I like to think I’m straightforward about food. I’ve never been on a diet. I’m not picky. I like all the things other people seem to hate (liver). The only food I cannot stand is raw celery. But, of course, I live in the 21st century, too, and this does take its effect on a person’s habits. One day, you find yourself grazing on little else but crisps and toasted cheese, and feel perfectly content about it; the next, you spend hours trailing the streets in search of ingredients for some mad recipe you’ve never cooked before, and probably never will again once you’ve scratched the itch. It’s lunatic, but there it is.

Near where I live is an Italian restaurant called Trullo. I love this restaurant, but it is small, reasonably priced and deeply cherished by locals, and I can never get a table there, not even when I cry in front of the maitre D’. Frustrated again the other night, I suddenly thought: sod it, I’ll make their famous rabbit ragu myself – I own the cookbook, written by its chef, Tim Siadatan, and hitherto shamefully unused – and next time I walk by, I’ll have no need to press my beseeching nose all snottily against their window. The recipe seemed straightforward, though I couldn’t think that I’d ever been required to boil black peppercorns to soften them up before. I had almost everything I needed already – apart, that is, from a tub of mascarpone and some rabbit legs. Here, then, was Friday-night freedom.

The mascarpone was easily got. There are now tiny pockets of Britain where mascarpone is seemingly more easily come by than salted butter (grateful though I was on this occasion, I’m not entirely sure this is a good thing). The rabbit, though, proved to be more elusive. What is it with the British and bunnies? I blame Beatrix Potter. Rabbit is our most populous edible animal. It’s lean, relatively inexpensive, and its meat has less impact on the environment than beef. Above all, it’s not unlike chicken, which some people (most people) seem to eat virtually every day. Put that little blue jacket from your mind, and what’s not to like?

Anyway, I could find no supermarket rabbit, online or in real life. I could have used chicken thighs, but by now I was in the febrile grip of recipe mania. You know the symptoms: mild panic; utter certainty that nothing else will do; slight worries about time and one’s budget pushed firmly aside. It’s a bit like being a Brexiter, only your end game is a quiet supper at home rather than the destruction of the entire British economy. There was nothing for it: off I went, on the bus, to the nearest groovy new butcher. There, the dashing young man with a beard said that, no, he didn’t keep rabbit legs, but he would order some for me, and they would arrive the next day; he would ring me to confirm. I gave him my number, but I was sceptical: people always say they’ll ring, and they never do. Needing a back-up, then, I walked to another groovy new butcher, where the same thing happened. I placed an order; the butcher took my number, and promised she would call.

Friday dawned. The first butcher had indeed called, and off I went to collect my booty, determinedly ignoring the impending catastrophe of work deadlines. He and I talked – not at all in a flirtatious way on my part – about what I was planning to make, and then I stepped out into sunshine. My contentment, however, was brief. I thought with guilt of the second butcher, where another batch of rabbit legs might be waiting – and so, yes, you guessed it, off I went, praying all the while that something had gone wrong, and I would not be obliged to buy those as well. Naturally, though, my goods were waiting for me – what a golden day – and I duly coughed up; they would do for the freezer, and I’m nothing if not, in the matter of small shops, a polite and reliable customer (it’s the Yorkshire in me).

You’ll be wondering about the ragu, and yes, it was completely delicious, with its top notes of orange and bay, its rich sauce, its tender slow-cooked meat. But in a way, the dish itself was almost an irrelevance. It was the making of it that counted: an itch scratched until it practically bled, and today I’ll be eating only cheddar, peanuts and custard creams.