The other Sunday I shopped for a diamond solitaire. Platinum, Tiffany-style band, at least a carat, perfect clarity and color. I looked into the heart of the stone through a tiny magnifying glass and saw it sparkling back up at me.

Following painstaking research in the fancy jewelry boutiques of 5^th Avenue – Cartier, Tiffanies, De Beers – we’d headed for the diamond district, an amazing strip of jewelry importers, wholesalers, manufacturers and dealers that runs between 5^th and 6^th on 47^th Street. Some of the store fronts are jewelry shops where you can select from stunning modern pieces, or gorgeous antiques. Others are divided up into counters like a very expensive flea market, and you can select a stone and a setting and have it turned into a ring before your very eyes. As well as this being incredibly interesting to watch, and giving you a custom made bauble, it’s staggeringly less expensive than buying from somewhere with a recognizable name on the box.

We narrowed it down to two diamonds. Both utterly stunning. Both morally sourced, certified and all that other formal important stuff. The lady behind the counter fitted them into prongs and I balanced them on my fingers. “What do you think?” I asked. “They’re both perfect. How are you going to choose?”

“I’ll take the bigger one,” said Ronnie. And later that night, Karen said yes.

For those of us without diamonds to offer to our loved ones, chocolate soufflé will have to do.

Chocolate Souffle (makes 6 – 8 individual servings, depending on the size of the ramekins)

There’s a mythology about soufflé that they are difficult to make. I’m not really sure what the fuss is about – especially if you have some kind of electric beater for the egg whites. In an ideal world you’d whip the egg whites just before making the soufflé, but if you made them a little in advance and baked them off just before you want to eat them, well, what’s the worst that can happen? They won’t rise quite so triumphantly? You still have warm fluffy chocolate puddings.

A few things: use room temperature eggs to get good stiff peaks. Wipe the mixing bowl with a cut lemon to make sure it’s spotlessly clean from grease which kills volume in egg whites. Don’t open the oven door or they’ll flop.

• Preheat the oven to 350f
• Butter 8 ramekins and sprinkle with a few tsp of sugar. Shake the sugar around to coat the sides and base, then tip out excess
• Melt the chocolate very gently in a microwave or bain marie. Cool, then add the milk and stir gently to combine
• Beat in the egg yolks and the 60g of sugar until incorporated
• In a clean bowl, whip the egg whites until stiff, then gently add the 75g of sugar until incorporated
• Stir a spoonful of the egg whites into the chocolate and mix to loosen up the mixture, then fold in the rest of the egg whites. Fill the ramekins and level off the tops
• Bake for 18 – 20 minutes depending on the size of the ramekins, until risen and stiff
• Dust with coco or icing sugar and serve with a jug of cream to pour in

The thought of not being able to watch the Olympics on the BBC is making me consider turning to a life of download crime. Considering, mind, I’m not actually admitting to anything, just to be absolutely clear here.

My friend Kim said she could identify with this, but warned me that Kama may well catch up to me in unexpected ways. She downloaded a costume drama from a site based in Brazil. “At first it was great, and I loved watching it, but then the computer started crashing.” The computer, I should mention, actually belonged to her husband.

“After a few days of it shutting down on him in meetings, and writing over his powerpoints, he took it in to the company’s IT guy to see if he could fix it. He took a look and then said, probably not, the Brazilian Porn Download had totally wrecked it.”

At this point, her confused and embarrassed husband called her to see what the hell she’d been watching and why she hadn’t invited him to join her. Finding out it was The Borgias explained a lot.

“That doesn’t make it any better,” said the IT guy. “In fact, it makes it worse! My girlfriend is a costume designer. She works really hard at her job and you think you can just illegally download her work? You people make me sick! Seriously, do you just hate artists? Is that it? Do you hate artists? Do you?!”

The experience made Kim think. “I have friends who are actors, and writers, and artists. I don’t hate them!” To prove it, she bought me a drink.

Bourbon and Spiced Apple (per glass)

This is the kind of comforting, warming drink that perks up a spring evening of lashing rain, thunder and lightning. This is May, New York. Seriously.

• Put the ginger into a cocktail shaker and muddle it with a handful of ice
• Add the bourbon, lemon and apple juice and shake
• Strain into a glass and garnish with slices of apple

It was my friend Wendy’s best friend Mary’s YA book launch yesterday, so a crowd gathered at a Soho bookstore to drink wine, listen to her reading extracts from Wuftoom, and celebrate her fabulous achievement.

I’d met Mary a couple of times before, most notably at Thanksgiving, where she pretty much summed up her life view as “if a giant talking bug crawled into the room, I’m one of those people who wouldn’t kill it because I’d be interested in what it had to say.” So I was kinda prepared for her book, a dark fable about a boy who turns into a particularly grotesque type of giant sewer-dwelling worm called a Wuftoom.

In keeping with the theme of the book, worm-related treats were served at the party – worms in chocolate pudding being the runaway hit. Glass of wine in one hand, jelly worm in the other, Mary looked happily around the room, taking in the moment.

“I started writing this book and finished it within 6 months, because I found my job soul-destroying, and I needed to work out how to leave it,” she told us – inspiring stuff for a Sunday afternoon.

And so, in the spirit of achievement, creativity and dreaming big, employing the unlikely metaphor of worms, chocolate mousse worms in dirt

Pot au Chocolate with Oreo Crumb Soil and Worms (makes 6 large shot glass servings)

This recipe contains raw egg, so don’t serve it to pregnant / fragile people, and use eggs that you trust. If you really want to make these egg free, use a tbsp of room temperature cream cheese instead – the pot au chocolate is more of a cheesecake filling, but there’s nothing wrong with that.

• Break two bars of dark chocolate into pieces in a bowl
• Pour the ¾ cup of heavy cream and ¼ cup of milk into a pan and heat until it’s just about to boil
• Tip the hot cream/milk over the chocolate and count to 20
• Whisk the melting chocolate into the cream until the color is uniform
• Crack in the egg and whisk again. You’re not trying to whip up the mixture, just mix everything well
• Pour the mixture into a jug, then from the jug into pots or shot glasses, filling them half way up. Top with a tsp or two of oreo crumbs, then another layer of chocolate. Chill for 2 hours in the fridge
• Top with another layer or crumbs and decorate with worms. Take out of the fridge about 20 mins before you want to eat them so that the chocolate can soften a little

If You Can Make That You Can Make This

• Dark Chocolate Pots
• Milk Chocolate Pots
• White Chocolate Pots
• Green and Blacks Mayan Gold Chocolate Pots
• S’mores Chocolate Pots
• White chocolate pots with raspberries and blackberries
• Tiramisu Chocolate Pots

If you live in New York and you like to eat out, you will inevitably spend a lot of time hanging out outside restaurants with a whole bunch of other people who agree with you that an hour, an hour and a half is not too long to wait for a pizza. 

Outside Rubirosa there is a bench, and this bench is one of the best people watching spots in the city. A few weekends ago it was lovely and warm, so we joined the crowd sipping bottles of beer wrapped in paper bags, and listened in to a slice of life.

One girl had brought her puppy, a doe-eyed silky-eared spaniel that charmed all who saw her. “Sure, she’s totally cute, but she’s already cost me $150 in probiotics.” When this woman’s table was called we discovered that a couple of her friends had already eaten, and had simply come along to hang out with the puppy outside the restaurant.

One couple appeared to be on the verge of a break up. “I didn’t say that. I didn’t even imply it. Unless, of course, you think it’s representative of our relationship that we’ve lived together for a year and you only found out how to turn the dishwasher on today.”

And then we heard this cautionary tale:

“This guy bumped into me on the street, then started yelling that I’d broken his glasses and I should pay for them. Well, it wasn’t my fault, so I told him I wouldn’t pay for anything, and he literally growled at me, and said “Man, I’m going to kick you in the leg,” yeah, it was oddly specific.  So I thought, shit, better run, so I headed into the diner that was right on the corner and waited for him to go away.

I thought, since I’m here, I’ll have a sandwich. After about five minutes he went away and I relaxed, but after half an hour he was back out there. And I watched him deliberately walk into another guy and yell at him about how he’d broken his glasses.

The waitress took my plate away and I told her what was going on. She looked totally mad, and opened the door of the diner and yelled; “Tony, what did I tell you? Get the hell outta here with that pathetic scam. Nobody’s gonna fall for that shit. You don’t even need glasses. You should go back to Conways and beg them to give your box cutter back.” It was like I walked into an episode of Law and Order.”

“Sorry about the wait” said the hostess as she seated us, an hour and forty minutes after we’d put our names on the list.

“It’s not a problem at all,” Jon told her, and we both meant it.

Vodka Pizza

I got the idea for pizza with vodka sauce from Rubirosa, but I’m not claiming any inside knowledge or authenticity whatsoever for this recipe – if you want to eat Rubirosa’s pizza, you’ll have to stand in line next to me. But when I cook an inspired-by version at home, this is how I make it.

For the pizza dough

If you live near a Trader Joes or an amenable pizzeria, buy a ball of pizza dough. Oil a baking tray and dump out the dough onto it. Press it out as much as you can, then leave it alone for a few minutes. Poke it and stretch it out again. Give it another few minutes. The resting helps the dough relax into the stretched out shape. Poke it out again – it should be about the size of the tray now, and very thin – then proceed with the toppings.

Or make your own dough:

• Sprinkle the sugar and yeast into the warm water and let stand until the yeast begins to foam (a couple of minutes)
• Combine the flour and salt in a bowl (mixer for preference), then add the 2 tbsp olive oil and the yeast mixture. Using the dough hook, and stopping to scrape down, mix and knead for five minutes (or, by hand, for 10)
• Half way through, have a feel of the dough – if it’s crumbly add some more water, if it’s too sticky, add a bit more flour – it ought to be smooth and plump and soft
• Take the dough out of the mixer and give it a quick knead by hand, then put it in an oiled bowl, cover with a tea towel and let rise in a warm place for an hour
• Punch the dough down, divide the mixture into two pieces (each piece serves 2 – 3 people, and the spare piece can be kept in a zip lock in the fridge for up to a week)
• Oil a baking tray, and put the dough in the middle. Press out to try to cover the tray and thin out. Leave for a few minutes, then press out again. Leave for a few minutes and press out again – it should be thin

For the vodka sauce topping

(1 lot of pizza dough on a tray)

• Dice the onion, season and fry in a splash of olive oil over a gentle heat until the onions are soft and sweet – about 15 minutes
• Add the tomatoes, and chop up so that they make a sauce (or you can use chopped tomatoes). Add the vodka and reduce the heat to a low simmer for five minutes, so that the sauce can reduce and thicken. For a very smooth sauce blend with a stick blender
• Preheat the oven to 450f
• Stir in the cream cheese and check the seasoning. Let the sauce cool down for about 5 minutes
• Top the pizza base with the sauce and tear the cheese over the top
• Cook for 8 – 12 mins depending on the thickness of the crust, until the cheese has melted and the base is crisp

If You Can Make That You Can Make This

Pizza toppings are limited only by your imagination and the contents of your kitchen. My current favorites are:

• Pesto and fresh tomatoes
• Mushrooms roasted with garlic and olive oil, then baked on the pizza, then finished with fresh Parmesan and truffle oil
• Roasted butternut squash on top of a pizza spread with ricotta, thyme and lemon zest
• Classic tomato pizza
• And if you can make Vodka Sauce (which is great on pasta, btw) you can make all these things with just a little tweak
• Spaghetti with tomato sauce
• Minestrone Soup
• Chicken Cacciatore
• Marinara dipping sauce
• Puttanesca

Is there any way to eat a cupcake outside the context of a birthday party without feeling just a little bit Sex and the City?

I am a member of a writing group, which mostly means that we meet up every couple of week and moan and bitch to each other about how well or not well our various projects are going, argue about the Oxford comma again, then rush home, inspired by fear, jealousy and cocktails to write feverishly into the night.

Walking to this writing group’s bar of choice takes me straight past Magnolia Bakery. You would think that you’d first be alerted to the presence of Cupcake Royalty by the perfumed aroma, the vanilla scent drifting half way down West 11^th street. But no. Mostly it’s the noise. And mostly, what the serpentine line of women, bored boyfriends and gay teenage boys are screeching to each other runs along the lines of; “No, you’re a Samantha, I’m more of a Carrie!” and “Did you know, statistically speaking, Charlotte was the one who had the most sex?”

Now I’m all for Sex and The City nostalgia – confession, when I first moved to NY, I went on the official Sex and The City bus tour with a German writer friend of mine and his boyfriend. We ate cupcakes, got super hopped up on sugar, drank cosmos and spent some time in a vibrator shop. It was a pretty fun afternoon all told.

And I’ve always thought, if I ever walk past that store and there’s no line, I might just pop in and buy a cupcake. There always is a line, of course. Weaving my way home I peer in through the windows and wonder, who are all these women buying cupcakes at 11.30 at night?

Last week, odd fluke of nature, an oddly modest line, so waited my turn and bought a box to take to the bar. We sat around our regular table, having the same conversation, only this time, our lips were frosted with pink icing. “We are Carrie right now!” said Neil happily. “We should order cosmos.”

“We can’t be writers eating cupcakes in the village and drinking cosmos,” noted Karen. “What if, for example, Darren Star walked in and saw us and we lost all credibility forever?”

It was a point. “What’s the least Sex and the City drink we can have?”

But since none of us had the stomach for Guinness with a shot of tequila in it, the barman’s suggestion, we had Tom Collins’s instead.

Tom Collins (per glass)

• Shake the gin, simple syrup and lemon juice over ice
• Pour into a tall glass, add some more ice and top up with soda water
• Garnish with an orange slice and a cherry

Simple Syrup

• Pour the water and sugar into a saucepan and heat gently until the sugar dissolves (the water will be almost simmering)
• Chill

Jon’s iPod shuffle, which has a flair for spontaneously coming up with the perfect life soundtrack, triumphed again this week. He emerged from the subway uptown to meet me grinning all over his face; “I really did take the A train, and it really was the quickest way to Harlem!”

Meanwhile, my iPod is trying to compensate for the chilly spring weather. As I stepped out of my building this buttoning up my coat, shuffle gave me Copacabana followed by Yellow Bird.

The early morning mist pouring down the subway steps could not dampen my mood – my hair, sure, hello frizz, but not my mood, which remained distinctly tropical.

Pineapple, Coconut and Lime Loaf Cake

• Preheat the oven to 350f
• Dice up the pineapple into small bite sized chunks, and drain in a sieve for a few minutes to dry out a little
• Mix the pineapple, coconut, flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a bowl
• Mix the eggs, yogurt, oil into a jug, and grate in the zest of a lime
• Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and stir to combine
• Butter a loaf tin and pour in the cake batter
• Bake for 55 mins until golden brown

Lime Glaze

• Sift the icing sugar to get rid of lumps
• Stir in the lime juice. If the glaze is still stiff, add milk or water drop by drop until you have a pouring consistency
• Pour over the cooled cake, and decorate with lime zest

If You Can Make That You Can Make This

• Use apples instead of pineapple to make an apple cake, swapping out the lime for a tsp of vanilla, and the coconut for ½ a cup of walnuts and ½ a cup of sultanas
• Or try this apple loaf cake
• Or these banana muffins

Living in New York can feel like living on a movie set – and not just because there are movies shooting all over town. A friend of mine who works at The Whitney watches a crew move in every night and transform the place with lights and fake walls into a more movie-esque version of the Whitney, complete with fake modern art, hung over the actual modern art, because apparently it looks more like modern art than the modern art does.

Possibly because the city feels like a film set, people are pre-disposed to act as though they are themselves in a movie. I’ve never seen anybody throw a martini over someone in any other city in the world, but I’ve been there to witness it in the flesh on more than one occasion in Delicatessen on a Friday night.

I had my own movie moment today – it’s Spring, albeit a gloomy one, but spring nonetheless, so I was wearing a skirt. Then I walked over a subway grating, and suddenly I was flashing lower Manhattan a la Some Like It Hot. But, and this is really my point – if a woman in a skirt had walked over a subway grating in New York and not found herself clutching at her skirt and her dignity, we would all have felt that the city had somehow let us down.

I met Andy at a Tribecca film festival related party. She told me that she had recently been on a date with a new guy who took her to a fancy spot that, it turned out, had lost their reservation. They bought beer in paper bags, waited on a bench for an hour and a half, only to discover that the host had taken down their names wrong, and they’d missed the table again. At 10 pm now, and thoroughly starved, they gave up and went for a slice of pizza. He was angry, she was too hungry to care. The date was clearly a bust. No good could come of it. But there, standing up at the counter eating pepperoni, all awkwardness suddenly slipped away, and they were chatting like friends at last, and there, under the strip lights, they kissed and agreed to meet again.

“It was just like a movie,” she said. But in a city where you look up and your every view ought to be on some kind of IMAX, how could it not be really?

Vanilla roast chicken breasts

This recipe comes from an old issue of Marie Claire. I love its fragrant springy aroma, and I cook it a lot – it’s very simple to make, and feels somehow very exotic. The leftover half vanilla pod can be put in a jar of sugar to make vanilla sugar. The original recipe calls for 4 tbsp of olive oil and “the juice of 4 lemons.” Since lemons vary in size so much I use equal amount of both, and measure or guestimate in terms of ½ cups. It’s what works for me. The same amount of marinade will do 4 chicken breasts too, if you’re cooking for company.

2 chicken breasts

• Preheat the oven to 400f
• Slice the vanilla bean in half and use the edge of the knife to scrape out the seeds into a dish. Add the soy, sugar and lemon and stir to dissolve the sugar before adding the olive oil and mixing everything together
• Slash the skin of the chicken breasts a few times, then marinate, skin side down for 15 minutes. Turn over, and marinate for another 15 mins (if you don’t have time, rub the marinade in a bit and cut straight to the cooking)
• Season the chicken and roast skin side up until the chicken is cooked through – about 20 mins, depending on the size of the chicken breasts and the real live temperature of your oven
• Let the chicken rest for 5 mins covered with tin foil before serving with the juices poured over
• This chicken is lovely with rice or cous cous – grate some lemon zest over before serving and maybe add a handful of toasted slivered almonds or pine nuts

My Mum and Dad were visiting New York, and we took a side trip out of the city to see what we could see and have lunch. What I saw was a four leaf clover, right in the middle of a grass verge by the sidewalk.

I don’t know how I spotted it. My family will tell you that, to me, Where’s Waldo is one of life’s great mysteries. But spot it I did. I stopped. Bent down. And picked it.

“That’s very lucky,” said Mum, who admitted that up to this point she hadn’t really believed they existed. “What are you going to spend the luck on?”

The idea of luck as currency appealed to me. What should I spend my luck on? It would take some thinking about.

“Lottery ticket,” said Jon when I showed him the now limp leaves over a delicious dinner at Clearwater that night. “Pick a nice big jackpot, kiss the lucky clover and win big.”

“I’ll think about it,” I said, carefully slotting the clover into the back of my notebook for safekeeping, as though it were the world’s most useful and magical gift certificate.

On the way home a black cat walked in front of my path.

Let me reiterate: I was on a path. A back cat walked in front of me. In a city of apartment dwelling felines, this is a singularly unusual event.

“Lucky!” said Mum.

“It’s adding up,” said Dad.

“That’s it. We’re totally having a bet on the Derby,” said Jon.

We walked back to the flat to drink coffee and look at photos. People that I love I the city that I love. And I felt extremely lucky, clover, cat or no.

Frozen Mint Julep (per glass)

I love this description of how to make a traditional mint julep, and if you consider yourself a purist, I recommend that you heed the writer’s advice. But this version is the version that I actually prefer to drink. Extra frosty, extra minty, with no annoying mint bits in the teeth – and it’s easy to make a pitcher using the same basic proportions.

¾ cup crushed ice

• Spoon the crushed ice into your julep cup and add the whiskey, water and mint syrup
• Stir to combine and garnish with a fresh sprig of mint

For the mint sugar syrup

• Stir the sugar water and mint together in a pan over a medium heat until the sugar has dissolved
• Cool off the heat for 30 mins to allow the mint to really infuse into the syrup
• Strain the mint out using a fine sieve and keep the syrup in the fridge until needed – lasts a month, covered and chilled

If You Can Make That You Can Make This

• Use the syrup in lemonade to give it some zing
• Or make frozen mojitos by blending 1 measure of white rum, 1 measure of lime juice, 1 measure of mint syrup and a cup of ice together. Top up with a little soda water

A friend of mine had been to Space Camp as a child and had described the experience as “absolutely no question the best week of my life, made up of the best days of my life!”

“Apart from our wedding day?” prompted her husband.

She gave him a withering look. “Honey, it’s clear you have never been to Space camp.” So when my cousin Alex was invited to go to Florida and learn about rockets with his friend Oliver, I was beyond excited for him, and promised to meet him on his return to NY, and make sure he caught the plane back to the UK.

Back from Space with the pictures to prove it, Alex and Oliver were full of the experience. They had built and launched rockets, rode in simulators, spun upside down in an anti gravity globe, led a space mission, and won a team prize. In their down time, they’d fished, watched a baseball game and driven go-karts. What New York could possibly offer two ten year olds that wouldn’t be a tremendous let down after that?

Oliver’s mum Amy had the right idea. Apple products and Lego. The morning was a huge success, but what to do after lunch? My friend Jess had the answer; “Come to my office and I’ll show you round.”

Normally when people make you an offer like that, it’s best to say no as politely as you can, but Jess works in the Empire State Building, so we were there – well, I was there, and the boys were there, and Amy took the opportunity to be child free and drink coffee. Smart lady.

Jess bussed us past the queues and ferried us up to the viewing deck to see New York spread out before us like a giant Monopoly board.

The boys collected quarters and hit the binoculars, while Jess and I caught each other up on our lives. Love, loss, jobs, irritants, ball games, decorating tips – the minutiae of living, against a background that could best be described as epic. Which pretty much sums up how I feel about New York in general really.

“It’s almost like seeing the city from Space,” I said out loud, not knowing any better. “Almost,” agreed Alex as politely as he could. “If the Empire State Building was like a hundred times taller.”

Buttermilk Blueberry Pancakes (makes about 10 pancakes)

We took the boys to a proper American diner, where they had the opportunity to quiz Uncle Jonathan (physicist) who had not finished his first cup of coffee of the morning yet, about all things black hole and cosmic ray related. “How many galaxies are there that you would say are nearby?” The more pancakes he ate, the more he enjoyed this conversation.

My buttermilk pancake is a variant of a Martha Stewart’s classic, and the method is pretty much the same, only I cook my pancakes in oil rather than butter, which I always seem to burn before the  pancakes are done.

2 tsp baking powder

• Mix all the dry ingredients together
• Melt the butter and add to the buttermilk and eggs. Whisk to combine
• Add the wet ingredients to the dry and mix – the batter can be a bit lumpy, indeed, it should be a bit lumpy
• Heat the griddle (or frying pan) until a drop of water fizzes and bounces off
• Brush with vegetable oil, then spoon out the batter leaving a generous gap between each pancake
• When the top of the pancake starts to bubble like lava, flip it over (about 2 mins) and cook the other side for (1 min)
• Keep warm in the oven until you want to serve

 If You Can Make That You Can Make This

• Make chocolate pancakes – replace 1 tbsp of flour with 1 tbsp of coco powder, and replace the blueberries with chocolate chips
• Or try making lemon pancakes – add the zest of half a lemon and a tsp of lemon juice to the plain batter – with or without the berries
• Or orange pancakes – add 1 tbsp of orange zest and 1 tsp of orange to the batter
• Add a handful of raspberries into the batter instead of the blueberries
• Make this peach compote to pour over the pancakes
• Or try pumpkin spice scented pancakes with maple apple compote
• Or try these crepes (banana foster style)
• If you can make crepes you can make spectacular crepe suzette

Tables in New York restaurants are often crammed close together, so even though you might be having a romantic evening with your husband you can still listen with ease into the conversations to your right and left as though you were all on one big date.

Now I’m not saying that Jon and I have run out of things to talk about, on the contrary, but after 12 years of dinner together, it’s nice to let other people do the heavy lifting now and again so we can sit back, get on with eating, and be entertained.

One such example of dinner theatre took place last Friday night, with a couple who, we quickly established, were in the early stages of dating.

“Tell me about you. I want to know all about you.”

“OK,” agreed the guy, “here’s a thing you probably don’t know about me, I have a tattoo.”

“Oh, me too,” said the girl. “It’s a seahorse on my shoulder.”

“Cool,” said the guy. “Actually, mine’s not really a tattoo. Um, so basically, when I was in college I was like a major weed dealer. Major, you know. And I was selling to these Asian gang dudes, a lot of money. I mean a lot. But it took a while for them to trust me. Example? One time, I went over there and one guy pulled a switchblade on me. He was pissed because I’d forgotten to take my shoes off, and that’s like, a crime punishable by death in their religion. Anyway, they got over it.

“So I was graduating and leaving for New York, and they were sad to see me go, so they said, hey, we should initiate him into the gang. They gave me a cigar and we were all smoking them, and part of the initiation was that they would all burn me in the arm with their cigars. Well, I was drunk so I thought, what the hell. So it’s not so much of a tattoo as a burn scar. I’ll show you later if you like.”

The girl chewed her salad thoughtfully for a moment.

“You know, I’d like that,” she said, smiling suggestively and holding his hand in the candlelight.

Lamb Salad with Herb Pesto

Handful of parsley

• Preheat the oven to 400f
• Season the lamb fillets and place on the roasting tray. Toss the tomatoes with olive oil and salt and pepper, add to the roasting tray and cook everything for 10 – 15 minutes (depending on the thickness of the lamb, maybe even 20 mins), until the meat is pink. Rest under tented foil for 5 mins
• Meanwhile make the pesto by putting half the walnuts, the garlic, Parmesan, basil and parsley into a processor. Blend, adding olive oil down the tube until you have a thick paste, check the seasoning and adjust
• Slice the lamb and spoon over some pesto. Serve with the roasted tomatoes and some good bread or plain cous cous