It’s officially autumn, but you still get extra hours of daylight up til 8pm which gives you the illusion that 5pm has stretched itself to three hours. So we went to the gym a bit late and getting home, I realised that I had half a chicken steeping in a marinade that would take at least 45 minutes to cook. But it was all I had - or a can of corned beef that I had been saving.

It was supposed to be chicken nasal - the marinade I made, plucked randomly from the internet called for vinegar, lemon grass (I used a powder), lemon, real-sugar sprite, brown sugar, patis, salt and pepper. Then there was a basting of atsuete powder and melted butter.

My only memory of chicken inasal was of course Mang Inasal, and my version - dumped into the air fryer for faster cooking - tasted nothing remotely of that memory. Maybe it should have been grilled over charcoal; maybe it needed real tanglad (lemon grass). Maybe it needed more acidity.

But I didn’t really care. The chicken was tender, the skin crisp and caramelised and the butter-annatto sauce dosed up with chicken salt was perfect with rice.