I am by all accounts a gentle man. I am not excited by new cars, loud noises or breaking things. I write children’s stories, I paint, sing and dance, and I get confused when people argue about women’s “rights” because I don’t understand the non-feminist side. I freely admit that I got moist-eyed at Toy Story 3.

But despite all this I am unshakeably a man.

And so, when I find myself home alone during a football world cup and happen to invite my favourite ninja over for some moderate sneering at the television (Spain-Portugal, if memory serves) my manly side breaks out.

Here’s what I cooked.

The pot:

Nearly a pint of boiling water,

1 cube beef stock,

A liberal splash of red wine (Shiraz, I think).

A sprinkle of white pepper, another of chilli pepper.

A green pepper sliced into smallish bits, dumped in.

Left to simmer and reduce for 20mins or thereabouts.

A decent amount of sweet chili peppers – maybe a handful / 75g? – sliced and dumped in.

When this had reduced for a while I turned off the gas and added a can of plum tomatoes.

This mixture then stood and waited for the frying pan.

The frying pan:

250g of smoked back bacon,

6 weird half-smoked polish sausages, brought by Nick,

Five slices each of Chorizo and Pepperoni (when the frying pan was quite literally *full* of meat – I explained that these things were being added for comedy value)

4 cloves of garlic

A couple of minutes of frying happiness

4 tbsp cream cheese stirred in

A bit of stirring love

Turn heat down to minimum

Add contents of pot.

Add one more tin of tomatoes.

This then simmered for another 10 minutes to get rid of some of the liquid while I boiled conchiglie-pasta (the shells are good – they fill up with sauce). When that had about a minute left I drained it and put it in the frying pan, so it boiled in the sauce for the last minute.

I’m not entirely sure what this says about the core of my masculinity – but I’m guessing somewhere in the lower branches of the family tree there was a big lad who went into fields, smacked oxen on the head and ate them as they fell.