Saturday afternoon cooking

Todays post was going to be headed "£50 doesn't go far at the Farmer's Market" but I cocked up my dates and got there to find it had been on last week. Frustrating as for Father's Day I was looking forward to an free range chicken cooked with harissa and I was going to get some Lancashire & Cheshire cheese for tonight. I will have to wait until the second Saturday of next month. No matter I went to Edge's and bought chicken breasts for lunch and bacon for tomorrow's breakfast. Then onto Ward's for fillets of plaice and a dressed crab and then to the grocers where amongst other things I bought a box of cherry tomatoes. They will make the soup for tonight.

At Ward's Simon told me that Ted, the man who ate the oysters, had not been back since I had seen him, and that his old routine had been to go get a pint of Guinness after two oysters. Oysters and Guinness - the man should live to be a hundred.

So what are eating tonight. To start there will be tomato soup. The cherry tomatoes have been cooked down for a couple of hours with onion, garlic, fennel, ground cumin seeds and sage. It has been sieved until smooth. I am going to serve it with the pulp of roasted aubergines mixed with olive oil, crushed garlic and yogurt.

After that we have breaded plaice fillets - the breadcrumbs flavoured with hot smoked paprika together with a chickpea salad and slow cooked rice flavoured with saffron and cardamon seeds. All to be eaten with a tahini, garlic sauce.

Most of the cooking has been done listening to the new Dexys album. This was the first chance I have had to listen to it loud. It is very good and there is a song on it called Free that could soon have me kicking down the doors at work. Looking forward to when the play in Liverpool in September. Followed that with King Curtis live at the Filmore West - one of the best Saturday afternoon cooking albums ever.