That’s a nice recipe. Quite fancy knocking up a few of those snickerdoodles or a nice batch of lebkuchen for thrifty gifting…Oh damn, it’s an American book. And I can’t be faffed with all those sticks of butter and cup measures and trying to differentiate said cups from their American counterparts. Mission’Family Presents On The Cheap’, abort.

Catherine Fulvio sounds as Italian as a Vespa and tax avoidance, but she actually owns and runs the Ballyknocken House Farm and Cookery School in Wicklow, Ireland and is one of the country’s biggest culinary TV stars. She was born in Ireland as a Byrne and Ballyknocken house is her family home.

Every so often a book comes along that you wish you’d penned yourself. Not only that, it IS the book you’d have penned yourself. Most of the time it’s authored by someone you have no qualms resenting for their sheer audacity at nicking the concept, but Capital Spice’s creator, Chrissie Walker, is just too damn lovely for me to hold any grudge.

The etymology, or origin, of recipe names is a subject no one I think has ever really gone into before. Some names we know, such as Peach Melba and Eggs Benedict, but does Chicken Kiev really come from Kiev and who was Reuben of the famous sandwich?

He is, as you may have guessed from Gascony, a region famous for its honest, rather heavy, food. A region of ducks and duck fat, of wild game, massive stews and grandmothers who can cook like angels with the simplest of ingredients. The recipes here are the ones he remembers from childhood and through them he wants to invoke a sense of time and place.

Tibits recipes have a clarity of flavour that might not be suitable for novice vegetarians who are still smothering everything with cheese and surviving largely on bread.

There is definitely an art to pasta because, while it can never aspire to or want to be’fancy’ food with intricate cooking and presentation, getting a great pasta dish onto  the table means the art of mixing simple yet fantastic ingredients and, of course, carefully watching that boiling water.

It’s not easy being an omnivore who revels in the wonderful world of vegetables in all their myriad forms when you’re surrounded by chop-loving compatriots. Alright, I don’t mind the odd Ali Nazik down the Turkish, but a plain hunk of plated protein is monotonous enough to kill my voracious appetite quicker than you can say’5 a day’.  Veg, on the other hand, never fail to get the juices going- raw, cooked, pureed or whole… Let me at’em. Convincing the crew, however- now that’s a meaty matter. Holy cow, thinketh I, what am I taking on?

I think I will have a canapé party; young people will come and explain what a slider is to me and I will nibble pensively on a mini Peking Duck Pancake and pretend to care. These little nibbles could be the start of something big.

We should preserve the art of preserving, it’s satisfying and it gives you tastes you just can’t get in the shops or get as good. I’m off to pickle some allotment tomatoes now and on Boxing Day I’ll crack the first one open to go with my cold turkey. The best things come to those who wait.