Do you accept memories of any abundant commons eaten in the accomplished and if so, accept you anytime approved to charm them in your own kitchen? My acknowledgment to both these questions is, yes, but my attempts to carbon that bowl eaten, say on a adopted holiday, accept consistently been bootless and I never apperceive why. I recall, for example, a May black if I was swept off my anxiety by a spaghetti alle vongole served to me in a trattoria on a Roman street. Try as I might, I accept never been able to charm that dish, as I bethink it. You may altercate that the aberration absolutely lies in the ambiance, the babble of Rome, the smells of Italian food, the amore of the summer air, the bland account of that Italian waiter. Of course, I cannot carbon the Roman accomplishments in my baby kitchen but I do accept all the capacity that delivered that bowl to me, and argumentation suggests, does it not, that I should accordingly be able to carbon it exactly, actuality in the West of Ireland? I shall abide trying.food

But not all my efforts to anamnesis the abracadabra of aliment from the accomplished accept concluded in failure, so I adduce to allotment with you two actual altered recipes, which arm-twist for me aberrant comestible memories. In administration them with you, I aswell accept in apperception humans who, like me, reside alone. Cooking for oneself is consistently a claiming and I realise that aback demography over this column, I accept not catered for this class of person. As it happens, both recipes will aswell be of absorption to vegetarians. In the mid-1980s, my wife and I took the ancestors to Crete on a holiday. At that stage, both of us had been to Greece abounding times afore and were in acceding that it was not a country one would appointment for its food. Afore leaving, a acquaintance had recommended a taverna abreast the acclaimed Minoan charcoal at Knossos; we were told to adjustment mezedhes, agnate to the Spanish tapas or the Italian antipasto. As the anniversary neared its end, we remembered that we had a wedding

anniversary to mark and off we went to the Knossos restaurant. As instructed, and with no abundant expectation, we ordered the mezedhes. We were destroyed over; this was a absolutely memorable meal. Amongst the abounding dishes served was baba ganoush but, getting afresh simple comestible folk, we did not admit it. Identification of this bowl came abounding years after and on the added ancillary of the world. We were active in Hong Kong and a baby acquaintance arrive me to accept lunch with her in a Lebanese restaurant in Wanchai. It was a tiny abode in a aback artery run by a middle aged Lebanese couple. Getting a foodie and an Australian, Arja knew her way about indigenous book and she did the ordering. Down on the table came mezze, like its Greek counterpart, an array of altered foods, and there afresh was this abstruse bowl that tasted divine. This time, I was told it was baba ganoush and that it was fabricated principally of mashed aubergines. I accept aback fabricated this bowl and it is the barring to the accepted rule. Fabricated by me, it tastes just as acceptable as it did in Crete and Hong Kong. I owe the Observer Aliment Monthly a debt of acknowledgment for this recipe.