Lacking the great, roaring, open fires of my dreams to permanently keep me at an agreeable temperature, I have decided to resort to spicy food for inner warmth and to ward off the feeling of coldness that has begun to creep in lately.

Luckily Mark has an excellent book of Asian recipes and we have locally, an incredible oriental food store.

It is an added bonus that the walk through an industrial estate to SeeWoo is pleasing and short, featuring all the things you could hope for on a quick and purposeful trip.

Like this very tall, red brick house which appears most odd, rising up in the midst of the road, surrounded by hoarding and corrugated metal pre-fab warehouses.

The substantial brickwork around the house is very wintry, dotted as it is with rain and ivy.

Brambles break through generator boxes…and there is the inevitable and cryptic graffitti that grows like a weed around places that feel uninhabited like this place.

I have always been drawn to the strange qualities of the industrial centres that lay just out of town. They have a strange, uninhabited feeling and when I walk through them I always feel like I am in a Manga animation film.

Tomorrow there shall be epic, Malaysian fish curry joy and in the near future, something involving the great banana leaves I bought today. The immediate future looks spicy.

But for today, my keeping-warm lunchtimee recipe is Colcannon. I don’t know who taught me how to make this but it was something I learned during my time in Ireland and is a great way to eat a lot of kale without noticing.

Ingredients:

shredded kale (2 big handfuls)
potatoes (small ones with skins on still, for vitamin C) – 5/6 small potatoes
3 scallions (spring onions)
butter/marg
milk
pepper

You boil the potatoes with their skins on (most of the vitamins and roughage live just under the skin so it’s good to boil with this on if you want fibre, vitamins etc.) in very hot, salted water. When they are done, chuck in the shredded kale until it goes really dark green but not so long that it starts to yellow (about 3 – 4 minutes.) While kale is good and green and dark, drain everything through a strainer and return it to the saucepan, drained. Stir in butter or margarine, milk, spring onions and pepper and mash everything until it is a sort of white and green pulp. Serve immediately.