Alentejo Pork and Clams

Whilst I was in London last week I met Giovanna for some lunch at the Eyre Brothers restaurant in Shoreditch. It is a favourite London haunt because the food is good, the bar is good and David Eyre is a good friend. He and his then girlfriend, now fiancé, came out to Carcassonne last year for a weekend break and he ended up cooking for me the day after I had cooked for him - one of those daunting 'oh my God, a chef is coming to stay' experiences.

If you don't know who David Eyre is then you should. He is responsible for the whole gastropub revolution following the success of the Eagle on Farringdon Road in the 1990's.

Anyway, we had ordered some bar tapas last week which were fabulous as ever and then a couple of additional dishes arrived courtesy of the chef, which was nice of him. One of them was Alentejo Pork and Clams, which was absolutely delicious and I told David so - next minute he was sat at the bar with pencil and paper writing out the recipe for me to take away - how good is that?, a handwritten recipe from the master. I know I am being greedy but I wish he had written down the other six recipes he described to me, including a beetroot soup that sounded fabulous. By this time we were conducting a wine tasting too - hence my inability to remember all the details!

When I got back to Carcassonne last Thursday the dish was still very much on my mind and so I set out to find the ingredients and put it to the test.

The beauty of recipes being handed on from person to person is that they evolve and develop. I have David's Eagle cookbook and the Alentejo recipe is in it and it's quite different from the one he wrote out for me - and the one I cooked this weekend was different again because I didn't have exactly the ingredients, although all the key elements were there.

I was determined to try it and imagined that I would be cooking it for myself, so I was delighted to find that Denis is over from Dublin and that he had a free evening - it is so much better to cook for other people.

The result? - Denis gave it a good thumbs up and ate the lot, although being Irish he seemed more intent on polishing off the boiled potatoes. In my usual understated and modest way I thought it was brilliant and I can't wait to cook it again, for Debrah next time and maybe the crew coming down to Carcassonne for my birthday in a couple of weeks time.