Cooking is an activity that connects us with our most ancient’s ancestors. In an age of digital technology, it’s a calming way of keeping in touch with the natural world. It focuses our attention on what matters most: feeding ourselves. We forget about the importance of food, because its everywhere. Yet, put three people in a room with no food for a few days and you would soon find out how little we have evolved over the last 10,000 years.

Whether it’s baking bread, poaching a piece of fish, or cooking a piece of pork shoulder outside on an open grill, cooking grounds us, feeding both out body and our mind. Cooking is always a social act, one that brings us closer together. Even if you cook alone, peeling potatoes and simmer in hot water until tender, you engage in thousands of years of the ways in which people used water and heat to make food more palatable. It is always the simplest of acts of cooking that contain the greatest complexity. I recently cooked in a wonderful handmade oven in the Ballybane Community Garden. They had built the oven out of clay and straw. I was amazed at how hot the oven could get.

I recently acquired an outdoor wood burning oven (www.woodfireoven.ie). After lighting a small fire and getting the heat up, I discovered the difficulties of cooking with an open flame. Much more focus and attention had to be paid to the proximity of the meat to the fire. After a few more experiments with the smaller things, I decided I was ready for something bigger.

I seasoned a piece of boned and rolled pork shoulder (just ask your butcher) with sea salt and black pepper and tucked it into a corner of the wood-fired oven. Then I waited, turning the shoulder every 25 minutes, basting it in some olive oil and rosemary, all the while keeping an eye on my smouldering embers. After 4 hours, the shoulder was absolutely tender, wood smoked and beautifully charred. It was a simple act, a little feast, for my family and friends.