home again home again

May isn't the best time to go away on a jolly. In my absence everything in the garden has shot up and burst forth - the roses and lupins and hostas, the wild strawberries and cherries and vines and herbs - but also the weeds, so I've spent the last few days hoeing and strimming to get the garden looking respectable again. (BB had a sick note from his - eh - vet, due to his gored hand so wasn't able to carry out gardening duties. It was the vet who stapled his hand back together after the 'running with the bulls' incident and subsequently removed the staples at the veterinary clinic down at the market last week!)

Our cherry tree, which only had tiny hard green fruit when I left, is now groaning under the weight of plump black berries which need to be harvested quickly before the birds get to them. I picked about 10 lbs today and BB suggested that I make a Black Forest Gâteau to follow that old standard fall-back fare available in all British restaurants circa 1970 - prawn cocktail and steak and chips. Unfortunately I didn't have all the ingredients to make the BFG today but I made the prawn cocktail and steak with home-made oven chips.

Classic prawn cocktail

Ingredients

Serves 2

12 large prawns in their shells

1 Cos lettuce

paprika

lemon wedges

For the sauce

1 tbsp mayonnaise

1 tbsp tomato ketchup

few dashes Worcestershire sauce

few dashes Tabasco sauce

juice of half a lemon

♫ Cook along to: Aphrodite's Child The Four Horsemen (To HC in Glasgow - who's the singer? There's a clue in the recipe.)

1. Make the cocktail sauce by mixing all the sauce ingredients together.

2. Shred the lettuce and place in a glass with the peeled prawns, top with some sauce and sprinkle with paprika. Serve with lemon wedges.