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December 2006 |
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| December has been a bit all over the shop, starting with a week of night shifts, now mercifully infrequent compared to previous jobs. We then went to the Alpujarras, near the Sierra Nevada mountains for a week.6days after returning we went down to London for Xmas en famille. Then 10 days work on the trot, followed by the New year gathering in Deeside. Exhausting. | ||
| George's butcher finally supplied him with the beef rump slabs that he had requested for me. He has now changed butcher, who seems better, the mince is not ground fine now, which always seemed a shame. Arriving on a Saturday night in Spain, I was concerned for lack of provisions, so, I wrapped a 1kg slab in my down jacket for cooking the next day. Well, it did have bbq facilities, so this had to be done. It was cool enough to warrant the lighting of a fire and so we actually bbq'd inside on the fire. Two bricks seemed to have been positioned for the job of resting the rack, and so Georges beef was cooked in it's furthest adventure from Aberdeen. | ||
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As well as pomegranates, pictured above, the track winding down to the villas was lined with quince trees whose harvest appeared ignored. The bletched quinces hit you with a olfactory onslaught. However criminal the act of leaving the quinces was, they had possibly developed the most flavour I have ever experienced in a quince. Luckily Lewis and Penny are quincophiles, and helped with the haul which was transformed into jam, membrillo, baked, in syrup, and cooked over the fire in a clay dish with pork chops, as shown. There are quite a few recipes for quince with meat and I had given up after a lamb and quince suet pudding, in which the they just disintigrated. This effort was very good. | |
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I have been wanting to do a bollito misto affair for
a while, but was inspired to give it a British twist. Franco Taruschio
mentioned wrapping a stuffed capon in muslin and poaching it in the
liquor. I feel am idea coming on. I had lined up the cockerel Andy at work gave me but pheasant seemed a fine alternative. Keeping it Scottish, a Cock-a-leekie inspired dish transpired, stuffing a boned pheasant with beef mince and cooked leeks and prunes. The golden liquor I served with parsley dumpling, gently simmered but still very friable! The meat I served with mash and cabbage, and some Cumberland sauce from a jar, though it was from Harrods so was pretty good. |
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