pumpkinstrokemarrow

We then started to wonder why there were not more pies in shops. There are pork pies but not much else - apart, I suppose, from those flat tinned jobs that Fray Bentos used to turn out. And the baker at Cheam sells them along with his sausage rolls and cakes. Maybe cooked meat pies have been mostly zapped by the healthy people on the grounds that they need careful stock management if we are not to snuff it of food poisoning. Whereas pork pies are sealed up in a bug proof jelly and less prone to bug attack.

Today another crack at fore rib. While buying the pudding, I had happened to notice rather a good bit of rib. Bright red with plenty of fat, inside and out. 6.5 pounds done for 2.5 hours at 180C then rested for 0.25 hours, oven opened once. Served with swede, cabbage and rice. Very nice too, although it will probably turn out to be at least twice the price per portion as the pudding. But something more than half a pint of beef dripping as a makeweight.

While we are on the subject of good food, noticed another nasty case of bestitis in the Independent the other day, something I have been moved to moan about before. On this occasion some bright spark had thought fit to rank all the cooks in the world, that is, at least the ones with big enough egos to get onto the media radar, and give us an ordered list of the top ten. What a lot of nonsense. How can you possibly say one decent cook is better than another decent cook without any kind of qualification? One might say that this cook is not much good at steak and kidney puddings and that I like the steak and kidney puddings from Fred more than those from Mary, at least in the winter. But it is a big step from there to say that Fred is the best cook in the world. In the same vein, the BH has good hands for cakes, as her Mum did before her. While I have become the man for stews and soups, after a rather slow start.

It also seems to be the case that those who creep to the top of these sorts of heaps seem to go in for rather odd food. When did any of the creepers in the top ten last make a steak and kidney pudding? Or serve fresh, still slightly warm seed cake in their so elevated establishments?

Digressing from slightly warm, I am reminded that a lot of processed meat products - meat loaf, beef burgers, sausages - might start out life light and fluffy. Like the fine meat balls I had in Worthing the other day at http://www.istanbulworthing.co.uk/. But once you let them go cold and are into reheat mode, they are and stay very solid. As I learned in Sherbourne recently with a meal deal burger. Very large and very cheap, but also very solid. Same problem with bread pudding which is a far superior animal cooling than cold.

Returning to bestitis, I wonder whether this unpleasant disease will start to calm down if and when we manage to get shot of New Labour and their obsession with scores and ranks? Will the inbound lot be just as bad as far as that sort of thing is concerned?