Gennaro's stay-at-home pasta sauce, which we consumed with tagliatelle, was a joy, and I'm not normally an aficionado of cooked peppers. We'll be doing it a lot. Just google it. He's a sweetie. I had a fresh red chilli to use up, but it didn't give us enough of a chilli hit. I'll stick with dried chilli flakes in future, as I know where I am with those.

We had a lovely lump of brisket tonight, pot roasted in the oven for over four hours, with celery, carrots, onion and a bit of leftover bacon, and a bunch of fresh herbs all tied up (I had bay, parsley and thyme). I used some soaking water from dried porcini for stock and (confession time) a stock cube. I browned the beef in butter then used the same pan to sauté the veg and bacon for five minutes. The meat then went on top of the veg, seasoned, and in went the herby bundle and all the stock. I turned it a few times. I could just pull it to bits with a fork, no carving needed. We had it with mashed spuds and greens, though we did reflect that it would have worked equally well as a roast with all the trimmings. It was a definite success. I'm going to try to make a chilli con carne with the leftover bits of meats. I'll let you know...