• Chicken breast
• Pea shoots
• Capers
• Tomatoes
• White bread
• Mayonnaise
• White wine vinegar

First make the “ketchup”: roughly chop 4 or 5 tomatoes and cook in olive oil until bubbling. Reduce heat and cover. Leave for around 20 minutes, stirring once or twice. When all pulped, season and add a little off the vinegar to sharpen (no need for sugar but you can add some at this point, if preferred). Force through a sieve to remove all the skin, remembering to scrape the bottom of the sieve to get all the yummy pulp. This can be done a day in advance, transferred to a ramekin, cling-filmed and fridged.

When ready to cook, first take the bread and cut out rounds; it’s not essential but does look nice! One round is needed per person: toast each one in a toaster until lightly browned on both sides. Flatten chicken breast a little and carefully cut into slices, cutting at a shallow diagonal through the broadest part of the flesh. One chicken breast will do for 2 or 3 people. Season on both sides, then fry both sides in a little olive oil – move infrequently to make sure the pieces brown and thus enhance their flavour. While the chicken is cooking, take the cooled toast and carefully, with a sharp knife, slice in half through the thin edge to give two rounds from each.

Meanwhile, mix small handfulls of peashoots with some creamy mayonnaise and capers – one clutch of shoots per person and 5-10 capers, as per taste.

Place the rounds of toast under a grill to finish the untoasted, newly revealed sides: keep and eye on this as they will turn extremely quickly. This side only wants to be very lightly toasted so that the toasts are not too crunchy. Each toast will be slightly curved after the grilling, so they can be used like shells to hold the contents.

To assemble: place one toast on a plate, top with one or two slices of chicken, then the shoots, then the final toast. Pour some of the ketchup to the side and serve. Can be eaten with fingers!

I understand this; as the cook in the house, it’s limiting – but I get it.

And then she heads off on a hen party, for the glorious Al, and with the excellence of Suzi and Roselle. I feel that I should warn the town, but there doesn’t appear to be a central contact for such. It leaves me, however, with all the options of food that I could want. And other ways to fritter time away. Crossword and pint;  great – also with additional value of SkyGo giving me the cricket in one ear and visual when fun happens. Maybe Moon, finally? It’s Eurovision as well, for all of the soft lark that brings – though really, that’s only fun with other peeps and I appear to have run out of anyone who gives a toss. And the first England friendly since Roy Hodgson took over.

Well, options, then.

Perversely, the thing that has knackered most of my waking days for seven of them now, is what I should “treat” myself to… a hotter curry? Liver? Steak and kidney pudding?

There were so many options: I like the sense of spice beyond reason. But I also like food across the whole gamut – from crisp sandwiches, through a pub’s lasagne and all the way to Michelin starred marvellousness. In the end, I went with hot dogs. Princes’, not some clever variation. A hot dog isn’t a hot dog unless it’s an inherently processed, slightly rubbish thing.

But that allows for a  little leeway. Firstly, with hot dogs, one must have fried onions (which are a bit burnt, regardless of the opinion on that phrase). Cheese, mustard, ketchup and such are all optional but if you don’t have fried onions, you are de facto, a nitwit. Fact.

Spice was the thing for me. So, herewith, is a way to make ketchup EVIL (this is for one lovely tin of 8 hot dogs):

• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 4 hot green chillies, or other sense of HOTness. You know best.
•  1 clove garlic
• fresh ginger, about a teaspoon, sliced and diced
• 1 cap fish sauce
• squeeze of lemon juice
• pinch salt
• pinch black pepper
• 3 level tablespoons of good ketchup; your choice.

Chop garlic and chillies and ginger; pan fry lightly in the oil, just until you sneeze, then add fish sauce, salt (be careful on this – fish sauce is salt, essentially) and pepper. Turn heat off and add lemon juice. Mix together in heat of the pan, give a minute and then tip into the ketchup. Leave for 2 hours minimum for all the heat and madness to spread and mungle.

Use in the usual way you might any sort of ketchup.

I went with larger bread because it was better bread – should have been finger rolls really. But it just meant it was two dogs per bun. No major loss!

Until this point in this post, it was all predictive, because I was “cooking” as blogging. I’ve now tried and eaten. One word and some accurate grammar: yum!!! Also, ran out of ketchup.

The thing is, this mustard had been open for a few weeks, so it’s potency surprised me. As a long-time fan of Coleman’s English mustard*, the one thing I dislike about it is how fast it loses its punch. Not so with this variety. But then it is Tracklements – and they pretty much make the best condiments about. If you like English mustard, this is the one – their perky piccalilli and horseradish are also marvels.

Another good brand, particularly if you’re a fan of the sausage sandwich game (which scandalously ignores mustard), is Stokes, who do a very fine brown sauce. Better than HP. Their ketchup remains untried; these things are for bacon, not sausages, but I tend to prefer a chilli pickle, just to be perverse.

Which brings me to one last condiment, one that I’ve lost, it seems, and miss: sambal oelek. Some years ago, Indonesian foodstuffs popped up in a Sainsburys; a variety of items all under the same brand (Conimex – Dutch, oddly enough, it may have been). Sambal manis, a sort of fried onion relish, was okay if a little sweet for my tastes but the sambal oelek was wondrous – salty, spicy bite. Simple, clean and ferocious – barely anything to it other than chilli and salt. I could eat it by the jar – and frequently did.

It still exists, of course, but other versions are, well other versions. They don’t, ahem, cut the mustard.  But the supermarkets, and even delis, seem to have stopped stocking this particular version. And frankly, the Conimex version is probably not it. It’s the illustrated version that I can find a picture of but nothing else. Humbug. Oh well, keep looking…

*English mustard for cheese or sausage sandwiches; Dijon or wholegrain for dressings. Obviously.

Well, meat sarnies are all well and good but it’s really CHEESE that counts. I had an epiphany many years ago: on the way to the pub, for some unaccountable reason, I abruptly realised that a cheese and tomato sandwich was going to be the finest sandwich ever. It was true – although I didn’t find this out until the following day, as there was drinking to be done.

The thing is, the notion of the sandwich came intuitively and fully formed; it’s quite specific in the requirements even though I had not eaten one previously but the it remains unchanged for me to this day. Ingredients:

• 2 slices of bread – white for preference. Good quality.
• cheddar cheese – a good processed one, not a proper flash one (leave that for the cheese board)
• tomato – crucial that it’s not a wet, tasteless supermarket one. Riverford’s are nice!
• margarine or butter as preferred
• salt
• black pepper
• white pepper
• mug of tea (critical: see below)

Slice cheese and tomato generously but not too fat. Place on marged bread. Pinch of salt. Good grating of fresh black pepper. Now the important parts: firstly, lots of white pepper. Black pepper is good for an aromatic flavour but white pepper has its own distinct flavour and a much harder spice bite that works really well. Secondly, a steaming hot mug of tea (not sugared). Slurp between bites – the tea brings life to the white pepper, leaving tingling sensations at the corners of the mouth. Absolutely joyous.

If you don’t have any tea, make a cheese and onion sandwich instead. The second best of all sandwiches.