I kept things simple, serving only two dishes. The first was a great heap of roasted wintry veg: potato, sweet potato, parsnip and butternut squash. I tossed them in olive oil with a wee shake of cumin seed, turmeric and a good grate of salt and roasted them in a hot oven till they looked ready- about 45 mins probably. These were all served in my newly acquired big Phil Revell bowl, with a portion of fairly plain herby dip (50:50 hellmans and decent greek yog, a good grate of salt and pepper and a smallish handful of any fresh herbs you fancy, in this case thyme, chives and parsley) on the side in one of my two smaller matching PR bowls. Phil Revell is a potter based in our home town and if you are ever in the South East of Scotland I would recommend you phone him up to see if his studio is open. He produces lovely hand-made crafts, fired to stoneware so dishwasherable etc, and in a gorgeous range of colours. The wedges were in fact inspired by the bowls in their own right, as I’d reckoned (rightly so as it turns out, although sadly i have no pictures) that the colours would look stunning together.

I also wanted something more substantial and filling, something that would sit nicely in the bottom of one’s stomach, and so went delving through the book of bean recipes that my brother bought me for my birthday. I chose a recipe of Chickpeas with tomato and red pepper, and modified it slightly by frying the onion and garlic base not only in olive oil but also in some of the left over oil from a finished jar of sun-dried tomatoes. This certainly smelled impressive at the frying stage and I hope added to the richness of the flavours.

Dougal did not let the side down on the puddings front. The party had been inspired, in part, by the fabulous smell made when he baked Sweet Baby James’ Spiced Plum Crumble a few weeks back. The flat smelled of mulled wine and we felt we had to share this with people! This time he reined in the volume of sugar and golden syrup in the recipe, and we used slightly riper plums. This time it wasn’t too sweet, but I felt the glossy spicey richness wasn’t quite so prominent. We didn’t get a picture, but it did look exactly like this illustration; fabulous rich red escaping up through a golden crumble. Excellent cold weather pudding, albeit rather more labour intensive than some crumbles!

Dougal also whipped up some little chocolate fairy cakes which he iced with chocolate icing. Then, with what we will pretend was excellent forward planning but was in fact more laziness and running out of time, we elected to let our guests ice them with the little tubes of writing icing you can get. This proved to be excellent fun and showed off the geekish creative side of our friends.