis, and involved juggling glasses of champagne and tasters of hot chocolate,
• (e) I was able to justify all this swanning around as ‘work’, and
• (f) it was around the corner from my gaff so that when one of the organisers insisted I take home some of the fresh food they’d have to chuck otherwise, I was able to stroll home with a box of goodies.

Said box included:

• a round crusty loaf of Arbutus bread;
• a little plastic kilner jarful of hot-smoked Burren salmon (both of which featured with my first mini-meal of pink-peppercorned scrambled egg);
• fresh pasta from The Fresh Pasta Company, some stuffed with artichoke, some asparagus;
• ready-to-heat dark hot chocolate from Benoit’s Chocolate Factory (look out for them in a cafe / deli near you featuring various flavours including chilli, and caramel – all based on Valrhona chocolate) and a slab of their cinnamon chocolate;
• a large handful worth of baby carrots, another of baby fennel and a veritable family of tomatoes: big ones, little ones, round ones, long ones, even yellow ones.

And so it was that on the day after passing in through the gates of heaven, and back out again, I cooked up the second mini-meal, a tomato and fennel soup seasoned with pink peppercorn and finished with Highbank Orchard Syrup.

I’m not going to give you a recipe to follow, in the sense of spelling it out for you, because where would be the fun in that?

But I will go so far as to tell you that it did involve sweating an onion and several baby fennel very slowly in some olive oil and salt, seasoning with crushed peppercorns, adding in some peeled chopped tomotoes, including some yellow ones, adding some ice-cubes of veg stock and topping up with boiling water to cover the lot before cooking down until soft and sweet and finally blitzing with a hand blender.

When I tasted it, the tomatoes tasted like they were still pining for summer to kick in properly, so it needed a bit of a sweetener to round it out as well as some salt to draw out the flavours. I added a good spoonful of Demerara sugar dissolved in a little hot water and that helped, but then I finished it with a dose of Highbank Orchard Syrup (made in Kilkenny from local apples) which was so lovely that tomorrow I might try adding a little pureed apple to the soup. The syrup also looked pretty swirled onto the bowlful of soup, and I garnished it with some shaved fennel and chopped frond.

The resulting soup ain’t necessarily what everyone would describe as the mother of all soups. But then each to their own invention. I was rather happy with mine.

*you’ll find that pizza van in Greystones, Wed–Sun, 5pm–late(ish)…

Lemon sole with herbed green rice

I was chatting to Amy Caviston and Shane Willis of A Caviston, Greystones yesterday (Amy is going to be joining me at the For Food’s Sake event at Inishfood next weekend, as per previous post, where she’ll explain why they insist on selling Irish fish where possible), and they mentioned in passing that lemon sole takes just a couple of minutes in the oven.

It occurred to me that lemon sole is one of those fish I tend to overlook, maybe cos the fillets can be very small and are often overcooked and bland. I popped by my nearest fish counter on the way home and picked up three fillets for €1.60. When I got home I wrapped them in foil with some of the gnarlier bits of a fennel bulb, a few wedges of lemon, lots of black pepper and a little olive oil, and preheated the oven to about 200C.

The plan had been to use the rest of the fennel bulb in a risotto, so I sweat it until nice and soft with a chopped shallot and heated up some vegetable stock which I had prepared the other day from bit and bobs gathered in my ice-box for the job (off-cuts of onions and leeks, leftovers from bunches of herbs, etc). I was about to throw in my risotto rice for toasting when I realised I was all out of arborio, so I tried the same approach with basmati rice to see how it would work out. I didn’t rinse the starch off like you normally would with basmati, just threw a couple of handfuls in, toasted for a minute or two and stirred in the hot stock ladle by ladle. Meanwhile I wilted some spinach in the simmering stock until nice and soft, and removed to add in at the very end with lots of chopped tarragon.

It took about ten minutes to cook to al dente, at which point I popped the sole in the oven. Three or four minutes later, rice and fish were both ready. I seasoned the rice with the juice from the roast lemon, lots of pepper and a little salt, and tucked into a delicious dinner that had cost me about €4 and took me about 20 minutes. Not bad, and a great example of how fish really can be cheap as chips, if we’re willing to look for the bargains out there.

It’s not that I have anything against celebrating what you have, should you have it. One of my favourite animals is the seahorse. Apart from being so pretty, and the fact that the male steps up to the role of chief childminder, I love that seahorse couples rebuild their monogamous bond with a daily ritual of a little dance. It might take a few minutes, or it might go on for some time. But they do it every day.

Rituals are important to bind us to the people we love, whether that’s the extended family ritual of coming together for a Christmas dinner or the courting couples ritual of going out on dinner dates. And I quite like that there’s a day in our communal calenders to remind us of the importance of taking the time out to share a meal or something else intimate.

But having worked in restaurants for years, I know that Valentines ain’t necessarily the most romantic time to rebuild those bonds. I remember one particular restaurateur insisting on seating three separate couples on the one six-top table. That’s a new take on a threesome I suppose.

Anyway, personally I think it’s much more romantic to cook something – even something easy – and concentrate on providing sparkling company. If you haven’t thought of a dinner for tonight yet, there’s still time. Keep it fairly light – you don’t want to rule out other activities by being knocked out by a rich meal. I’d suggest an aromatic, lightly spicy beef noodle soup, followed by something simple but stylish like an affogato (espresso poured over vanilla ice-cream, with or without chocolate sauce).

And if you’ve no-one to cook it for, I’d suggest you cook it for yourself. Who said love has to be shared?

Beef noodle soup

(Serves 2)

• 1 litres stock (beef if possible, or chicken)
• 1 thumbnail-sized piece of fresh root ginger, peeled and grated
• 1 star anise (optional)
• 1/2 teaspoon coriander seeds (optional)
• 1/2 cinnamon stick
• 125g boneless beef (sirloin or fillet)
• 125g dried flat rice noodles
• 1–2 tablespoons Thai fish sauce
• Pinch of white pepper or a generous grind of black pepper
• 50g fresh bean sprouts, rinsed and drained
• 2 spring onions, trimmed and finely chopped
• 2 chillies, thinly sliced
• Handful each of fresh coriander, basil and mint leaves, roughly chopped
• Lime wedges, to garnish

Bring the stock to the boil together with the flavourings (ginger, star anise, coriander seeds and cinnamon), reduce to a simmer and infuse for 15 minutes.

Cut the beef into very thin slices and set aside. Cook the noodles according to instructions on the packet and set aside. Warm some serving bowls.

Strain the stock, discard the flavourings and return the liquid to the heat. Once simmering, season with fish sauce and pepper.

Divide the noodles between the serving bowls and top each with a handful of beansprouts. Lay out the remaining ingredients in little bowls on the table.

Add the sliced beef to the hot broth, stir briefly, and spoon the broth and beef over each bowl of noodles where the meat will continue to cook.

Serve and help yourselves to the spring onions, herbs and sliced chillies – but don’t forget a squeeze of lime to bring it all together.

And there you have it, hot and spicy, delicious and a bit of fun. Happy Valentine’s!

Last night I was out having stir-fried chilli beef and braised seabass in M&L Szechuan on Dublin’s Cathedral Street, washed down with pints in The Palace. Tuesday it was ebi gyoza (prawn dumplings), tako sunomono (octopus and seaweed salad) and sushi in Musashi on Capel Street, followed by the most random and enjoyable pub quiz in Nealons, with a real coal fire at our side. (I now know that Japan is home to the world’s largest whisky still, amongst other important facts.) And Monday I was busy up in Sandyford’s China Sichuan helping celebrate the start of the auspicious Year of the Dragon, a year last night’s waiter explained is associated with luck granted or received from external sources.

It was some party, kicking off at 7pm and the wine still flowing well after 10.30pm when I made use of my return Luas ticket back into town. A highlight was some inspiring Shaolin dragon dancing from the Dublin-based Lung Ying Academy. There was a surreal moment involving the glittering dragon spitting iceberg lettuce all over my ex-boss, herself a famous Dragon.

Despite the usual communal anxiety at parties featuring finger food (that you will be overcome with booze-fuelled hunger) we all left exceedingly well fed, thanks to the generosity of our host Kevin Hui. If you don’t know the restaurant, I’d recommend making an acquaintance. And not least because, after generations of business down in their original Stillorgan location and a trickily-timed move to Sandyford, the restaurant went under in 2010. As in closed, kaput, game over. In some miracle of perseverance – perhaps a willingness to believe in life after death and endings being beginnings – China Sichuan reopened about a year ago, and went on to be awarded Best Ethnic Restaurant at the FOOD&WINE Magazine Restaurant of the Year Awards 2011 last August.

At the end of the summer, myself and the gang from For Food’s Sake approached Kevin to do a movie night with us in The Sugar Club. We wanted to show Eat Drink Man Woman (itself a movie about finding new life at the end of an old one) and to serve up authentic Chinese food to film-watching punters. Kevin originally was reluctant to commit, for good reason. On the night in question, he was going to be about halfway between Paris and Nice on a 700km charity cycle, something he had promised himself he would do if his restaurant made it through the rebirthing process. Though he was understandably reluctant to undertake a pop-up presence without being there to oversee it, Kevin eventually capitulated and loaned us his chefs for the night.

(The deal we finally struck was that we donate half of the money made that night to the Paris2Nice charity to raise money for Special Olympics and Cerebal Palsy Sport Ireland; the other half went back into the For Food’s Sake kitty to fund future events – more of which anon.)

His chefs cooked up a storm for our movie goers, starting with ‘Bon Bon Chicken’ spicy lettuce parcels, which is what last Monday night’s feast also kicked off with (see below for recipe). Further festive New Year’s bites included deep-flavoured vegetable spring rolls, butterflied sesame prawns, crunchy prawn toast and my highlight: moreish Chinese turnip cakes.

All of which reminded me that China Sichuan is a restaurant worth getting on the Luas for, especially if we want it to be a Dublin dining option for another 20 odd years.

To encourage you to go visit, I asked for a recipe for that Chicken Bon Bon. And generous as ever, Kevin gave it up. Fair play. And may that generosity bring him much good luck from many external sources. Some of them may even come via the Luas. Happy New Year!

RECIPE: Bang-bang ji (Bang-bang chicken, or Bon Bon chicken)

This is a fairly quick and simple starter to make and is meant to be served cold.

3x 200g fresh skinless chicken breasts

For the sauce

• 4 tablespoons light soya sauce
• 2 tablespoons Sichuan vinegar (Chinese black vinegar is fine)
• 15g granulated sugar
• 15g sesame paste
• 5g sesame seeds, roasted and crushed
• 1 teaspoon chilli oil
• ½ teaspoon ground roasted Sichuan peppercorns
• 1 teaspoon sesame oil

To serve

• 20g iceberg lettuce, chopped
• 5g scallions, chopped
• 1–2 red chillies, seeded and sliced (optional)

1. Boil the chicken breasts for 30-35 minutes until they are cooked through. Tear or
cut the chicken into shreds approximately 3-4cm in length. (The traditional method would be to hit the chicken a few times with a wooden stick until the meat starts loosening up and then to tear it into little strips, using your hands.)

2. To make the sauce, thoroughly mix all the ingredients together.

3. To serve, place a small mound of lettuce in the centre of each of the serving plates. Arrange some chicken shreds on top and pour the sauce over it. Finally, scatter the scallions over the dish, and some chillies if you want to pick up the heat (as they did at the New Year’s party).

• Pre-Christmas Sunday lunch in Camden Kitchen with gang of mates kicking off with amazing smoked haddock croquettes with chorizo vinaigrette and finishing with a Christmas song sung to us by one of the lovely waiters.
• Dunnes Stores minced pies, surprisingly good when oven-heated and served with creme fraiche and a pot of Barry’s Tea.
• Christmas Eve breakfast of scrambled eggs and Burren Smoked Salmon with the mammy and sister in the ever-lovely Pepper Pot Cafe.
• Christmas Eve toasties in Grogans washed down with one of the best pints going (actually, that was the white-out Christmas Eve 2010, but the fact that they were willing to serve their seminal toasties when most city centre pubs were shutting up shop and turfing people out to the burbs still warms my heart a year on).
• Christmas Eve dinner of Yawl Bay Seafood’s luscious crab toes atop a lemony fennel and radicchio risotto served with a glass (or two) of Chateau Minuty rosé.
• Christmas Day fry of Jane Russell’s sausages and Gubbeen Smokehouse rashers served with Maguire’s Irish Mustard (a seasonal special of Mulled Wine Mustard from Troy Maguire, he of l’Gueuleton–Locks–Coppinger Row fame, which promises exciting things from him in 2012).
• Christmas dinner starter of smoked oyster pate on toasted bacon and onion bread served with apple-smoked oysters and a salad of diced apple, fennel and tarragon-pickled beetroot (featuring oysters from Stephen Kavanagh’s oyster stall at Meeting House Square’s Saturday food market in Temple Bar).
• Christmas dinner of whole roast fillet of beef rolled in juicy porcini and wrapped in prosciutto, a la Jamie Oliver, served with my mammy’s amazing Vermouth braised fennel finished with Parmesan and my sister’s balsamic-roast baby beets.
• Christmas pudding from Country Choice served with brandy butter from Jenny McNally’s market stall in Saturday’s market in Meeting House Square.
• Cheeseboard featuring Bellingham Blue, Cratloe Hills and Glebe Brethan amongst other star Irish farmhouse cheeses.
• Post-Christmas meal in M&L Szechuan of braised hot and spicy seabass and fried green beans with dried chillies.
• The Winding Stair’s platters of smoked fish and charcuterie, including James McGeough’s amazing range of air-dried lamb, pork and beef, and Fingal Ferguson’s venison salami and chorizo.
• Last night’s Zaytoon special of Barg kebab featuring saffron-marinated beef and red cabbage in freshly baked, airy flatbread straight from their ovens: worth every penny spent on the rake of pints leading up to it. Though these kebabs are so good I’d eat em sober too.
• Tonight’s hangover cure of patata maneas, Spanish mashed potatoes with garlic, olive oil and Pimenton de la Vera usually topped with crispy chorizo but in my case topped with some jamon Iberico de belotta I’ve been saving for months for the right occasion, with a glass of aged Amontillado from Byas Gonzalez (makers of Tio Pepe). Magic. Seriously. Give it a go…

RECIPE: Patatas Meneas

[Serves one for supper, or increase quantities for more]

2 large potatoes, peeled

2 bay leaves

1 cloves garlic, sliced

1 tablespoon olive oil

3/4 teaspoons sweet pimenton de la Vera (or regular paprika)

1/4 teaspoon hot pimenton de la Vera (optional)

Salt, to taste

150g pancetta, diced; or chorizo, sliced into chunks; or jamon Iberico, at room temperature

1. Chop the potatoes into large chunks and bring to the boil in salted water. Add bay leaves, reduce to a rolling simmer and cook until tender. Drain, reserving some of the cooking water, and remove the bay leaves.
2. Mash the potatoes roughly but leaving rustic chunks, and moisten the mash with a little cooking water, about 3–4 tablespoons.
3. Heat the olive oil and garlic together in a frying pan over a low heat, and fry very gently until golden, taking care not to burn it.
4. Remove from the heat and add the pimenton to the garlic and oil. Stir for 10–15 seconds to release the pimenton aromas before adding in the potato mix. Season with salt to taste.
5. If using pancetta or chorizo, fry in a hot pan until crispy.
6. Serve the potatoes garnished with the crispy pancetta or chorizo. Alternatively do as I did tonight and just drape it with moist slices of nutty, oily, room-temperature jamon Iberico.

1. Boil the kettle and heat a ring on my relic of a hob. Pour a glass of vino, rinse a handful of purple sprouting broccoli florets and check that the latest episode of The Good Wife has recorded.

2. Salt the boiling water generously, throwing in a handful or two of Noodle House tagliatelle (which I like cos it’s made in a place called Curry in Sligo, which strikes me as doubly incongruous, and cooks in three or four minutes, and cos it’s organic as well as tasty). Pop a bamboo steamer on top (said super-handy steamers are a steal in the Asia Market on Dublin’s Drury Street) and fling in the florets. Cover. Have a taste of the wine.

3. Grate the remainder of my rind of Oisín Farmhouse organic gouda-style blue goats’ cheese, which was delicious last week sliced into a salad with roast beetroot, alfafa sprouts and quinoa but which had dried up a bit over my long weekend away from the fridge – ideal for grating so.

4. Taste the pasta to check for remaining cooking time, and break up some walnuts into the simmering water to heat them through for the last minute. Oh and drink some wine.

5. Drain the pasta and nuts into a colander, reserving some of the starchy cooking water to (a) finish steaming the broccoli should it need it, and (b) moisten the final dish should it need it.

6. Tip the drained pasta into a large white bowl, and season with a crush of Maldon sea salt and several twists of coarsely ground pepper from my Peugout pepper grinder (a total indulgence picked up one day I was wondering around Brown Thomas looking for a little retail therapy, and whose six grades of adjustable settings I appreciate every time I use it).

7. Throw in a spoonful of pesto, loosened with the reserved starchy water, and toss (this is as entirely optional as my choice of entertainment, and the result was as good with as without, in both cases).

8. Drizzle over a slug of peppery extra virgin olive oil, toss in the florets, snapping them into bite size pieces, bind with the grated blue cheese (which by the way is very mild so don’t be scared) and check for seasoning before retiring to the comfiest armchair going.

9. Poise the glass of vino within arm’s reach, press play for The Good Wife, and tuck in. Pasta supper, in nine easy steps and even less minutes.

I still can clean a bathroom, at a push, and I’ve set several tables between then and now. Indeed I still take a rather tragic pride in my ability to line up cutlery at the perfect distance from the edge of the table, as I rediscovered on Day Nineteen of the Cooking for Life course when we readied ourselves and the venue for our penultimate meal and transformed the school’s dining room for our Restaurant Night. (Regular followers of this blog and the four-week course I’ve been posting on should check back in tomorrow for my posting on this feast of an affair.)

Anyway, nor is the skill of dressing a salad something I have lost an appreciation for.

Today was a long day so tonight I wanted something quick but satisfying and healthy too, cheering food rather than comfort food. A tin of Ortiz tuna brought as a dinner gift by a very clever guest* was winking at me from the countertop where it had been suggestively lingering all weekend. (Quick, ticked, and cheering too.) Some spuds from Jenny McNally‘s north county Dublin organic farm went into the pot and some broccoli into the steamer on top while I rinsed Jenny’s peppery leaves and a handful of baby spinach. (Healthy, ticked.) Slivers of red onion, shards of feta and a scattering of quality capers (from Irish-Italian company, Italicatessan, picked up from the brilliant Wexford Street veg shop, Evergreen). One boiled egg later and my Niçoise-ish salad was almost ready to devour. Almost. Now for the most satisfying task of the meal: shaking up the perfect dressing for my personalised salad.

This is where I don’t get people buying ready-made salad dressing, even if it is from a nice man called Paul Newman and all for a good cause. How can you know what dressing you’re going to want to shake when you don’t even know what salad you’re going to make? And how can you know what salad you’re going to make when you don’t know (a) what’ll be loitering in the fridge and winking from the countertop, and (b) what kind of day has given you what kind of hunger?

My day, my salad, my mood all said: Puglia olive oil, mostly. Red wine vinegar, a little. Elderflower-infused vinegar, even less (strong stuff, but brilliant with fish). Honey, to balance rather than sweeten. Dijon mustard to spike it. Salt to season, and pepper and a squeeze of lemon too and then, because it needed rounding out, some nutty, cold-pressed Donegal Rapeseed Oil.

I’m not sure you can call what I did tonight ‘cooking dinner’. Boiling an egg and spuds, and shaking up a salad dressing. But sometimes the simplest pleasures give the most satisfaction.

If only I could get such a kick out of cleaning the bathroom.

[*In the interests of fairness I should point out that I was blessed with clever guests on Friday, my first post-cooking-school Come Dine With Me And My New Recipes get-together. Another arrived armed with potted hyacinths in matching coloured pots, and the third swooped to the rescue with emergency aubergines so I could reproduce Lynda Booth‘s stomping recipe for grilled Moroccan aubergine with honey and spices – without which I had realised her lamb tagine recipe could not be done justice. Thanks girls!]

Now, there’s probably people in the world who would leave it at that for a day’s feeding, but I am not one of those people.

Instead tonight’s supper was:

• 1 tin of tuna (not Ortiz sadly, because the only place I know that sells it is the veg shop in the old Dundrum Shopping Centre, and I think the shop might have closed…)
• Shavings of red onion
• Shavings of fennel
• Squeeze of lemon juice
• Spoonful of capers
• An enthusiastic shake of Green Tabasco
• A pinch of Maldon sea salt and grinding of black pepper
• A scraping of the end of my squeezy jar of Hellmans mayo

I mixed all this together while toasting some crusty bread, which I rubbed with a little garlic, drizzled with olive oil, and then smeared with the tuna mix and served with a green leaf and tomato salad in balsamic vinaigrette.

The reason I’m telling you this is because: (a) I’m hoping someone might tell me where to buy Ortiz tuna in Dublin town, and (b) it was super tasty and took me minutes, and might give you some ideas, and (c) I haven’t decided yet whether this will be one of those blogs where the author tells the world what they had for their supper.

Feel free to leave a comment about (a) where you buy your Ortiz tuna, (b) what suppers or snacks you make with it, or (c) whether you think this kind of ‘what I ate tonight’ posting is a waste of space or not.

Answers on a postcard to… oh hang on, forget the snail mail, answers on a comment below please. Thanking you kindly.