Back on planet Earth

It cannot, of course, always be a day of dazzling cuisine.

And today, incapable of managing any enthusiasm for lunch from the deli or Pret, I resorted to the sort of fodder that cannot disappoint, since you expect nothing of it except some calories and the quick rush of salt and sugar and artificial flavours.

Mind, I have made the interesting discovery that Cheesy Wotsits are clearly not made with those who wear dentures in mind: what starts out as nice and crisp, turns into a mush that clings to the plastic and blows raspberries at your tongue's effort to sweep it away.

Tomorrow is a day of TOIL after working last Saturday, so I have three days in which, yet again, to attempt to plan packed lunches for the following week. Because the current situation is, frankly, poor – and I have only myself to blame.

To start with, I'm not really much of a fan of sandwiches. That's not a statement of sandwiches not being any good or anything, but simply a subjective preference. With the exception of a recently-discovered pleasure in cucumber sandwiches (white bread, proper butter, organic cucumber and good salt), others are, by and large, convenient.

Pret's sandwiches often seem crammed with rocket – and I got bored with the British fetish for rocket some time ago.

Perhaps rather oddly, I do have a habit of picking up a prawn mayo butty from M&S or Boots when I'm off on a train journey.

Thinking of sandwiches, though, it’s funny how memories come back to you. In recent weeks, a mental movie has been flickering its way into my consciousness.

It’s the north west of England in the 1970s, and the women of the church are making sandwiches for some social event.

They take bags of sliced, white factory bread and, with a practised movement, a sweep of yellow spread goes on one way and, with the knife’s return, is almost all whipped right off again, the fleeting promise of fatty generosity blown away.

It’s a team effort as they stand next to each other, all floral housecoats and tightly permed heads bobbing in chatter, piling sliced bread into a new tower, ready for filling.

I don’t remember what happened next. I cannot even really be sure that this is a real, personal memory – although I can’t think of the collective cultural memory that it would be part of.

It’s probably present now because I’ve been making sandwiches for The Other Half to take with him ‘oop north’ for Rugby League matches in recent weeks.

He might prefer an olive oil spread to butter, but I am not as stingy with it when spreading as those women were.

As I see them in my mind’s eye, the housecoats were all various shades of pink. My mother had one. They were nylon and had that quality of giving off static electricity.

There would have been tea – my mother, who doesn't like that drink, long complained that it was so hard to get a coffee at church events, and in the those days, her idea of a coffee would have been limited to something out of a jar. Nescafé was the brand of choice, I recall: given her snobbery about a whole range of small things, it occurs that Maxwell House was probably the ITV of instant coffees.

Packed lunches, if she had to make them for school trips, would invariably involve sandwiches. The only filling I recall was from those pots of meat or fish paste that you can still find in shops today, although there might be a single triangle of Dairylea cheese.

I think, if memory is serving me correctly here, that that was the limit on cheese for us until we were much older: cheese – like coffee – was for grown ups.

So lunches will not involve sandwiches, that much is certain.

I read a suggestion somewhere, earlier this week, that all you needed to do was make extra dinner the night before and keep some of that to take with you. That evening, I was cooking mushroom risotto. Some dishes improve with keeping. That wouldn't.

It will have to be salads – possibly with tinned sardines (there are tons in the cupboard – or goat's cheese or even the contents of dinky tins of meat I bought in France last year and sometimes lavish on toast for an indulgent breakfast when I'm not at work. The art form, though, is the dressing. Too much and everything gets soggy and the box leaks; too little and it's dry.

The thinking cap will have to be unpacked and tried for size.

Dinner with Raymond and Bruno

It had been the sort of day when the sun had gone AWOL, leaving us with greyness and the barely-interested efforts of the rain.

So what could possibly cheer me up on such a day?

Well, around two months ago, I picked up a tweet from Raymond Blanc that advertised a charity dinner that he and Bruno Loubet were going to give at Bistrot Bruno Loubet in late March for Hospitality Action, an ‘industry benevolent organisation’ that’s over 170 years old, and helps workers in the industry who are in need.

Giddy with delight at having such an opportunity, and so close to home, I snapped up tickets.

And then, as the day itself came closer, worked myself into an ever more nervous state: nervous that we’d find ourselves in an uncomfortable environment; nervous that I’d landed us in a situation where we’d be expected to fork out loads more cash; nervous that I’d manage to completely misunderstand the dress code (‘lounge suit’) and look utterly out of place, and nervous that it would be a let down in some way after all my own excitement.

None were to have any foundation in reality.

The evening started at the Zetter Townhouse – a 13-bedroom Georgian townhouse, with interiors by Russell Sage – which is a new addition to the Zetter Hotel, just across the cobbles of St John’s Square and the home of Bistrot Bruno Loubet.

The townhouse doesn’t open until April, but we were afforded a look inside for the champagne and canapés part of the evening.

The canapés were little warm Parmesan biscuits – soft, delightfully cheesy, with a pleasant greasiness but yet still beautifully crumbling – and twists of buttery, light puff pastry that held pieces of anchovy saltiness in their embrace.

Moving across to the restaurant, already starting to relax, we found ourselves seated at a table of eight. Three of us were women – all of whom had recently made their own duck confit! So it was clearly a serious foodie gathering and indeed, all very friendly.

After a couple of initial speeches to introduce the evening, including one by Blanc himself – as enthusiastic and passionate as ever, explaining that it is a very cruel, hard industry, and that more legislation is needed to protect those in it – we played a little game and did a little light fundraising.

All of which served to further ensure that nobody was doing airs and graces or feeling awkward. It was most certainly not that sort of affair.

But what of the food? After all, this was might have been charity, but it was also dinner!

To start, we had a spring vegetable salad with air-dried duck, Parmesan mousse and Banyuls jelly.

Oh my! The duck was stunning – and to think that it was exactly what Blanc had been demonstrating on TV just over a week earlier. I really have to work out how to hang a duck breast in the fridge to make this.

The baby vegetables were so small that I cannot imagine any shop selling them – which pretty much declares that they came from Blanc’s own organic garden at Le Manoir. Baby carrots, peas and broad beans were accompanied by asparagus that was as thin as a thick chive, but still packing wonderful taste.

The jelly added a different texture and a sharpness, while the tiny, piped blobs of Pamesan mousse brought a sweet softness to a dish of exquisite freshness.

Next up was a mackerel and prawn burger, with a piquillo ketchup, a potato ‘fish finger’ and cucumber salad – a really funny riff on fast food, and full of more tastes and textures.

The ‘burger’ was dense but full of delicate flavour. The ‘fish finger’ was smooth inside but with a wonderfully crisp casing, while the ketchup gave off the lovely flavours of roasted peppers – and reality to the word ‘piquant’.

The little salad – itself a play on the garnish you get in a fast food joint – was thinly sliced red onion with ribbons of lightly cured cucumber and dill. And it too was a delight.

I just about had a view of the kitchen. The culinary gods were joking and chatting, and it was with great pleasure that I saw Blanc pick up a ladle occasionally and taste something – he really does do what he tells everyone else to do in A Taste of My Life.

The burger was followed by tournedos of rabbit, with braised celery, puréed pumpkin, a deep, dark jus and lovage pesto – so many hallmarks of Loubet’s cooking.

The rabbit, which was a tight, deep circle of flesh, wrapped in bacon and with a little rabbit liver inside (see the description here of his hare royale), was stunning. The first taste made your eyes flutter closed automatically in deep pleasure and awe.

And the pesto was a wonderful shot across the sweetness of the dish; a contrast that added so much to it.

It was more Blanc for dessert, with a white chocolate mousse, as light as air, on a base of dark chocolate and all encased in a wafer thin dome of marbled dark and white chocolate, with shortbread nougatine and orange vincotto.

A dish of real beauty, amazing skill and fabulous tastes and textures.

Stuffed alomist to immobility, I managed to eat just one of the petit fours that came at the end – a single macaron – of a meal that I can barely do justice to in words.

And there was no skimping on the wine either.

One of the things that fascinates me about Blanc is his ability to combine different textures and tastes and even temperatures. So shortly after having read his own thoughts on all this, and while Kitchen Secrets is still playing on BBC2, to be able to actually experience these things was an awesome learning experience – and a quite dazzling culinary one.

It might all look wonderful – it does – but this is not simply looks for the sake of looks. The food tastes sublime. There are so many contrasts, yet every dish comes together beautifully as a balanced whole.

After, I spoke to one of the organisers and asked if it was possible to meet the man himself and get him to autograph A Taste of My Life, which was in my bag.

Unfortunately, he’d had to go – it’s a fair way back to Oxfordshire. But she offered to take the book and get him to sign it, before sending it back to me: it was a delightfully kind offer that I have taken up.

I did, however, manage to speak to Bruno Loubet – the evidence is at the top of this post, as The Other Half joined me for a pic (and no comments about our size, please!).

He’s utterly charming, gracious and down to Earth. Indeed, when the friends who had initially recommended the restaurant were themselves back there a couple of weeks ago, they were astonished – and charmed – to see him washing up in the kitchen.

All in all, a fabulous night. And it raised over £17,000 for a most worthwhile cause. Thank you to everyone for making it such a wonderful experience, from the Zetter's owners, to the staff (who as always, provided lovely service), to Hospitality Action's team and, of course to the wonderful chefs and their team in the kitchen.

High end and low end experiments

After the excitement of Saturday, yesterday was a bit of a double experiment.

First, after around three months, this was the day I'd chosen to see just whether my first attempt at duck confit was edible. I had been worrying that, even though the top of legs were covered completely and safely, somehow I'd have done something wrong and, when they came out, they'd pong to high heaven.

It took some doing, but eventually I was able to haul the pair of big legs out of the thick, creamy fat that has been protecting them for all that time. And protecting them it most certainly had. There was nothing to fret about. I brushed off as much of the liquid fat as possible and then roasted them for half an hour at 170˚C.

Good taste and certainly flaky. Okay, maybe not the best in the world, but darned good, nonetheless – and more so given that it was a first effort.

Served with courgettes and bread, it worked fine.

But in contrast to this wonderful peasant dish, the rest of my cooking day was somewhat more of a culinary challenge.

Taking a couple of ideas from David Everitt-Matthias's Dessert Recipes from Le Champignon Sauvage, I set about a really complicated dessert – in three parts!

The first part, which was my own, was a jelly, made from rhubarb and strawberries, initially cooked in a caster sugar and a little pink grapefruit juice, plus some fresh ginger, before being strained and then having softened gelatine leaves added to it, before it was decanted into a mould and popped in the fridge.

The second part of this dessert was a white chocolate mousse – I had white chocolate with cardamom – which was from the book. It started with cream whipped to ribbon stage (except that my cream was already thicker than that).

Caster sugar and egg yolks are beaten together and then whisked in a bowl over simmering water.

A little more cream is heated and gelatine added.

The white chocolate is melted carefully over more simmering water.

Once everything's been brought together, it goes into the fridge.

Now it's never easy cutting recipe amounts down for just two people, so that may not have helped.

But I found myself suddenly realising just why Raymond Blanc's recipes – and chef's notes – are so bloody good. In this book, there doesn't even seem to be a note about what egg sizes he uses. And it's all very well saying: 'X leaves of gelatine', but gelatine leaves come in different sizes, so one is still left wondering 'how much?'

There's a side of me – the cynical side – that thinks that, if you perhaps skate over such things in a book like this, you won't really be giving away any secrets. I'm sure it wasn't deliberate.

The book will still be of use – and the pictures are pure (so to speak) food porn.

But the point is, the resultant mousse may be far from what it should be. And perhaps that's why I didn't like it much.

At least the third part of the dessert was easy – well, sort of. Dark chocolate is melted gently over simmering water and then spread over a flat, smooth surface. Everitt-Matthias recommends a piece of acetate, but foil over a baking tray, smoothed carefully, does fine.

The theory after that is to cut the thin chocolate slice into geometric shapes to provide a sort of architecture when you assemble the final dessert.

Next lesson – don't try to cut such chocolate with a dry knife. Remember to use a hot, damp one. I didn't get any perfect shapes. Still, you can't go wrong with pieces of chocolate at any time.

It'd didn't look like I'd pictured in my mind's eye – there was so little jelly that that had to be halved rather than cut through horziontally, leaving a thin disc each – but it had a good, intense fruit taste.

The chocolate, as you can see, didn't quite provide the structure I'd hoped for. The drizzle on the plate is Balsamic – good idea, given the strawberry involvement, but it should have been thickened (agar agar or arrowroot?).

So hardly a raving success to the posh bit of the meal. Still, that's how one learns. Next time ...

There IS an alternative

In London yesterday, at least half a million people marched to protest not simply against something (the cuts), but to say that they were not inevitable – that there is an alternative.

I’m taking the half a million figure from the Daily Mail of all publications – but since it can hardly be accused of being a bastion of ‘loony lefties’, one can assume that it’s at least a genuine minimum of the numbers present.

The picture you’ve already seen is of Ghurka veterans who marched – so hardly ‘the usual suspects’. But that was always going to be the real story. (The one below is of an elderly supporter of the Robin Hood Tax).

Personally, I’d put it closer to a million, after standing in the middle of the march for over two hours – and then finding later that they kept on coming for at least another two hours after that.

I know people who were directed all the way to Fleet Street to join the back of the march as people walked some way to even begin the route proper from Hungerford Bridge.

For me it was a work day, armed only with my camera and a brief of snapping as many UNISON regional and branch banners as possible (with as many members with them!) and also a few odds and sods for the staff magazine.

After actually managing to get myself organised enough to eat a breakfast at home – I went to work on two soft boiled eggs, as per Fay Weldon’s advertising famous jingle – it was down to Hackney Road and a 26 bus to Waterloo Bridge, leaving a short hop along the Strand and down to the Embankment alongside the Savoy Theatre.

Which was rather funny, in a coincidental sort of way, since I’m just reading a biography of the great chef Escoffier, and the story has just reached the beginning of his time at the Savoy, working with Cèsar Ritz for Richard D’Oyly Carte.

This, of course, is the same D’Oyly Carte who gave the world Gilbert & Sullivan and whose own opera company in his Savoy Theatre, staged their operas (hence G&S followers often being called ‘Savoyards’).

The theatre itself was the first building in the world to be completely lit by electricity – a fact I was reminded of when I walked down the narrow passageway down to the gardens at the front of the hotel and spotted a plaque on the wall of the theatre to this effect.

Personally, my love of G&S is one of few things that my parents gave me. So there was an added piquancy to that walk.

In the gardens I spotted a bust of Sir Arthur Sullivan. Wonderful! But where was the comparable one to WS Gilbert?

However, moving on, I hit the Embankment at around 9.30am, to find colleagues who had been there for around two hours, unloading and preparing all the materials they’d worked to prepare. I felt like a dilettante by comparison.

It was a cool morning, but with the sun showing signs of burning through. I started taking my pictures.

The march was scheduled to start at 11am. Now that was never going to happen – it was around 45 minutes later.

Bur what an atmosphere!

Seriously good humoured – the police were fantastic.

Indeed, I hear from UNISON colleagues that, as UNISON police staff branches went past (these involve scene of crime staff, photographers, call centre staff – in other words, ‘frontline’ staff) they were close to applauding.

Personally, I chatted with officers and had to work with them professionally during the day (to get on Hungerford Bridge for photographs, for instance) and they were relaxed and we had a great atmosphere going.

So here’s a good chance to thank my police colleagues too. You do a thankless job, guys and gals, but a very important one. Thank you.

Indeed, a Parliamentary committee, on Friday, had applauded how well the TUC and Metropolitan Police had worked together to plan the day’s events. Nobody with an ounce of sense wanted this to be anything other than a safe and positive day.

As the march began, I was in a traffic island just before Hungerford Bridge. The atmosphere was electric – the noise form the UNISON delegation at the front, with vuvuzelas and whistles, was just stunning.

Goosebumps ran up and down my spine; tears pricked my eyes. It was utterly incredible. It was a privilege to be there.

They eventually set off. I snapped away, but with an ever-increasing sense of awe as it became clear just how many people were there.

My editor gave me chocolate to keep me going – thank you, Diana!

Eventually, I dipped into my rucksack to pull out a can of V (one of those caffeine drinks, but I prefer it to Red Bull). In fear of not being able to find a loo for hours, it was my first liquid of the day.

And still they came. There was one young man, dressed in a tail coat and with a lovely tray with tea pot and cup and saucer, who was carrying a small, hand-made placard that said: ‘Teapots against kettling’. The photo will go up later!

There was wit and humour everywhere. There was no aggression and no threat – well, apart from the toy town anarchists who slouched past at one point, faces covered.

It makes me feel old to say it, but some of them were really SO small that I felt that I wanted to ask them: ‘Do you mother and father really know where you are and what you’re doing?’

They gave off the only ‘attitude’ of the day. But I found myself worrying that some of them were too young t really make educated choices about what they were doing; that they had been suckered into whatever was being planned, and that they might seriously suffer for it.

UNISON member Mary Locke, who is a hospital housekeeper in Birmingham, had hoped to see me – indeed, had promised to bring me lunch (it’s not easy carrying a picnic when you’ve got a camera around your neck), but the march was so vast we ended up with no chance of spotting each other.

I’m sure Mary would agree that that was the better outcome – although I’ve had one of Mary’s wonderful cobs, full of lovely, moist cheese and coleslaw, before, so I did regret not getting one this time!

At another point, UNISON member Tracey Lambert darted out of the mass to tell me that she loved my blog. Wow! That makes me feel really humble and very happy. Thank you, Tracey.

And eventually, when I broke away and managed to get back toward the Embankment gardens, I bumped into Sue and Alan, who coaxed me out of being too hyped and gave me Pepsi and the encouragement to sit down for a fag and chat – and they’d been on the road since the early hours trying to get down in time!

I then hopped a cab to get back to the office as quickly as possible (400-odd pictures to go through, process and upload to the interwebby!).

After bidding farewell to Sue and Alan at Charing Cross, I hopped a cab and was approaching Centre Point, down a small street, when it was suddenly gridlocked by toy town anarchists.

My cabby was bemused – not least because at least two of them were pushing big bins down the road.

‘What are they doing with those?’ he asked. I responded that they were probably heading to Oxford Street to bring down the nasty capitalist state by smashing a few shop windows with said bins or using them as barricades.

Then one – a woman who really cannot have been much younger than me, but at least she wasn't covering her face – decided that, as she had a camera, she would make a big thing of photographing the number plate of the cab I was in.

Wow! Photographing the number plate of a stationary black cab! I bet that's going to advance the cause, big time.

As it happened, I hadn't packed my own camera away at that stage – it was still around my neck – so as she then walked past my car door window, I picked it up and snapped her.

Cue hysteria – fortunately the cabbie himself was in hysterics by this point – and me giving her the finger in the most insouciant way I could.

They're pathetic. In some ways, they make me even more angry than I am with this government. After all – with them around, the government doesn’t need agents provocateurs, it’s got perfect propaganda material made for it, which detracts beautifully from at least a quarter of a million people marching peacefully!

It makes the ‘infantile disorder’ of Trotskyism look politically mature by comparison.

But it was an amazing day. I feel remarkably privileged to have been a part of it in the way I was.

However, let’s diversify a little.

It never ceases to amaze me how some people currently assert that complaints about the bankers are a result of jealousy.

Let’s be clear: I consider myself very lucky at this point in my life. I work for a very good employer, with (by and large) wonderful people and certainly FOR wonderful people (see above).

Would I like more money? Well don’t be stupid – of course I would! But not mega millions. Just enough to make me feel safe and give me the chance to explore some things. I don’t need to take over countries or anything like that.

But in the last year or so, I have increasingly heard the response from some people that those who object to what this government is doing are ‘jealous’.

And herein lies the true tragedy.

When did it become ‘jealousy’ to care about anyone other than yourself and your immediate family?

When did it become ‘jealousy’ to care about your community – the ‘big society’, surely?

When did it become ‘jealousy’ to work in a role that was not just about how much money you could make, but about how much good you could do?

When did it become ‘jealousy’ to have X amount of income – and still care?

I hate labels. I spent the years from just before I was 40 adopting labels (and manifestos) instead of actually attempting to think through things for myself.

So you might (or might not!) forgive me if I now say that I don’t happily give myself any label, even when I essentially agree with whatever we’re talking about.

But in many conversations, I still get accused of being a ‘champagne socialist’.

What a daft soubriquet. Where is the ‘socialist’ teaching that socialists shouldn’t have the best in life? Simple. It doesn’t exist.

Indeed, a socialist would almost certainly stress that ‘nothing is too good for the workers’. Including champagne, no doubt.

Maybe – just maybe – once we learn ALL these things, we can move forward.

Last night, after I’d finished work, The Other Half (who’d been slogging it out in the office all day) and I went down to Waitrose and picked up dab fillets for £1.98 for two. They’re small but tasty. I did them with new potatoes from Majorca and a bit of salad and an orange butter that I concocted quickly.

My world is not about jealousy: my world view is based on a real, serious knowledge of how utterly shitty it is trying to live on nothing – and a real belief that everyone should have the chance to have a real life.

But finally, thank you to everyone who took part in the real demo. And to the stewards and police and everyone else. Screw the toy town anarchists – we rock. They're a bunch of infantile twerps!

No pint of lager and not even a packet of crisps

After a Budget that saw council tax fall in most places, leaving many of us around 35p better off each year, I found myself musing on just what I could spend this windfall on.

Now I’d want to be sensible, of course. And would it be possible to be much more sensible than a loaf of bread? Well, a small, white Hovis loaf from Ocado or Tesco is currently retailing at 66p. So I’ll have to save a bit before I can make myself a butty.

A pint of milk is 45p. A 150g tin of baked beans (same sources as above) is 38p – so near, but yet so far! And a packet of crisps seems to start from well over that 35p mark.

In less of tweedy two-piece and sensible shoes mode, according to the Telegraph, the Budget has hiked cigarettes to around £7 a packet of 20: I’d be able to afford a whole one fag!

There’d be no chance of anything boozy to numb the pain though, but I’d only be a penny away from a 330ml can of D&G Old Jamaica ginger beer.

At least, at 32p for a second-class stamp, I'll be able to send someone a letter to tell them of my predicament.

You could be excused for asking, given what will have to be cut in order to fund this dramatic tax cut, was it really worth it?

In my neck of the London woods – Hackney: the second poorest borough in the country, apparently – the population is around 212,200, at a density of around 28,835 people per square mile. The council isn’t giving us this 35p bonus, but freezing council tax at present levels.

While this is happening and to help ensure that frontline services are not cut (no library closures, I’m pleased to discover), central government funding is still being slashed, so council tenants are to see inflation-busting rent increases of 6.1%, while leaseholders face a rise of an average of 5.1% in the fees they pay.

It’s difficult to see how either will help the economy to grow, since one will reduce the amount people have to spend, thus affecting local retailers – and retail has become so important to the national economy that quarterly retail figures are now a major news story – and the other will make trading more expensive, and will particularly hit small, independent businesses.

But this isn’t just the rambling of some old (middle-aged!) ‘leftie’: according to bighospitality.co.uk, the Budget “delivered good news for small businesses and lower-level workers” (unless the former get hit locally, as above, presumably), “but offers little hope for hospitality operators as a whole”.

That’s what Davis Coffer Lyons is saying, claiming that “measures to increase the basic rate tax threshold increases from £7,435 to £8,100 and extend the rate relief holiday for small businesses … is [sic] not enough to sustain the future of the industry”.

“The Budget offers little help to alleviate pressure on operators’ suffering and does little to kick-start consumer spending,” says Mark Sheehan, managing director of Coffer Corporate Leisure.

“Altogether, the net increase in income tax and national insurance against savings for many earners will hit consumer spending further. This is compounded with the recent VAT increase in December and the outstripping of wage increases by inflation – a hard combination to bear for operators.

“With 4-5% predicted inflation for the year above compared to 1.7% predicted growth in the economy, this further illustrates a very tough trading environment for the leisure and hospitality sector, which employs over 2 million people and adds £19 billion to the UK economy every year.

“Operators need more help than they are being offered in this budget to help lead the economy out of recession and creating local jobs at a time when national unemployment levels are so high. In provincial areas especially, the hospitality sector should be better supported in keeping jobs alive and therefore helping to sustain the economy.”

There was an interesting news report on the other night, looking (in part) at how French president Nicolas Sarkozy is having to back track on his ambitions of dragging that country into the sort of laissez faire economic state that has proved so damaging to the UK and US.

But that’s a subject for another day – although: fingers crossed.

When you're weary

It was the sort of day that inspired a need to wear Birkies into the office and belt forth a heartfelt rendition of Rogers & Hammerstein's barnstorming opener to Oklahoma! – indeed, I'm sure that if there'd been any corn anywhere near, it would have been as high as an elephant's eye.

That doesn't mean I'm not knackered. This defending public services malarky is hard work. Not, I hasten to add, that I'm complaining. I like my work; I like the people I work with and I'm fortunate enough to work for an organisation whose general aims I am in accordance with.

But it's a couple of years since I was 21 and there are times when I seem to feel the pace just a little more than I used to.

That, as I noted a few of days ago, was what produced a night of getting home and feeling like nothing more on the food front than a cup of Bovril and a cucumber sandwich.

Indeed, I think tiredness actually blunts your appetite – not just renders you less willing to spend quality kitchen time cooking.

It was the same today – and not just for me: The Other Half is similarly tired.

The lengthening days and wonderful weather did mean that we could sit out in the evening for an hour with cups of tea, while the cats bounced around in the glow of early evening. I think that's another sign of getting older: in recent years, each winter has seemed to drag longer and longer. I miss the sun. The minute it really appears again, my spirits revive.

So what does this mean on the food front?

I'm possibly more aware than ever that good food can boost – not only a sense of well being but also general health. But I'm also aware that there are days when it feels like a real effort to get going.

This evening, having wrenched myself into action – and oh boy, it was an effort – I brushed skewered potatoes with olive oil, sprinkled them with salt and popped them into the oven to bake. Nothing to do after that for some time, so take a break. Watch the telly, have a fag ... whatever you want.

Later, I mixed some lemon and orange juice with a little olive oil and seasoning, before thinly slicing a Cox apple and halving some raddishes and popping them in this dressing. Then it occurred to me that this would be the ideal way to use up the rest of the weekend's aïoli, which was thinner than usual and had split a bit. Indeed, It created a crackingly tasty dressing.

Have another break.

The potatoes take over an hour because they're cooked at a low temperature for jackets – 160˚C fan oven. But that makes for a wonderfully fluffy inside and a lovely crispy skin.

When they were nearly done, it was a simple matter to haul out the griddle pan (I really don't use it enough), oil it and place it across two hobs.

Have another break.

Then out come two slices of tuna, to be dried with kitchen paper and then popped onto the heated griddle pan. If you want – and if you feel in fancy dan mode – you can move them around 90˚ after a minute, so that you get a criss-cross effect on the flesh. But they don't need more than two minutes on one side, and then just turn over and repeat.

Then it's a question of getting the potatoes out, cutting them and popping some good butter inside to melt everywhere and moisten the fluffy flesh, dishing out some of the salad, on top of a few endive leaves, and placing a tuna steak on each plate.

By nobody's stretch of the imagination can that be called difficult. And as always when I discipline myself to cook, in spite of tiredness, I feel the benefit on sitting down and starting to eat.

Dessert took care of itself. Nipping into Waitrose after work, I'd spotted the first English strawberries of the year, from Hampshire, which produced a real burst of excitement.

Now of course, they'll have been grown under glass (or plastic). But I held a box up and inhaled deeply. They weren't grotty, bland Elsanta, but gariguette, a French variety. And as it turned out, worth eating, with plenty of taste.

Winter really is over.

What a grind

One of the reasons that I was so thrilled with my kMix back in December was the knowledge that it can be accessorised. Now we're not talking a Chanel clutch here – but the meat grinder might just be the culinary equivalent.

It arrived from Kenwood on Sunday, just as the final remains of the previous weekend's roast lamb shoulder were sitting in the fridge and wondering what would become of them.

The answer was obvious – a shepherd's pie. But not just any old shepherd's pie – the first I've made with left-over meat, as it would traditionally have been made.

In the event, I picked up a small amount of lean lamb from Waitrose, knowing that there wasn't quite enough for two of us at home. As I waited at the butcher's counter, I was amused to notice the mincer there, with a vast notice on it informing everyone that you could only use it if you'd been trained.

It required no training to get my home front one up, running and extruding meat. The grey meat and white fat that was left on the plate came together as delicate pink strings. The raw meat produced red ones.

An adjustment was needed to the cooking. The raw meat went into some lard with a diced onion and carrot and was cooked for 10 minutes, before the left-over meat was added and the cooking continued for a further 10 minutes.

A slug of left-over red wine and a little chicken stock joined these ingredients, together with some peas that had briefly been cooked in boiling water from frozen and then well drained (it makes no sense to add something frozen to a cooking dish – it'll reduce the temperature and add water), then everything was decanted into a buttered dish.

Potatoes were boiled and then mashed with cream and butter before being spread on top. It all went into the oven (pre-heated to 170˚C – for a fan oven) for 25 minutes.

And bloody good it was too – not perfect: I'd not added quite enough moisture, while the left-over mince had rather collapsed from those strings as soon as it hit the hot pan – an indication of how much fat was in them, I think. I'd probably also use an attachment on the grinder that leaves it in thicker strings next time. But the taste was good –and with a depth of flavour that was definitely different to that produced when making the dish with raw mince alone.

While I'd wanted this very grown-up gadget (thankfully, very easy to strip down, clean and put back together again) primarily for its mincing prowess, it does have another rather attractive ability – that of making sausages.

Chatting on the phone to my mother on Sunday evening, I mentioned this. She almost giggled and then asked, in something sounding remarkably like disbelief: "You're not going to try making your own sausages, are you?"

Of course I am. It won't be particularly difficult to find skins and basic recipes are easy to get hold of. What will be interesting will be the chance to experiment with flavours – and I'm also looking to make tomato sausages, like the ones I remember having when we visited my maternal grandmother and hadn't tasted for years until visiting a Glasgow butcher in January.

Not that I'm only interested in 'bangers': there's a whole world of charcuterie out there that I fancy getting a little better acquainted with. Beyond that, I've been tempted by the idea of curing for some time, and last night's edition of Raymond Blanc's Kitchen Secrets gave that ambition another boost with a duck ham that almost looked too easy to be true.

A big, meaty adventure awaits.