It probably doesn’t speak well for my mental health, but often for no reason I can fathom, I wake up with a particular record deeply embedded in my mind and ears. Almost as though it had been played constantly by jazz elves while I slept, as some kind of weird music-hypnosis therapy. This happened quite early on Saturday morning, when I couldn’t get a Gerry Mulligan record called JERU out of my head even while half asleep. There was …

Last night, I had a craving for the flavour of a simple tomato sauce over pasta, something I haven’t had in a while. It’s not really a summery dish, but then again it hasn’t been all that summery a summer. I set out to make a straightforward Bolognese sauce, made a blunder and ended up with a cross between a Bolognese and a Puttanesca sauce. Much to my surprise and delight, it turned out to be one of the …