HOW'Z IT HANGIN'

Sometimes, when I really can't get out of it, I have to come here. It's as grim inside as it is out. Though not if you're into fabric. Because if fabric floats your boat then this is El Dorado. Afterwards I headed off to somewhere with an equally grim exterior but a far more inviting stock. 

I've been trying to play Credit Crunch recently. A game of scrimping and saving. Hopefully we'll be too absorbed playing it to notice that our houses are now as worthless as our currency and our jobs are about as secure as, err, well our jobs.

My first purchase is well within the rules.

What I used to call winkles but the fishmonger here calls whelks. £4.99 kg. I'll be boiling these in very salty water for 5 minutes and eating them with a pin..... no shortage of them today.

The next purchase disqualifies me immediately. It's a rubbish game anyway.

But who could resist a wild sea bass for £13.49 kg? The fishmonger scaled and gutted it. My plan is to bake it with a few slices of ginger, a little mirin, grassy olive oil and some fresh herbs. A few years ago I planted up some old sinks with various herbs and then forgot all about them. Amazingly they're still there, so perhaps a few more points back on the Credit Crunch board. Fennel, chives and.....

Lemon sorrel. This stuff really tastes good. Can't decide whether to put it in with the fish to bake or chop it up with butter to serve? Probably not the sort of dilemma you're suppose to have in a global recession. The wine....

another present from Niven and Sabeen who just came back from Paris. They're not very good at Credit Crunch either.