A Day in the Life, or how to make my piquant sauce To Die For

Sometimes I'm struck by the various skills and abilities I have, seemingly quite independent of my conscious mind. Today I found my fingers delicately picking up and feeling tomatoes at the shop, knowing by gentle feeling whether they were just right or not, and taking pleasure in knowing and feeling it, my mind elsewhere, as it often is, but my body working cleverly, with experience and enjoyment.

Continue the success story with cooking. Take an oven dish big enough to hold your fillet of salmon. Squeeze into it the juice of a lemon - or like today, a lemon and a half, why not. Add enough runny honey, and sea salt, and ground mixed chillipepper spice. Take the bottle of Gewürztdaminer Mezzacorona out of the fridge (no, it didn't really have enough time to cool while you drank the mouthful of cider leftover from two weeks ago and smoked a ciggie on the balcony, and began preparing the marinade, but that just can't be helped now), open it, pour a glassful and tip it into the oven dish and another for yourself. Taste it and find it nice. Acknowledge the fact that, indeed, it did not have quite enough time to go cold. Mix the marinade ingredients in the oven dish with a spoon or similar. Place your salmon fillet, face down, skin-side up, into the marinade. Put the bally lot back into the fridge.

Take and chop up finely a red onion and enough garlic. Saute gently in olive oil until soft and lovely. Add some flour (oh - you will have boiled the kettle for a pint of fish stock. Shop-bought will do) but go easy on it - you don't want a thick squidgy sauce, you want it just right. Allow the flour to cook just a little and remove from heat. Stir in the stock - little by little is good, so you achieve a homogenous consistency each time before adding more stock. This will ensure the sauce is not lumpy. (And oh again - you will have heated your oven up to 200° C whilst diddling with the onions cetra). Once all the stock is added, bring to boil. Your oven will most likely have just heated up now, ready like a reliable actor in the wings, on cue, so do now take the salmon in its oven dish out of the fridge and, holding on to the salmon so as not to lose it, pour the lovely stingy sweet-sour piquant marinade into the sauce. Smear the skin side of the salmon with oil (if you have a cheapo less nice one bought e.g. by your mother, it will be good enough this time - it's only to easy the job of the washer-upper afterwards, as the skin isn't really worth eating in this dish), tip him over (face up, skin-side down) and pop him in the oven.

Take a break. Go and speak with your mother on the phone about your cousin's wife and the fact you both suspect she's either mad or has post-puertum exhaustia and compulsive disorders, while painting your toenails and smoking (the balcony is good for this - the day is as hot as these latitudes will allow). Once finished with both the phonecall and the toenails, pour yourself some more wine (it's even nicer now it's properly chilled), put the new potatoes you mean to boil in the sink with some cold water, and a pot of water for them, to boil. Drink some wine. Start writing a blog post. Go back and wash the potatoes so they, in their turn, are ready and waiting like good reliable actors cetra when their cue comes. Go back to drink more wine. Don't forget to stir and taste your lovely sauce every now and then. It is gorgeous, if I say so myself. Continue with your blog post and the wine. Have another cigarette.

In your near future, you foresee having to super-rapidly throw together your favourite salad - spinach, tomato, feta cheese, lightly-roasted pine nuts, olive oil and balsamic vinegar (curse the fact you forgot to buy olives, again, and worry over whether to use a bit of avocado or save it all till tomorrow when it would be properly soft), as well as eating, putting on that designer-label summer dress you bought second hand for a mere 12€ and have washed and ironed, but not worn, and maybe some make up and hair fiddling although maybe not, and hurrying off to hear your friends play their music and allow their new films to be viewed. Be aware that after the official programme has finished, the sweltering evening will most likely degenerate into drinking more wine and being all cultural and artsy.

Have another cigarette, add fresh dill to the To Die For sauce (leaves and stalks - use scissors, it's more fun) and to your drained new potatoes. Realise your blog post lacks all the wee details you wanted it to have - how your cooker and kitchen are freshly cleaned yesterday, how you put kitchen paper atop your drained potatoes (and the lid on tight - they cook to perfection in their own steam).

Don't forget the feeling of the tomatoes, though, that was a lovely find.