This is the simplest and yet most ancient Sardinian meat recipe. It owes its name to the shepherds' habit of stewing stolen sheep in the same pot with a couple of pounds of beans (to conceal the meat) - and some pork lard (to disguise the aroma).

Ingredients - Serves 8

In early spring, lovage, which is a perennial herb, sends up its tender new shoots, cut these and make your first green salad of the year. You can add anchovies for more flavour if you prefer.

As marriage became increasingly voluntary and negotiable in late twentieth century Britain, cakes for weddings changed too. A form minutely evolved since the sixteenth century, and fixed since the Edwardian period of the early twentieth century, suddenly became but one of a series of possibilities. When in the early 1990s the laird of a Scottish Hebridean island had a cake in the shape of his domain,