Broadway Market faces the Tesco test

'Google', so they say, 'is your friend'. And Google does, indeed, provide a most informative search engine.

For instance, earlier today, I tried something. I entered my post code and then I entered a single word: Tesco.

It made for depressing viewing. Page one – eight listed. A further eight on the next page. Ten on the next page. Another load on the following page – and still I wasn't finished!

Indeed, it just went on and on.

I already knew that I had at least five within easy walking distance. There are others I pass on my way to and from work that have sprung up in the last year or so. The screengrab here shows just [i]some[/i] of the Tesco stores in central London.

I know that it doesn't show all of them, because the most detailed map searches I used for specific postcodes do not show the newish stores on New North Road, Pentonville Road and Hackney Road, so it seems reasonable to assume that a few more are missing too.

Sainsbury's is not quite as bad, although it appears to manage some clusters that make you wonder how anyone could justify three stores almost on top of one another.

Morrison's – fewer and more spread out.

Waitrose – a new one I had no idea was almost on my doorstep, just to the south of Hackney Road.

Co-op? A lot fewer, but there are quite a few Icelands.

Why this sudden spurt of searching? Because it seems that we're going to have another Sainsbury's, very soon and very near me. And because local businesses are worried about the possibility of a Tesco, too.

Let me explain. Our local council is dealing with a planning application for a site just around the corner from the top end of Broadway Market.

The site is currently occupied by small workshops and offices for small, local and locally-based businesses.

These will be chucked out and a block of flats will be built instead.

However, for the flats to be financially viable for the housing associating that wants to build them, there will have to be some commercial properties on the ground. Planning permission is being sought for office space.

Yet in similar developments only a few metres away, spangly new office spaces continue to stand empty.

And here we hit the nub.

Only recently, Hackney Council changed the nature of planning permission on one such block around the corner, on Mare Street, so that its empty office space can be used for retail instead. Sainsbury's will be moving in soon.

This was done with absolutely no consultation with local businesses or residents.

So it's hardly surprising that local businesses are now worried that this new scheme is just a ploy to shoehorn yet another supermarket in the area, without the bother of formally consulting on such a plan – and the one that they most suspect is Tesco.

That there is already a Tesco on nearby Wells Street (the first one), which killed off the old street market means nothing. That there is a vast Tesco metal box just off Mare Street, around half a mile up the road, means nothing either. That there's one on Bethnal Green Road and two on Hackney Road and I've seen a new one on City Road too matters not one shred.

That Hackney Council is spending money to hang banners around the borough linking 'I heart Hackney' with 'shop local' also appears to have no meaningful content – unless we assume that, by 'local', they simply mean at one of the rapidly increasing number of supermarket outlets that we're allowing to open'.

Now, I appreciate that, to some of you, this might sound a tad hysterical. I'll briefly mention – as always do when discussing this subject – the value of reading Shopped: The shocking power of Britain's supermarkets by Joanna Blythman and The Wal-Mart Effect by Charles Fishman (Wal-Mart owns Asda and is also a big model for Tesco).

But let's move on.

In the last few months, I've twice been in a cab where the driver has a former butcher, who realised that the traditional trade had little future and decide to change direction.

In the first such instance, his father – who owned three butchers' shops that his son expected to take on – had told him that the only hope for him, as butcher, was to go and work for a supermarket.

So he gave it a whirl. He found that he needed no skills; his knowledge of cuts and so forth was of no use. He had no butchering to do.

He did The Knowledge and changed job.

Travelling across London just over a week ago, there was the time to quiz the second of these quite thoroughly.

In a massive coincidence, he was born and grew up just around the back of Broadway Market. A couple of years younger than me, he remembers there being three butchers on the street - together with the greengrocers and the fishmongers and the bakers.

When The Other Half and I moved into the areas some 17 years ago, the street was a mess. A famous piece of graffiti described it thus: 'Broadway Market - not so much a sinking ship as a submarine'. Witty - and sadly true at the time.

I asked what he thought had killed off the street. There was no hesitation: supermarkets.

How, though?

They'd opened, offering cheap vegetables, he said. When shoppers went there for their greens, they decided to take the easy option of buying other things at the same time.

Gradually, unable to compete against increasing buying might the supermarkets could deploy, most of the independent businesses died.

Then, he added, shoppers found that the supermarkets were not quite as cheap as they had initially seemed, but by then it was too late.

But after the street had been killed off, what revived it? Small, private businesses – simple as.

The council made some half-hearted and completely cack-handed efforts to revive the street, but utterly failed. To give just one example, the council had the bright idea of starting a flower market on Saturdays. They kicked it off with just a couple of really, seriously piss-poor stall.

And yet this is just a stone's throw from the legendary Colombia Road, where people come from (at least) across the city for the Sunday flower market.

What has happened is entirely down to private individuals getting together to build a market – and to small businesses moving in, all at around the same time.

Broadway Market is no longer a submarine – it's no longer even close to being a 'sinking ship'. It is thriving and bubbling and healthy and quite wonderful.

Now this doesn't meet with universal approval. Ultra-leftist, SWP lies that there was ever an option between a privately-run market and a council-funded community centre haven't helped.

As haven't the almost mythical tales of the £3 loaf of bread – which is rendered utterly daft on the basis that it's an organic, seven-day sour, as opposed to a £1.72 loaf of ordinary, mass-produced wholemeal, which you can, of course, still but on Broadway Market from Percy Ingle.

The reality is that the market has been instrumental in reviving a once-almost dead street. Little has been lost to locals (myself included) as a result – and 2/3 of that as a direct result of collusion between the council and the ridiculously-named local commercial landlord, Roger Wratten, who, one imagines, delights in adding notches to his bedpost every time he drives another business to the wall because he, as landlord, can demand more dosh.

Trust me – it's happened more than once, more than twice ... And the most recent example is only just occurring.

Wratten, indeed, is an example of what can happen when greedy, individual landlords get their way. Broadway Market as a whole is – at present – and example of something different and far more positive from private businesses.

It's become a vital, thriving community. Where once there would hardly be anyone on the street at any time of day on any day of the week, now it draws in people for lunch, for dinner, for the evening. In the week and at the weekend.

Where once I'd have been forced to go to a big supermarket to do my shopping, I no longer have to. I can shop locally and stay locally.

And I'm going to defend that.

I have written to the council already with my comments on the planning application. I'm trying to find out the legal situation, I have said that I wish to attend any council meeting at which the application is discussed – and I wish to speak. And, simplest of all, I have signed the petition that is in most local shops on Broadway Market.

I'll let you know how it goes!

The ghosts of a faded glory

In the two years and three months since I was last in Brighton, more of the West Pier has slipped away into it’s final, watery grave.

Designed by Eugenius Birch and built in 1866, the pier was in such a state of disrepair that it was closed to the public in 1975. But it was finally reduced to a skeleton of iron, jutting up from the sea, by a fierce fire in 2003 – little more than a month after the local council had approved plans to restore it.

The West Pier Trust still believes that "professional arsonists" were responsible.

There is, of course, still Brighton Pier itself – “1,772 feet of fun” proclaims the website – but the sad and slowly disappearing remains of the West Pier have become an icon, more photographed than it’s still-gaudy, still-living neighbour.

And as the intervals between my own visits are measured by the year rather than the day, it is not difficult to note the differences each time we renew acquaintance.

This year it was the ballroom dome, which had previously reclined at a tilt in the shallows between the rotting bulk and the pebbled shore, that was gone. An inside-out aviary, covered in streamers of seaweed, a perch for the birds, consigned now to memory.

But while the burnt-out pier is the most obvious sign of decay, there is much in Brighton that reflects the fading glamour of the English resort.

There's the mint green livery of the promenade, dotted with rust and interspersed with rotted wood.

For work purposes, I was staying in the Metropole on the seafront. Built in 1890, it was designed by Alfred Waterhouse – whose work also includes the iconic Natural History Museum in London.

With 340 bedrooms and conference facilities, it is apparently the largest residential conference centre in Britain.

Sold by taxpayer-owned bank RBS last year, it’s now owned by investment company the Topland Group and is on long-term lease to Hilton hotels.

But long before it played such a cameo in the aftermath of the financial debaclé, its guests included Winston Churchill, while it stands next door to the Grand Hotel, which was bombed by the IRA during the 1984 Conservative Party conference.

So much history for a hotel, yet even though it remains a hive of activity, a sense of faded glory pervades the atmosphere.

On Friday night, with the temperatures plunging outside, I dined in.

My waiter was a charming young man called Sage, and I had decided to limit myself to the set-course menu for £20 (including a glass of wine).

Taking the chef’s suggestions, I’d opted for a duck terrine with fig – with turned out to be a fig marmalade, plus melba toast and a little, rather bland salad garnish. It was pleasant enough.

The cod that followed was somewhat odder. It pretended to the heights of modern cooking, but the single, small red pepper, a lonely floret of undercooked broccoli and a rather dry polenta cupcake that accompanied a piece of fillet, together with an unidentifiable garnish scattered around, was an unappetising pick ‘n’ mix selection of ingredients that had no unity.

Indeed, there was little suggestion that there had even been an attempt to knit it all together.

Looking at the menu for dessert, I realised that my cheapskating on the meal was going to make for a very uninspired culinary denouement.

Sage, however, was at hand – and helpfully agreed that I could add a little extra to my bill in order to have the chef’s special – a ‘Brighton Mess’.

A short while later, he wheeled a tray to my table and began the process of constructing my dessert, crushing meringue and adding a tiny splash of Grand Marnier as a base, before asking me to pick the next ingredients. In my case, these included assorted berries (none seasonal, I confess), cream and plenty of butterscotch.

It had an artificial sweetness, but that was a relief after the main course.

Just a short walk from the Brighton Pavilion, where the first celebrity chef, Marie-Antoine Carême, cooked for the Prince Regent, in a restaurant that would once have prided itself on full sliver service and the food to match, these cut-price efforts to continue that tradition had a painful futility about them.

Few diners – either resident or from outside – appeared, and the spacious, chandeliered room almost echoed with the clink clink of cutlery.

Nearby, as an inducement to diners and filling the disquiet a little, a singer performed Rat Pack classics to karaoke accompaniments on a laptop.

Sage was a delight as he flattered me with his attention.

Back to the window, back to the here and now, I felt like a dowager duchess basking in a compliment as the final glow of her youth fades.

Perhaps I have watched too much Poirot, but as I made my way slowly back to my room later, on the deserted staircases, as the sounds of chatter from the bar drifted up, the ghosts of a bygone era seemed to be all around.

The discord continued the following evening, in the nearby China Garden, where a jarring meeting of cultures could be found; a pianist playing selections from The Sound of Music while diners consumed their dim sum. And brittle birthday-party loudness took over from the sound of a fractious baby, as the latter finally tumbled into exhausted sleep.

The food was a big improvement – deep-fried frogs’ legs with a chili sauce that packed a pleasing punch proving my dish of the weekend by some considerable way, even though it provoked a modicum of shock amongst one or two of my fellow staff diners.

The sweet and sour chicken was perfectly decent but, with some steamed rice, far too big a portion. I was too full for dessert and, after braving the driving, icy rain on the short walk back, happy to bid my colleagues a good night.

Earlier in the day, contemplating lunch, I'd gone in search of proper fish and chips. With snow in the air, I'd walked past at least three outlets that offered pizzas or kebabs alongside what I was after. I wanted dedication to this wonderful dish.

Sitting down eventually in a cramped corner chippy, with white tile walls dotted with blue and yellow cartoon fish and a notice proclaiming that it had been there for 50 years, here at least was a nod to tradition.

The fish was nice – flaky and moist, with a really light, crisp batter. The chips so-so; the mushy peas too wet. And no smell or taste of a proper cooking fat.

Back at the hotel, perhaps the most pleasantly memorable thing about the actual food was the egg station, where a cook prepares your eggs to order – the best eggs I’ve ever had at a hotel breakfast.

Make your request and then hit the toast machine to watch it’s oh-so-slow progress.

The bread is barely coloured after one run, so you put it through again, knowing that it will somehow go from an extreme of underdoneness to something nearing the opposite, altogether passing by a happy medium. Fortunately, I don’t mind well-done toast.

Later, traveling home through a snowy landscape, the incongruities continued as I spotted two deer near the train tracks at – of all places – Gatwick Airport.

But two and a half days later, it is the sense of those ghosts and of the fading glory of an old style of English seaside resort that remains with me. And something about that – a quality of sensuality in the decay – makes me quietly happy that they have not dissipated yet.

Frugal food that's fit for an emperor

With everyone watching the pennies, the question of ‘frugal food’ has reared its head, and launched almost as many articles as Helen of Troy launched ships.

But ‘frugal food’ is hardly a new idea – and it doesn’t just refer to cost, but to culinary simplicity too.

And not only that, but it doesn't mean ignoring flavour either – there’s no way that it would get any mention here if it did!

So bearing all this in mind, a perfect example of frugal food is that classic of Italian cuisine, minestrone.

It’s believed that the origins of minestrone predate the Roman Empire, while the Roman army is said to have marched on minestrone and pasta e ceci (a sort of beans and pasta).

Marcus Apicius's ancient cookbook De Re Coquinaria described polus, which was a Roman soup dating back to 30AD and made from faro (a wheat-based food), chickpeas and broad beans, with onions, garlic, lard, and greens thrown in.

Just as with the cassoulet I was exploring at the weekend, there is no one recipe for minestrone – no right or wrong way to make it. Much depends on seasonality and even what’s in the cupboard or fridge, which of course makes it idea frugal food, since it’s the perfect way to use up leftovers.

The only real certainty is the beans – and they should, ideally, be borlotti (or Roman) beans.

Minestrone alla Genovese is a version that’s typical of Liguria, and contains a greater use of herbs than other versions, plus pesto.

And this is the one I decided to use as my own guide, using The Food of Italy.

The first attempt was chock full of taste – but The Other Half was not overwhelmed because he has decided that he would prefer something that was not as chunky and had more broth going on in the bowl.

So, bearing in mind that a quiet life is worth making a certain number of adjustments for, I tried again today.

Whatever you’re going to put in your minestrone, the sofritto is crucial.

This is how any minestrone begins.

Chop an onion and garlic. In the meantime, melt around 40g of lard in a big, heavy pan. What you want to do is cook the vegetables, plus a couple of chopped leaves of sage and some pancetta very gently in the fat for at least 10 minutes. They need to be well softened, but most certainly not browned.

Once that's done, add a couple of medium-sized potatoes - peeled but not cut up - plus sliced carrot and celery, and cook for a further five minutes.

Add a good squeeze of tomato purée, a tinned of chopped tomatoes and some chopped basil leaves - be generous with the freshly ground black pepper, and then add stock and bring gently to the boil.

Turn the heat down, cover and cook for two hours, stirring a couple of times. The big test is when the potatoes have started collapsing on their own and can easily be crushed into the soup.

Test the seasoning.

Then add your rinsed borlotti beans - if from a tin; otherwise, add soaked beans with the tomatoes.

Now at this point, I added a sliced courgette, plus some broken pasta - spaghetti is ideal, but it could be anything, frankly. Keep the broken pasta from the bottom of a bag and save to chuck into a minestrone. And then carry on cooking until the pasta and green vegetables are cooked through.

Serve with a dollop of pesto – which gives it a lovely zing – and some grated parmesan.

According to Janet Clarkson's Soup: A Global History, various texts refer to something called 'Italian wedding soup', but something has got rather confused in the translation.

No such soup has ever existed. But one of the words for soup in Italian is minestra (zuppa is the other). Thin - or 'little' - soup is minestrina and thick - or 'big' - soup is minestrone. When ingredients in a soup are happily combined, they're referred to as maritati or 'married'.

It's not difficult to see where the mistake occurred.

But it's also easy to see why this classic soup is such a fine example of 'frugal food'. Forget the tinned version - it's a travesty. Cooked freshly, this is food fit for a Roman emperor. And given the number of ingredients, there'll be no stinging on portions - mine has done enough for lunch for The Other Half and me tomorrow.

And if all that wasn't enough to get you excited, it's healthy too!

Cometh the hour, cometh the cassoulet

It was July. The weather had been mixed as we had trundled from Bordeaux to Carcassonne by train. It was late afternoon when we disembarked, with no obvious method of getting to the hotel other than Shanks's Pony, so we walked, using iPhone 'sat-nav' to guide us.

After checking in, we'd walked over the bridge to the village that lies beneath the plug of rock that bears La Cité itself. Everything was shut. Reluctantly, we adjourned to the hotel restaurant and, expecting nothing to match the view as night descended on the ancient city, ordered cassoulet.

It went way beyond our expectations. We'd had the tinned stuff before, but this was a first 'proper' taste of a treasure of French regional and national cuisine.

Two days later, when we boarded a train for the mountains, we took with us a carefully wrapped cassole, the traditional earthenware cooking pot for the cassoulet.

Back home, in the autumn, I laid in duck confit, but the haricot bean - at the heart of this hearty dish - proved elusive. And then, just as the weather started its dip to the sort of temperatures one could expect in January in northern Europe, I found some.

The moment had arrived.

Cassoulet was, the great cook Prosper Montagné declared, "the god of south-western food" in France.

Initially, it would have been made with fresh broad beans, until white beans arrived from across the border in Spain in the 16th century. And the haricot had since become the established bean for the dish. It remains arguably one of remarkably few absolutely crucial ingredients.

This culinary adventure began in seemingly sensible manner - checking recipes in my own library.

I turned first to the version in Hot Sun Cool Shadow by Angela Murrills; then to one in Goose Fat & Garlic by Jeanne Strang and yet another in Paula Wolfert's The Cooking of South-West France.

Stephanie Alexander had produced her own version in Cooking & Travelling in South-West France, which was the last of my collection of books dedicated to that area - and, as far as I know, the only ones published in English.

If I was getting a little dizzy by now, it was but the start.

In French Country Cooking, the Roux brothers used pork and lamb and no confit. Joël Robuchon's version includes lamb shoulder and lamb neck, and involves topping the final dish with crushed melba toast mixed with parsley, which sounds close to heresy, if you ask me.

Bruno Loubet presents a simplified version in Cooking from l'Odeon, to be cooked not in a traditional earthenware pot, but in something like Le Creuset and presented at table in exactly that.

In The Complete Guide to the Art of Modern Cookery, Auguste Escoffier gives instructions for a cassoulet dominated by mutton and with the option of "goose or chicken".

In European Peasant Cookery, Elisabeth Luard's version is informed by her year living in the Languedoc and the instruction of her neighbour there.

And of course, we cannot forget the divine Mrs David, whose French Provincial Cooking goes into some detail about the history of the dish, as well as providing relatively straightforward instructions from a period when Toulouse sausage was something you could only hope to find in a very limited number of shops.

Culinaria France crams it all into a very terse recipe, while The Food of France, like Murrills, simplifies.

Larousse Gastronomique prefers far more detail, and quotes Montagné as having said that cassoulet could be divided into three types - a 'Trinity'.

The 'Father' came from Castelnaudary. The oldest version, it included pork - loin, ham, leg, sausages and fresh rinds - with "perhaps some fresh goose".

The 'Son' of Carcassonne used leg of mutton and, in the shooting season, partridge.

The 'Holy Ghost' of Toulouse uses the same ingredients as in Carcassonne, but in smaller quantities and with the addition of "fresh lard, Toulouse sausage, mutton and duck or goose".

These are the main versions, but as Larousse makes clear, it is far from being a finite list. There is even a salt cod version, with the fish replacing the duck or goose.

But while this so clearly reveals its peasant roots, the French being the French, there has had to be some formalising of what was already a classic - well beyond its home region - into an institution.

In 1966, the États Généraux de la Gastronomie française decreed that a cassoulet had to be made up of at least 30% pork (which could include sausage), mutton or preserved goose, together with 70% haricot beans and stock, fresh rinds, herbs and flavourings.

All of which still leaves things about as clear as mud for the beginner.

So, which path did I follow?

In the end, it was largely Luard, with hints from Robuchon and David.

Prep had started yesterday with the beans. I usually use tinned ones, so I was grateful to read on the packet that 40g of dried haricot would turn into 80g of cooked pulses, which is generally regarded as a 'portion'. Seeing 80g weighed out, I decided to add another 20g for good measure. These was then decanted into a bowl with plenty of cold water and left overnight.

And so to this afternoon.

The pulses were rinsed, drained and popped into a large pan with plenty of cold water, a peeled and sliced carrot, a stick of sliced celery, an onion studded with two cloves, a sachet of bouquet garni, six crushed garlic cloves and the small amount of pork fat Matthew had been able to give me yesterday.

It's heated quickly and then, just before it starts to boil, the temperature is reduced to leave it barely simmering. And so it stays for an hour.

In the meantime, the meats are prepared. Now, this was dinner for two people with smallish appetites, so I'd got a small piece of lean pork, which I diced, plus two Toulouse sausages.

One of the confited duck legs was placed, dripping, into a frying pan, where it gave off all of it's coating of creamy fat, before being removed to a plate. Then the pork and the sausages were fried in this fat, together with another four crushed garlic cloves.

The duck leg was stepped of its flaking meat; the sausages were sliced thickly. A diced onion was cooked in the fat after the meats had all been removed.

Don't throw the fat away - you need it later.

Next up, skin, deseed and chop a large, beefy tomato.

Heat your oven to 120˚C.

When the beans are ready, strain. Get rid of the vegetables and bouquet garni. Keep the pork fat.

Take your pot/casserole and put the fat in the bottom, fat side down. The theory is that, starting with some beans, you layer the ingredients. For just two of us, that meant a layer of beans, then everything else forming on thick layer, to be topped with more beans.

Oops. A problem. There were nowhere near enough haricot to top the dish. It was rather too late to contemplate a minimum four-hour soak for more beans, followed by an hour simmering.

I cheated in the only way possible, rinsing of a tin of cannellini beans and using them to fill in the gaps.

The dish is covered (with foil, if you don't have a lid) and placed in the oven for two hours. Check a couple of times and, if the beans look a little too dry, add a little boiling water.

After two hours, remove from the oven and turn up the heat to 160˚C. Spread a layer of breadcrumbs over the top and drizzle with the melted goose/duck fat from the duck confit that you'd reserved.

Leave the lid off and pop back in the oven. Give it 30 minutes, by which time it should have a nice, golden crust, then remove and stir the breadcrumbs gently into the beans. Back in the oven it goes for at least another half an hour.

The key here is patience. But every 10 to 15 minutes, give it another stir.

This breaking the crust is considered to be really authentique: they do it seven times in Castelnaudary and eight in Toulouse. It's now been set at three times in Hackney.

Remove, serve and eat.

For a first effort, I was very pleased. It wasn't perfect - the shortage of haricot being an obvious point. But I'd also be inclined to increase the initial bean cooking time by 30 minutes, as suggested in at least one recipe, to ensure they're just a little softer.

And the pork and sausages need to be cooked initially for a shorter time but at a higher heat.

But that apart, I was chuffed. My first effort was no insult to the lovely, half-glazed dish that has graced the kitchen since our return last August. And it certainly won't be long before I give it another go.

Dealing with a case of SAD. Or is it EOF?

It could be the all-pervading gloom and a dose of SAD; it could be a hangover from the festive period. It might be the knowledge that the clock is now ticking on the final year of my forties.

But one way or the other, I have not been myself of late. And the nearest description I can offer is that it has felt like a case of Early Onset Frumpiness.

Is this what women mean when they talk of suddenly feeling invisible as they reach A Certain Age?

At home, I slob around in casual gear – and feel perfectly happy doing so. But elsewhere, I have been feeling distinctly dowdy and dumpy.

After allowing this mood to dominate me for a week or so, I realised that there were things that I could do. Mostly, it was about finding ways of feeling that I was taking back control.

Step one seemed obvious. Ever since getting less than a pound back from a tenner for a single packet of fags at WS Smith at Glasgow Airport in November, my smoking days had been numbered.

I hadn’t set a time frame – it was too frenetic a period to be adding in something like that – and then stocked up in France on the basis that, once the Gauloise were finished, I would be too, as a smoker.

In the event, it took a packet more, but on Monday, I pressed a patch onto my arm and threw away the remaining ciggies.

It is nearly the end of day five now and we are progressing well. And I haven’t had increased munchies either (which will calm my father, who is more worried that I will turn into a veritable beach ball of elephantine proportions than improve my bank balance and my cardiovascular health).

Step two – book a hair appointment. And that was late this afternoon – fresh colour to cover the grey and a short, sharp cut to make me feel modern again.

I never have been able to do the long hair that, in the UK, seems to be de rigeur for every woman who doesn’t want to be assumed to be a raving bull dyke.

Why this obsession with long hair, I don’t know: why this belief that the only 'properly' feminine hair is long hair? There seems to be far greater variety of length in France than here. Personally, my hair has always been far too fine – and a halfway house between curly and straight – to do much with it if I do let it grow.

Yet more than one hairdresser down the years has baulked at cutting it short. Not Ian, though, who always does a very nice job. And the whole experience – not just the wonderful head massage – is deeply relaxing.

Step three – think about the wardrobe. Not quite as easy. I am, in many ways, caught between the devil and the deep blue sea in two ways at present.

On the one hand, I’m a traditionalist in matters sartorial – my mother had me looking like a junior Miss Marple in my teens, so it’s well rooted – but there's a part of me that yearns to be far more bohemian. After all, I’m ‘A Creative’, don’t y’know!

On top of that, the clothes problem isn’t helped at present by being ‘between sizes’ as I very slowly lose weight.

But what could be done easily was remembering to wear some heels in a morning rather than opting for the rather flat boots I’ve been living in. It might sound daft, but even a small heel can put a bit more spring in your step.

And then, in a take-hold-of-the-situation-and-shake-the-cobwebs-out-of-it sort of way, I set about a day of deep cleaning in the flat.

It might not have been good for my hands, but it was certainly good for our abode. And the exertion was a good wrench out of the lethargy that seems to have been hanging around with all that grey cloud.

I had allowed myself to slump into laziness. Other little things had been allowed to slip too – like a decent skin care routine.

The only thing that is clear is that, five days after embarking on this attempt to invigorate myself, I feel a lot better. Now if only the blue skies stay overhead, I can finally step properly into the new(ish) year.

Pep up the midweek food

Can you eat well but cheaply? It’s a question that has been exercising more than a few minds in the last few years, as the county slumps from recession to recession and families find it increasingly difficult to make ends meet.

And indeed, what does "well" mean within that construction? Does it simply mean healthily? Does it simply mean 'enough to keep you going'? Or can it mean something more?

More than one person has observed that the last time we were a really healthy nation was during rationing – so perhaps there’s hope now? And more than one person has decided that suggesting frugal food solutions can be a money spinner.

Yeah. Well, that might be more than a tad boring, looking back at some of what people ate during WWII and in the immediate years after.

But there’s a point here – and it’s not totally unrelated to what I posted about earlier this week.

Perhaps cash concerns can be beneficial to health – and pleasure?

With the general idea I discussed there in mind, I try to have at least two meat-free days a week.

Actually, I should be a bit more specific here. It’s very rare for my lunch to include meat. Occasionally, my breakfast might include meat. So it’s primarily a question of dinner being meatless a couple of times a week. Of fishless, for that matter.

Tuesday was just such a night.

I have decided that, even though this is not one of The Other Half’s favourite dishes, he can put up with it occasionally. It’s not far distant from an arrabiata – and he certainly enjoys a pomodoro – so he has little excuse.

This recipe, although essentially traditional, originally came from a little book of 32 pasta recipes from Lidl, which cost me peanuts – a book that continues to be a delightful source of dishes.

So this is my ever-so-slightly tweaked version.

Take some big tomatoes – you want really fleshy ones: big Italian plum tomatoes are the best, but they’re not easy to get, so the sort of beefy ones that my local Turkish shops sell are the business.

I used five tomatoes for two people. Halve them and scoop out the seeds, then leave them to drain on some kitchen paper.

Take a couple of romano peppers – they’re the long ones and so much sweeter than the standard bell peppers. Halve and remove the seeds. Do the same with a couple of red chillies.

Heat your grill and put the shelf around 10cm below.

If the fruits have been in the fridge and the skins are damp with condensation, wipe them dry carefully. Better yet, make sure they've been out of the fridge for a good 20 minutes before you start preparation.

Pop everything on a foil-lined baking tray, skin side up. And under the grill it goes.

It’ll take a minimum of 10 minutes for the skins to scorch and blacken. Once you’ve reached that point (see the picture above) bring them out and let them cool until you can handle them comfortably. Then you can peel the skins off.

In the meantime, pop a saucer under the grill with a layer of ground almonds on it. You’ll need to watch this because it can get burnt very quickly, and you just want it when it’s started turning golden.

Right. Now you can put everything in a pan and give it a very gently blitz with a hand-held blender – or give it just a tiny process in a processor.

Otherwise, just chop the fruits roughly and mix with the toasted nuts.

That’s it, in essence. If it’s a bit stiff, you can loosen it with olive oil, but otherwise, simply heat gently and serve with the pasta of your choice.

Easy, tasty, healthy and inexpensive. Given word associations, it seems churlish to describe it as ‘frugal food’, but it’s certainly not a bank breaker!

Enlightened self interest and pleasure

It didn’t take long for the first bit of bad food news of the year to appear.

On Friday – just as you were looking forward to a weekend brekkie with the full works – the media revealed that processed meats cause cancer. That bacon butty can kill you! And let's not mention the sausages!

Well, actually, behind that tabloidesque comment – and the headlines that were on display – was research that suggested that the risk of pancreatic cancer can be increased by around 19% by eating approximately one sausage a day.

But pancreatic cancer is, itself, rare. And there appear to be other factors – known and unknown – that could have an impact.

Yet the World Cancer Research Fund has advised people to completely avoid processed meat – which seems to be the most crass and counter-productive piece of advice ever.

Actually, what’s counter-productive are these sort of stories in general.

Some years ago, I had been commissioned to write an article about Breast Cancer Awareness Month. I contacted one of the charities involved. One thing that emerged from conversations was how they hate it when stories about cancer get into the general media.

It’s not that they think that the results of surveys should be hidden, but rather that a steady diet of ‘this gives you cancer’ and ‘that gives you cancer’ might not actually give you cancer, but it will quite probably make you feel so fatalistic that you’ll stop any reasonable efforts you’re making to avoid obvious risks.

They noted that, whenever such a story emerges – this was around the time of ‘you’ll get cancer if you work night shifts’ – they actually found that fewer people called them for advice, precisely because of the fatalism that such stories create.

If so many things in life can give you cancer, then what’s the point of trying to be healthy? You’re going to get it anyway.

What's more, many of the research that is reported is being taken out of its scientific context and, therefore, usually manages to sound much more frightening than it actually is.

Should it be reported in the mainstream media, then? Well there's a question – and particularly at a time when media ethics is being examined in great detail by the Leveson inquiry that has followed revelations about phone hacking by parts of our news media.

Perhaps the question that should be asked before publication is does the sum of these stories – see above – outweigh any possible advantages. I wonder if there's a single story like this that has resulted in a saved life.

But back to this one specifically.

I doubt that any sensible person wants to increase their chances of getting cancer – I certainly don't. I might have started getting waves of the sense of my own mortality at the cliché-ridden age of 40, and I might have known – and know – a horrifyingly large number of people who have had to deal with or are dealing with cancer, but I have no desire to see whether I would be as heroic, under such circumstances, as they have been.

So what about the question of meat consumption?

It’s probably fair to suggest that, although we are omnivores – and therefore evolved to eat meat – we are omnivores. In other words, we can eat more than meat. Indeed, our ancient ancestors probably didn’t get a big kill and eat meat every day.

Unlike Boudi, Otto and Loki, we don't actually need meat (or fish) at every meal.

Perhaps the real problem is that meat has become so cheap that many people consider it a staple for every day – indeed, even for every meal.

Isn't that cheapness a good thing?

Well, perhaps not. Look at what it can mean. The £2 chicken has probably spent its brief life sitting in its own shit, unable to move and pumped full of antibiotics and hormones and other drugs.

Setting aside any question of animal welfare, why would anyone want to eat that?

We know that swine flu evolved via intensive factory production of pork products. Why would anyone want to eat pork reared in such an environment?

But if we look a bit further, we can also see that cheapness is a bit of a con.

Take bacon. It's not difficult to find a pack of six rashers for around £1.99. But since those rashers shrink massively during cooking, spewing white gunk into the pan – water that the meat has been pumped full of in the first place – and never gets crisp properly, then wouldn't it be better to buy six rashers of quality bacon for double the price, and ensure almost zero shrinkage, none of the gunk and rind that will crisp?

In fact, if you look at it like that, the prices must be close to equal.

But what I didn't mention there is another factor – taste.

There is a good argument for animal welfare on the basis of taste alone. Call it enlightened self interest, if you will. Because meat from animals and birds that have been raised decently will taste a lot, lot better. That £2 chicken might not actually taste of shit, but then it won't taste of anything at all, so you'll need to swamp it in a sauce to make it edible.

But better meat is more expensive. In which case, why don't we simply buy less and, therefore, make it easier to afford the better product?

Meat-free days are really not the purgatory some might imagine – even to a committed meat eater like me. There's always fish – and even vegetables are nice!

Yet by opting for the best flavour possible, instead of the cheapest product, and by then cutting the amount of meat we eat in order to find the best possible stuff, we possibly even manage to do ourselves some good from a health perspective.

Pleasure can be good for you.

Telling people that they shouldn't eat a popular and enormously enjoyable foodstuff, at all, ever – and even of the best quality – is just plain stupid, and doomed to fail.