A day in Napoli, in the shadow of Vesuvius

Vesuvio

Arriving in Naples from an overcast London was an intravenous shot of Italian espresso for the spirits. The sun was high, the sky cobalt and to the left, as we sped by car to the centre of the old city, loomed Vesuvius.

Vast docks with container skyscrapers led to narrow streets before we were dropped outside the boutique hotel that would be our home for a single night.

Bags were gratefully deposited – we’d overpacked, since every weather forecast available had suggested we’d need clothes for at least two climates.

Then it was out and a search for lunch. Just around the corner we found Tandem, recommended by the receptionist at the hotel.

Slow-cooked octopus

Setting aside the young woman trying to give passers-by leaflets to lure them to a table – this is 21^st-century Italy’s version of sirens – the menu appeared authentic and there were clearly locals enjoying a leisurely Saturday repast.

Service was equally leisurely, but when you’re sitting in the sunshine with no concrete timetable, it’s difficult to be churlish. When a waiter came over, it was with a container of different pastas to help us understand the menu.

I opted for a tubular pasta with a Genovese ragu of octopus, onion and carrot. Slow-cooked for eight hours, it was excellent.

The people watching wasn’t bad either. Not for the last time, we saw men in hi-vis jackets, clearly in charge of off-street car parks that were somehow buried in buildings that didn’t look at all like that would be possible.

How high is this arch?

It didn’t seem to be a particularly onerous task, leaving them with time to stand around and chat, accompanied by plenty of gesticulations.

It’s worth realising as quickly as possible that Neapolitans in general speak loudly, quickly and with a lot of hand movements. Once you have that sussed, you don’t start every time you hear a conversation, thinking it’s a domestic.

The rest of the afternoon was spent wandering around the old city; down the narrow street that slices through the old quarter and is full of shops selling tat, such as limoncello in penis-shaped bottles. And no – it was not tempting even given the knowledge that the ancient Romans saw large, erect phalluses as a good luck charm.

Then we found ourselves deciding that the queue to see the sculpture of the Veiled Christ really was just too long, so we carried on admiring the age of the buildings and the architecture and also (in different ways) the sheer amount of street art and graffiti that, in places, seems to cover every millimetre of available wall.

Fidel – mirrored, on a university building

There are churches everywhere. There are more than a few shrines – and neo-religious references to Saint Hand of God Maradona also abound. And red chilis as decorations. Colours abound and washing hangs outside the windows of pastel-painted apartment blocks while the paint silently peels.

We’ve visited Venice twice – that was our Italy. But this is a very different of Italy. To be fair, Venice is a place apart. One assumes that Venetians are as happy to be regarded as a people apart as the rest of Italy is to be regarded as something different from La Serenissima.

But back to Napoli itself. Crossing roads felt like taking your life into your hands: horns tooted and with scooters not required to stop for a red light at a crossing, you have to learn quickly to follow the Neapolitans’ own example – just stride into the road when the light’s in your favour and trust that any vehicular traffic will stop.

We survived. Just.

Back at the hotel, we rested and freshened up before heading out for dinner. That was a slow descent toward the marina and the sea front, where we’d been advised that there was good seafood to be had. What there was, was our first real view of the bay as the day slipped gently toward its end.

Do you think we should have gone down here?

Shades of indigo all around. Vesuvius presiding over the bay. In the distance, across the water, the island of Ischia: a strip of pale mist appeared to sever it from the sea, as though it levitated, as mysterious as Bali Hai. It’s a view you cannot stop looking at: full of promise and, in that brooding volcano, power.

We eventually opted for one of the tourist traps along the promenade. There seemed to be no alternative and we were tired after a long day that had started at around 4am.

Service was dire. Orders were part forgotten and my squid, when it eventually turned up, was overcooked and tough. We ate one course and finished our bottle of wine, congratulated ourselves that we’d not ordered more, paid up and left.

Sunday morning: 8.29am on the dot and a lone church bell rings out for a few minutes before fading away.

The car park is closed

Below the window in our hotel room was a garden with apricot and lemons trees. Beyond were low buildings and, further off, Vesuvius. Swifts darted around.

We had breakfast and left, a taxi taking us down to the marina. There, it was swiftly on to a ferry for the journey across the Bay of Naples to Sorrento.

To the north, Vesuvius dominates as it would do for the rest of the trip. The bay was calm, the ferry remarkably comfortable. A vast, flat cloud fanned out over the top of Vesuvio.

When it exploded in 79AD, Pliny the Elder described the column of gasses and debris that were hurled into the stratosphere as looking like a stone pine.

As we near our destination, the coastline changes: it rears, craggy and precipitous – quite different from what we have seen so far; sculptural stone pines are visible in silhouette against the changing skyline.

And we realise that, as we should have earlier, that where mountains meet the sea, weather forecasters flounder.

What will the days ahead hold – and not least in the weather?

Memories of several Bottoms

Sheridan Smith, David Walliams and fairies

On Friday evening, I trotted along to London’s West End down to see David Walliams’s Bottom.

Yes, yes – I know. I know it’s been done before, but apart from one tweet, not by me. So I’m afraid that you, dear readers, have to put up with it being done here.

The fourth production in the inaugural season of the Michael Grandage Company sees A Midsummer Night’s Dream playing to packed houses in the West End – and the main reason for all the bottoms on seats is less that it’s the Bard and more the star casting.

Walliams has been cast as Bottom, while Sheridan Smith takes on the traditional dual roles of Titania and Hippolyta.

The former brings the pulling power of Little Britain to the production, and has been directed to camp up the part for all he’s worth.

Smith brings with her the success of Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps, plus stints on the Royle Family and Jonathan Creek, and has been directed in such a way that you wouldn’t know about that televisual CV unless you recognised her name or checked out the programme.

My own first Dream was way back in September 1976 at the Bolton Octagon, when a seat in the gallery cost just 50p – the ticket is still pasted into an old scrapbook.

It had been our introduction to Shakespeare a year earlier at school (when I’d read Bottom in class) and this was the first live production of a play by the Bard that I’d seen.

Then in April 1979, it was the Fairfield High School for Girls annual production (tickets 60p – there’s inflation for you), with me donning something like a sackcloth costume as Peter Quince; a performance that the local paper described as being “acted with authority”.

Actually, what I remember most was being able to say “bloody” twice in a speech – in front of the headmistress.

It was the one performance my maternal grandmother ever saw me in, and she and my mother decided that I had a likeness to one of my mother’s brothers. I’m not sure I’ve recovered yet.

But back to that Octagon production. Wilfred Harrison, who was also joint director, played Bottom. The notes in that scrapbook only mention his performance, but although this is an ensemble piece, the Mechanicals are what grabs the attention of most audiences, precisely because of the timeless comedy.

In 1991, for instance, Roy Hudd’s Bottom is just about the only thing I remember of a production at the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre – apart from the less-than-brilliant weather.

When it's not raining, it’s a play that is superbly suited to outside staging.

In 1987, the Duke’s Playhouse in Lancaster staged its first promenade production in the city’s Williamson Park, around and including the Ashton Memorial as a backdrop.

Andy Serkis as Lysander in Lancaster. Puck to the left

That Dream, with a cast that included, as Lysander, Andy Serkis – now best known as Gollum in the Lord of the Rings films – was utterly magical.

Of the ones I’ve seen, it remains my favourite production. The lovers were strongly done even if the Mechanicals didn’t make a major impression in the memory bank: Puck was the stand-out, although unfortunately I can’t remember the name of the actor who played him in full faun get up.

But back to the here and now, and Michael Grandage’s new production.

It’s played at F1 pace – just two hours for the whole play to unwind – and that has some benefits and some pitfalls.

Some of the languorous sense of the poetry is lost by charging at it like this – I was mightily relieved when Puck’s closing speech was allowed its necessary time – but it also works well in particular places, not least in the chaotic row between the four lovers in the forest as Oberon and Puck looks on.

Indeed, what Grandage and his company have done is remove any reverential attitude and emphasised the play’s physical comedy – the majority of which is quite clearly there in the text.

And they also haven’t ducked the point that it’s largely not about lurve, but sex – certainly in terms of Titania and Bottom.

Elizabethan audiences would have known, for instance, that an ass had a large penis, so Bottom’s transformation into just such an animal, combined with Titania’s awakening under the spell, is quite clearly about lust.*

Just imagine what would happen if all those bored schoolchildren being introduced to Shakespeare via this play were told that it was about sex?

Anyway, this is very good fun.

And more than that, it was thoroughly enjoyed by an audience that included a great many people who clearly don’t go to the theatre often – and most certainly not for Shakespeare.

The production has had some brief moments of song and dance inserted – and some snippets of pop classics – and where used, they work.

Gavin Fowler as Puck

While the mechanicals are camper than the proverbial row of tents, the fairies are a group of crusty hippies with a bit of edge.

And the lovers are far less insipid and boring than they can be.

Of the cast, Smith was excellent – all husky voice and powerful allure.

Walliams gets to nick the show – there’s more ham on display than in a Spanish deli, and anyone older than a teen will wonder if they’re seeing the reincarnation of Frankie Howerd at one point in particular – but again, in the context of this kind of production, it works.

Of the rest of a good ensemble, special mentions for Gavin Fowler as Puck – he moves superbly – Katherine Kingsley as a fabulously feisty Helena and Pádraic Delaney as Oberon/Theseus.

Christopher Oram’s sets work well, as do his costumes. In particular, I liked Puck’s trousers, which tallied with the attire of the rest of the fairies, but, in the side fringe, just hinted at a faun’s furry legs.

It’s a thoroughly enjoyable romp – more Carry On than delicate rom-com – but it’s about time that the Dream got this sort of shake-it-up treatment to rescue it from any perception of it being fey, rather infantile and ‘safe’.

Finally, just to note that we considered ourselves lucky in finding – and being able to get a table without booking – Piazza, an Italian restaurant that almost backs onto the theatre.

An independent amid the mass of chains in the vicinity, it did a very pleasant pomodoro (according to The Other Half) and a very nice diavola pizza for me – excellent, doughy base, with fresh tomato sauce, spiced minced beef, red onions, pepperoni, mozzarella and green jalapeños to get the endorphins flowing.

Really not pricy for London, with very pleasant service. That’s one to remember.

* For which insight I thank Jill Betjeman of Lancaster.

The journey back to Collioure

Etangs between Narbonne and Perpignan

It was just before 8am when the train pulled into Collioure. The journey from London had taken around 16 hours, but you hardly notice it when most of that is overnight.

We Brits might have almost forgotten about sleeper trains, but they’re a boon. In this case, it means that we don’t lose the first day of our holiday traveling.

We left work in the afternoon, walked the short distance to St Pancras, and after relaxing in the lounge for a while, boarded the Eurostar to Paris.

It’s approximately 30 minutes to the coast – whipped out of central London in no time, through tunnels, then past Rochester and on into Kent – before a further 30 minutes, at a somewhat slower pace, takes you under the Channel and lands you firmly on the Continent.

From there, it’s little more than an hour to the French capital.

There was blue above, and green and burnished gold below; trees and grass, bushes and scrub; hedgerows and harvested fields.

And occasionally, girded by a copse, the immaculate stone teeth of a war cemetery; some tiny, some larger, and serried ranks of clouds, grey shadow below pure white, marching into the distance, as far as the eye can see.

Rows of poplars started in the middle of nowhere and finished as abruptly as they’d begun. Small villages rushed past, arranged neatly around stocky, simple church towers topped with simple, stocky spires.

Modernity and industry have broken through in places, but these are the characteristics that dominate this landscape as you pass through northern France.

Once we’d disembarked at Gare du Nord, the main question was what to do with the time before our sleeper departed, just before 10, from Gare d’sAusterlitz.

We got a cab across the city and decided to wander into a nearby park that we hadn’t spotted when making the same trip last year.

It turned out to be le Jardin des Plantes, which is France’s main botanical garden, with four science museums – entomology, paleontology, mineralogy and evolution.

We strolled along one of the main walks – well, as much as one can ‘stroll’ when dragging bags behind through the sandy gravel.

The restaurant, though, was closed. So we sat down for a few minutes, only to find a park warden making his way to everyone still in the gardens to warn them that it would be shutting within four minutes.

Up again and out of one gate, we spotted a potager alongside one of the buildings, between the main gate.

A potager – not a bit of a flower bed in a carpark, but a real, live French potager, tightly packed with a vast array of fruits and vegetables.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to examine it in detail. That will have to wait for another day.

Determined to take things easy, we then found ourselves slogging up inclined streets before we found our way back to the main road to the station.

Still with two hours to go, we spotted a small Italian restaurant – a trattoria, in effect – and decided that, since locals seemed to be dining there, it was a far better option than the row of brasseries opposite the station itself, which, as we discovered last year, are not providers of the finest Parisian cuisine.

Il Vero turned out to be very nice indeed, although it was a good thing that we had plenty of time, because they really, really do believe in taking everything slowly – even getting your bill.

I opted for a puttanesca, never having had one actually cooked for me before.

Colloquially known as ‘tart’s spaghetti’ – possibly because it’s hearty and simple – it was an absolute delight.

It’s a tomato sauce with anchovies melted in to it, and olives and capers added. Gutsy, big flavours. Mine came with finely chopped parsley as a garnish, and I added a sprinkling of grated Parmesan.

The waiter/patron/maître d’ was a character who was happily joking with all his diners. In our case, he was deeply suspicious of The Other Half for requesting a mushroom risotto – and then asking that there be no cheese near it. I understand this sentiment entirely.

Later, he was equally suspicious when neither of us could finish the huge portions placed on the table – and I really do mean huge. In my case, it won’t have been less than 300g of pasta. The Other Half estimated that there was half a pound of rice on his plate.

Both dishes were fabulous to taste, and we enjoyed a small jug of a sparkling rosé that was recommended by a fellow diner and which was light and refreshing.

It left us enough time to comfortably make the train and get our bags up and onto the racks. We’d been given the top bunks in a cabin for four. At this time of year, you don’t get to have a cabin to yourself, even for a supplement – it’s too busy.

Not that that was a problem last year. A very quiet couple boarded just after us (we were on the lower bunks) and left at Narbonne.

Yesterday, we set off from Paris, with dark having just descended and with nobody else in the cabin.

About an hour later, we pulled into a station – my guess is that we were at Orléans. What sounded like a veritable hoard of small children came aboard and then spent the next half hour or so being bedded down by adults dealing with the excitement of a late night and a bed – on a train!

Your berth comes with a packet containing earplugs – kept for home, where they’re of far more use when some nearby residents decide to party late – and a very valuable bottle of water.

A knock on our door alerted us to the fact that we were not going to be alone for the entire journey. A man crept in quietly and went to bed with barely a sound.

He left at Narbonne in the dark, but the stop was long enough for dawn to brush past.

An apricot glow blossomed behind lilac clouds as we passed the first etangs. Hills in the background showed purple. The water was like metallic mirrors. It is a magical landscape that leaves me breathless every time in see it.

Morning over the Mediterranean, Roussillon

A couple of stops and we were in Perpignan. Just 20 minutes left. Elne first, then Argelès-sur-Mer. And five minutes later, you pass through a tunnel bored into the foothills of the Pyrénées and pull to a halt at Collioure itself.

We piled out of the train, almost mad with delight.

Down the hill and into the centre of the village, with a first stop for coffee while Aux Délice Catalans opened for business.

Then more coffee – and the butteriest, lightest croissants you can dream of, after we’d been welcomed by the man of the house, who shook our hands and welcomed us.

Tiny, delicate clouds scudded out to sea, and simply disappeared. Whitecaps were visible out beyond the harbour. The sky was as blue as could be and the light reminded you why Matisse loved the place so much.

After breakfast, it was on around past the chateau and to Port D’Avall beach, where Cyril and Vincent host the Bora Bora Beach Club – café, sun loungers (transats), pedalos and kayaks (give it a few days and I’ll be out in one).

Kisses and handshakes abounded: Cyril, quite wonderfully, lets us stash our bags at the back of the café until we can get into our rented home, while we get to start lounging around in the sun – by just 9am.

And so it is: Collioure – we’re back.

Forget the dolmades – try this with your vine leaves

Mushrooms on top of vine leaves

There’s always something new to learn – and neither the world of gardening nor that of cooking are any exception.



After mentioning, a few days ago, that my vine is developing nicely, m’friend George pointed out that the is a recipe that uses vine leaves in the Divine Mrs D’s Summer Cooking.



Mushrooms cooked in vine leaves, apparently.

 I went straight to the cookery books.



My copy is part of the Grub Street hardback Elizabeth David Classics, which also includes Mediterranean Food and French Country Cooking: a delightful collection.



In this context, that means that I had two recipes for this same dish.

In Mediterranean Food – her 1950 debut – Mrs D included a recipe for ‘Cèpes à l’Italienne’, which involved “1lb cèpes or morels or other mushrooms, vine leaves, oil, garlic, salt and pepper”.



The mushrooms are cleaned, de-stalked, sprinkled with salt and left for a few minutes, before being put “in a warm oven a minute or two to dry”.



The “washed and dried” leaves are placed at the bottom of a “fireproof” dish and covered with a film of olive oil, before being placed “over the flame” until the oil is hot: “not boiling”, though.



The cèpes go in (“stalk side up”) and the pot goes in a moderate oven for half an hour.



After that, the stalks are cut into thin pieces and, with a clove of garlic, added to the dish. It’s seasoned and cooked for a further 10 minutes.



By 1955, when Summer Cooking was first published, the recipe had been changed subtly.



Now called simply: “mushrooms cooked in vine leaves”, David introduces it by saying that she has “already published recipes similar to this one,” but she makes “no apology for including it again here, as I think many people who have a vine growing in their gardens would be glad to now it”.



The mushrooms by this time are simply “cleaned whole flat” ones, and the leaves are blanched before lining the dish.



There is more garlic here too – “3 or 4 whole cloves” – and the mushrooms are finally covered with more vine leaves before the dish is lidded.



In this case, it requires a slow oven for 35 minutes.



But apart from the simplification – had David and/or her publishers decided that readers might prefer a simpler version? – the most interesting difference in how this is written up is in the explanation of what the dish achieves.



“The great point about this dish is that the vine leaves make cultivated mushrooms taste like field mushrooms,” explains David, in a short, bracketed note.



All of which sounds fascinating – and very tempting. Now my vine isn’t currently big enough to be raiding for leaves for such an experiment, but the one at the back of the potager is.



Although it borders the area where the bins are kept, I picked leaves from furthest away. The blanching ensured they were clean.

I hadn't gone for the most generic of ’shrooms, since this was intended as the first course of a Sunday dinner, but for a selection of girolles, pied bleu and king oysters.

One of the latter was sliced into four lengthways. The rest were trimmed and brushed as necessary.



And I diverted from the recipe slightly in slicing my garlic.



It’s a perfectly easy dish to construct. Since I don’t have a small lidded dish, I covered one tightly with foil, pleated.



My “slow oven” was set to 150˚C (fan).



This really is something that I will do again. The leaves add something to the mushrooms that seems to deepen the flavour. A very, very satisfying result.



After that, it was a simple case of little lamb chops, each topped with a sprig of fresh oregano from the patio and grilled until the fat was crisp, then served with lemon, in true Italian style.



Ready for the oven

Given such an Italian influence to the meal, the only question was what else to serve with that.



Since The Other Half isn't exactly keen on polenta – which is how my first experience of lamb chops and lemon came when it was served in Venice – I opted for a rather French solution. Well, one I picked up in Paris, at any rate.



I cooked and puréed a small amount of potato, but mixed it with good virgin oil instead of cream and butter.

Seasoned with fleur de sel, each serving was in a small bowl, with a dimple in the smoothed top (back of a teaspoon), into which a little further of my best virgin oil, green and peppery, was dripped.



Perfect. Though I say so myself.



What that single potato also meant, though, was a debut for one of the new Le Creuset saucepans.



They’ll take some getting used to – not least because of a smashing piece of design.



Every lid has a small hole in it to vent the steam, meaning that you can boil without either having the lid balanced so as to leave a gap or having to keep the temperature higher.



So it’s easy to see that those pans will actually save on fuel – they’re not just good to look at.



Good design can pay dividends. And a recipe for mushrooms cooked in vine leaves, whether published once or more, will certainly be done more.

Mushroom heaven – and some cracking pork

If the miserable weather has made gardening difficult, it has made food no easier. The body wants a change – lighter foods, different tastes. But the continuing cold has had a different impact.

Over Easter, I experimented with an Italian approach: a first course of cauliflower, served with a drizzle of my very best virgin oil and some of last year's nasturtium ‘capers’, both of which added a lovely burst of pepperyness.

It worked really well and was followed with grilled lamb chops with lemon.

That’s a great way to enjoy vegetables – although, even more than with the traditional British way of serving your greens, it depends on quality. The ‘caper-style’ nasturtiums are really pleasing.

One of the advantages is that it’s so much easier to ensure that the vegetables are cooked precisely as you want them.

There was also a roasted chicken: done River Café style, cooked for three and a half hours: it was as enjoyable as ever, succulent and flavoursome.

For those who haven’t tried it before, the method is simple.

Heat your oven to 80˚C (fan). Place your bird the usual way up in as tight-fitting a dish as possible, stuffed with … well, whatever you fancy, really.

The recipe in River Café Two Easy suggests rosemary, sage and garlic. In this case, it was garlic, some thyme from the garden and a couple of getting-past-their-best lemons, quartered – simply because that was what was in the house.

You then add approximately 200ml of water to the dish and pop it in the oven for an hour.

After that, turn the bird over and cook for a further hour. Then give it a third hour back in its original position.

Take it out, massage butter into the flesh, season, add 100ml of white wine or vermouth – again, it can depend on what you have in or taste; and frankly, a little more water will ensure it’s cooked fine. And then place back into the oven, with the temperature now turned up to 170˚C, for half an hour.

Ridiculously easy – and wonderfully effective.

In what was rather an Italian weekend, a big pan of homemade minestrone proved once again how this classic, done properly, is comforting and tasty and hearty, yet it has a freshness about it too, that makes it perfect for such times.

If all the ingredients are fresh, it’s really an early summer soup, but frozen peas will do (blanched rather than adding straight to the pan and bringing down the temperature) and tinned tomatoes and borlotti beans also help.

The pancetta was British, incidentally, from Downland Pork. And very nice it was too, as are all their products.

And so this last weekend, the Italian theme continued.

On Saturday, it was time for mushroom heaven.

Perhaps few things are worse than mushrooms cooked so that they become rubbery. But mushrooms treated well are a thing of wonderful flavour.

So here’s an idea, adjusted and adapted from a Gordon Ramsey recipe to make it simpler.

Take a shallot or two, a stick of celery, a couple of cloves of garlic and a little red chili. Chop finely and cook gently in olive oil until softened.

Add either white wine or vermouth – or just stock.

If using booze, you need about a glassful, and then reduce by half and then add about another generous glassful of vegetable or chicken stock and reduce again by half.

If using just stock, use two large glasses full to start with.

In the meantime, take some dried mushrooms and rehydrate them in a mug of boiling water. Strain the mushrooms and add the liquid to the pan with the alcohol and stock.

Chop these mushrooms finely, together with approximately 400g (for two) chestnut mushrooms.

Strain the booze/stock mixture and return the liquid to a clean pan, discarding the flavourings.

Add the chopped mushrooms and simmer gently until cooked. To this, add a good tablespoon of double cream and heat gently.

Serve over tagliatelle, with plenty of chopped flat leaf parsley to garnish.

That is a heavenly dish of mushroomy pleasure.

And a simple a salad of endive leaves and segmented blood orange, with a straightforward vinaigrette, makes a perfect starter.

Not that that was the only Italian-influenced dish of the weekend.

For Sunday dinner, a piece of belly pork had been purchased from Downland.

In the morning, I pounded fennel seeds in a mortar, together with a couple of cloves of garlic, the zest of a lemon, and some dried thyme and oregano, before rubbing it into the scored skin of the pork.

Covered, that went back into the fridge to marinade.

Later, the oven was heated to 180˚C (fan).

The meat had coarse salt rubbed into the scores and was then laid in a dish with a large glass of white wine. Again, vermouth or plain water would work absolutely fine. Or, for that matter, dry cider.

It was cooked for half an hour before the temperature was reduced to 150˚C.

You do need to watch the liquid and add a little more if it dries out.

It was roasted for a further two hours before being rested in a warm place for 15 minutes.

In the meantime, scrape all the meaty fragments from your oven dish and either pop it on the hob or decant everything into a pan to do that.

If there’s a lot of fat, you can get rid of some of that, before adding a teaspoon of plain flour and whisking in.

Cook gently and add liquid as needed – either boiling water or vegetable water from anything you’re cooking as an accompaniment.

So Italian in one sense, but with a gravy that was 100% British – and utterly gorgeous.

The crackling wasn't quite crackling – you could pour boiling water over it before cooking (or adding the rub) but I decided against that. On the other hand, the meat was glorious: sweet and tender and wonderfully satisfying.

And to accompany, garlicky, crushed, roasted spuds, with sliced leeks on the side.

Easy food, but wonderfully tasty and just hitting the right notes for the weather.