The recipe came from Rick Stein’s Food Heroes, currently resident Chez Rosam courtesy of Worthing Library.

The flavours just didn’t work. It may well have been because our chorizo from the market and Waitrose butter beans weren’t up to the standards of those from Rick’s food heroes, but there’s a nagging reminder in the back of my brain that, when I need a fish recipe, I usually skip over my Rick Steins in favour of Leith’s Fish Bible.

Maybe I don’t get on with Rick Stein.

The bread – Parmesan and Sun-dried Tomato – fresh from our bread machine was great, though. I’d add some more sun-dried next time.

How do they do it in restaurants? Or is it a variety thing like the strawberries we get these days in the shops that never give up their hulls cleanly?

I remember the days…

Any suggestions, oh knowledgeable reader?

They, and their ilk are the home of overpriced Lifestyle (with a capital ‘L’) branded food – one showing a very Body Shop-like corporate image, staffed mostly by evangelistically fired-up young women just like Body Shop, and the other, a chef-as-brand emporium par excellence.

I must admit, I do buy the odd thing in O&V, when I can’t source it anywhere else in Worthing, but Carluccio’s prices are so hyper-inflated that I wonder about the people who buy their food there.

There’s something so 1990s about those who live as consumers, so unsure of themselves as individuals they have to drive certain German cars and wear logos loudly about their person; shoppers who have to have the validation of a brand before they will take the step into something unfamiliar.

I hope that Lifestyle food opens up the market in new ways, to people who wouldn’t usually buy this kind of stuff. I hope that food nutters like me continue to frequent the specialist shops we’ve spent years seeking out, and they will thrive. I just dread that our beloved shops will see what the likes of O&V and Carluccio’s are getting away with and hike their packaging and prices accordingly.

As my friend Loli once remarked, my consumption of diet cola is so out of kilter with my advocacy of things Organic, and active avoidance of too many processed things in my diet (’too many’ – what a wonderful fudge!). I have no real excuse. I’ll have to accept the brickbats.

But what brought on this post on? Well, on Friday night, after some noodles from the local take-away my wife suffered severe abdominal pains. We immediately blamed it on some dodgy seafood, and as the pain got worse, we went off to the A&E Department at the local hospital.

To cut a long story short, as several hours’ wait elapsed, Sam got better. But, even at the end of Monday, she still felt a little queasy – no pain, just unsettled, verging on the nauseous.

Then, after a glass of diet cola, the pain returned. Thankfully, not so badly this time. The truth suddenly hit us – it wasn’t the takeaway, it was the glass of diet fizzy stuff afterwards that had caused the pain.

Now, I’m owning up to mild indigestion feelings and the odd passing feeling of sickness sometimes following imbibing the fizzy brown beverage. Not scientific, I know, but reacquainting myself with the joys of Aspartame on Wikipedia is causing some real reassessment, not only of diet colas, but fruit squashes and desserts.

This week, the promise has been gnawing away at the back of my mind, so I guess I’ll have to knuckle down and try to develop my thinking without being nominated for Pseuds’ Corner.

I guess the manifesto is already starting to evolve naturally, if you care to read the posts here. I like big tastes; a lot of what I cook is Mediterranean-influenced. And because my cooking increasingly tends to simplicity – there’s a longer Influences piece here, I’m sure – I’m getting more and more interested in ingrdients.

That naturally leads to a passion for Organic and other better quality starting points, and more time buying from butchers rather than supermarkets, say. We get a weekly Organic vegetable box from the highly recommended Abel & Cole, who unfortunately clock up a few more food miles than is ideal from South London, but we’ve bought from them for years, and intend to stick with them.

I also like buying from the local specialist shops – the Italian shop and the Asian supermarket, up by Worthing Station are favourite haunts. They give better value than the supermarkets, tell you about what you’re buying and, best of all, have that authenticity that seems to matter more and more to me. As an aside, little so-called fusion food really works for me, unless the ingredients go together so naturally you’re unaware of the coming together of different cultures.

My kitchen isn’t a restaurant kitchen, so I’ve given up trying to emulate the kind of cuisine that needs the resources of a commercial kitchen to do well. My book of recipes from Le Manoir remains unused – even Raymond Blanc’s easier Cooking for Friends is too much like hard work. Or is it unwanted or inappropriate work?

I cook for fun and relaxation – and just occasionally to show off.

I’d been told that Food in central Worthing is owned by the same people as the excellent Fish Factory, so was keen to give it a try. As it happens, having been to Food, I’m not so sure if it is.

The Fish Factory does very little apart from fish, and does it very well; from yesterday’s experience, Food takes a very mainstream modern menu and does it not very well. Not that we had very much to complain about, but the food was just so-so, in a restaurant that had all the ambience of a tyre bay just after going-home time.

When you order main courses of calves’ liver and duck breast salad, you have so many previous experiences of the same dishes to compare them to, and there were bound to be have been some better ones. So Sam’s rather overcooked liver and my slightly tasteless duck breast with a one-dimensional dressing and badly chosen salad were bound to struggle against our expectations and others’ high standards.

This kind of food isn’t difficult and must be really good if we’re going to return. It wasn’t, and I doubt if we will.

And then sometimes the damned garnishes just creep up on you unannounced and sit there like a bacon sandwich at a Jewish wedding. Ah, actually this is a story of a bacon sandwich and a garnish, would you believe?

Stopping at the otherwise fine Sea Lanes Café by the beach at Goring-on-Sea for a late breakfast, my wife and I had a couple of rather good bacon sandwiches. Nicely crisp bacon on fresh white bread, and not at all greasy.

But – and it’s a big but – not only was there a garnish (a garnish with a bacon sandwich!), but it was a particularly bizarre one. It consisted of the usual timid piece of lettuce and lonely slice of tomato, but sitting on top of the salad ensemble was a slice of orange, slit radially and with the free edges pointing in opposite directions. The piece of fruit sat up proudly as a major feature of the gastronomic presentation.

What are these guys on??

Dedicated to upholding heritage, and beating the drum for Fairtrade tea and coffee, you’d expect some well-above average beverages. The reality is, however, so disappointing.

For a start, they insist on using tea bags, a sure way to kill any of the subtle flavour. I use leaf tea at home – why can’t the National Trust do the same?

Today, we had three teabags stuffed into a small pot with barely enough capacity for two average-sized tea cups, resulting in a kind of deep brown tannin-containing gloop. Disgusting!

And this week and last, neither tea room supplied a jug of hot water to replenish the tea pot – or in this week’s case, thin the infusion down to make it something drinkable.

I wonder if the tradition the National Trust is upholding is of 1950s British Rail buffet?