Monday, October 20, 2008
Small blacks
First, the Microsoft Corporation invite me to allow them to take over the PC for ten minutes or so while they intall a flashy new version of their media player. After the ten minutes or so it announces that is has failed and invites me to do it again. No explanation of failure and I make little use of the media player, so I have declined the invitation for now.
Second, the baker at Cheam is having trouble with his currant buns. When I first used to buy them they were light and fluffy with plenty of currents. Latterly, they have become less reliable. They have not been light and fluffy and the currents seems to have been replaced, in part, by rather generous dollops of liquid sugar on the top. That said, on Saturday, they were OK.
More important, I wonder whether I have reached the apogee of the fad for Sussex Pie. On Friday, visited the Cheam butcher to buy half a lump of stewing steak. That is to say, the butcher gets the stuff in as a shrink wrapped 10kg lumps of which I had half a lump. Boned leg of cow, I had thought; but judging by the Wikipedia diagram of a cow in their entry for corned beef, perhaps shoulder. Now, the usual drill is the wrap the thing up in foil in such a way as the juices can collect in rather than leak out of the bottom, put it in a covered pyrex dish and cook at 120C for a long time, accompanied by onion, port and mushroom ketchup. In the present case, wrapping the thing up was a bit of a challenge and I had no idea how long to cook it for. In the end, brain clicked into gear, and rather than wrapping it in foil just put it in the giant saucepan (which I bought a year or more ago as a retirement present for myself), add onions and so on, then cover the whole with foil, jamming the lid gently down on top of the foil. Put in oven at 0200 hours and eat it at 1400 later the same day. Oddly, I woke up at 0150 before the alarm went off; clearly the brain managed to retain the importance of the occasion despite being in sleep mode. Oddly also, a lot more gravy collected in the saucepan than I was expecting. Maybe two pints of the stuff. Perhaps the new arrangements for wrapping resulted in less leakage of steam rather than more. We did about two thirds of it at the first sitting, accompanied by boiled potatoes (some funny brand, all the rage presently in Mr S, small thin things, maybe two inches by three quarters of an inch), swede and crinkly cabbage. Plus mixed wine from Aldi (or perhaps Liddl. Can't tell them apart). All very good, although I think that when I next do a peice this size, maybe strain and stand it for half an hour before serving. Maybe 11 hours rather than 12.
Today we have it cold for lunch. So, remove from fridge about an hour before the off to let the thing thaw out a bit. I do not care for cold cold meat. Like red wine, should be at room temperature. BH prepares mashed potato, crinkly cabbage, braised celery and gravy. The gravy made by taking some the fat from the original gravy, rouxing it with some corn flour, then topping up with more original gravy. All very good again. The texture of the beef reminding me somewhat of that of (tinned) corned beef. And Wikipedia reminding me that the corn part of corn beef is nothing to do with corn, rather a sort of salt. And I went through my childhood thinking that the corn was corn, possibly part of the white stuff you get in corned beef. But Wikipedia is certainly right in so far as the colour of corned beef is very much the colour of salt beef. Which last I have not been happy about since the demise of the splendid cafe that used to live in Upper Windmill Street.
Earlier in the day I had notice of how it is not always sic transit gloria mundi. I read in the TLS of volume 5 of the collected letters of one Katherine Mansfield, weighing it at 376 pages or 60 pounds. This is the last volume and it seems that it has taken more years to publish the whole lot than it took to write them in the first place. I suspect that they are a lot more bulky than her published oeuvre - which I imagine, is, in any case, long out of print. Now, in the 'Oxford Companion to English Literature', the lady rates exactly five lines, which is about as small as entries there get. So her importance in the academic world is growing, while that in the reading world is shrinking. Strange how academics in literature departments (or perhaps media studies departments?) can devote such enormous amounts of time and energy to minor, if interesting, writers. I read a fair bit, and I do not recall reading anything of hers, or even owning anything. Perhaps the interest is that she was probably part of the Bloomsbury set. Knew Ottoline and all that sort of thing. Tricky love life. But more tricky, before she died young of TB, she left clear instructions that her correspondance should be destroyed. Is there really a public interest case to disregard those instructions? Clearly need some newky brown before I can opine further on the matter.
Second, the baker at Cheam is having trouble with his currant buns. When I first used to buy them they were light and fluffy with plenty of currents. Latterly, they have become less reliable. They have not been light and fluffy and the currents seems to have been replaced, in part, by rather generous dollops of liquid sugar on the top. That said, on Saturday, they were OK.
More important, I wonder whether I have reached the apogee of the fad for Sussex Pie. On Friday, visited the Cheam butcher to buy half a lump of stewing steak. That is to say, the butcher gets the stuff in as a shrink wrapped 10kg lumps of which I had half a lump. Boned leg of cow, I had thought; but judging by the Wikipedia diagram of a cow in their entry for corned beef, perhaps shoulder. Now, the usual drill is the wrap the thing up in foil in such a way as the juices can collect in rather than leak out of the bottom, put it in a covered pyrex dish and cook at 120C for a long time, accompanied by onion, port and mushroom ketchup. In the present case, wrapping the thing up was a bit of a challenge and I had no idea how long to cook it for. In the end, brain clicked into gear, and rather than wrapping it in foil just put it in the giant saucepan (which I bought a year or more ago as a retirement present for myself), add onions and so on, then cover the whole with foil, jamming the lid gently down on top of the foil. Put in oven at 0200 hours and eat it at 1400 later the same day. Oddly, I woke up at 0150 before the alarm went off; clearly the brain managed to retain the importance of the occasion despite being in sleep mode. Oddly also, a lot more gravy collected in the saucepan than I was expecting. Maybe two pints of the stuff. Perhaps the new arrangements for wrapping resulted in less leakage of steam rather than more. We did about two thirds of it at the first sitting, accompanied by boiled potatoes (some funny brand, all the rage presently in Mr S, small thin things, maybe two inches by three quarters of an inch), swede and crinkly cabbage. Plus mixed wine from Aldi (or perhaps Liddl. Can't tell them apart). All very good, although I think that when I next do a peice this size, maybe strain and stand it for half an hour before serving. Maybe 11 hours rather than 12.
Today we have it cold for lunch. So, remove from fridge about an hour before the off to let the thing thaw out a bit. I do not care for cold cold meat. Like red wine, should be at room temperature. BH prepares mashed potato, crinkly cabbage, braised celery and gravy. The gravy made by taking some the fat from the original gravy, rouxing it with some corn flour, then topping up with more original gravy. All very good again. The texture of the beef reminding me somewhat of that of (tinned) corned beef. And Wikipedia reminding me that the corn part of corn beef is nothing to do with corn, rather a sort of salt. And I went through my childhood thinking that the corn was corn, possibly part of the white stuff you get in corned beef. But Wikipedia is certainly right in so far as the colour of corned beef is very much the colour of salt beef. Which last I have not been happy about since the demise of the splendid cafe that used to live in Upper Windmill Street.
Earlier in the day I had notice of how it is not always sic transit gloria mundi. I read in the TLS of volume 5 of the collected letters of one Katherine Mansfield, weighing it at 376 pages or 60 pounds. This is the last volume and it seems that it has taken more years to publish the whole lot than it took to write them in the first place. I suspect that they are a lot more bulky than her published oeuvre - which I imagine, is, in any case, long out of print. Now, in the 'Oxford Companion to English Literature', the lady rates exactly five lines, which is about as small as entries there get. So her importance in the academic world is growing, while that in the reading world is shrinking. Strange how academics in literature departments (or perhaps media studies departments?) can devote such enormous amounts of time and energy to minor, if interesting, writers. I read a fair bit, and I do not recall reading anything of hers, or even owning anything. Perhaps the interest is that she was probably part of the Bloomsbury set. Knew Ottoline and all that sort of thing. Tricky love life. But more tricky, before she died young of TB, she left clear instructions that her correspondance should be destroyed. Is there really a public interest case to disregard those instructions? Clearly need some newky brown before I can opine further on the matter.
# posted by Jim @ 5:52 AM 
