Why is there no tonic? Why?
Having two essays due in, a small mountain of reading, a play, housing worries and not forgetting the minor concerns which flesh is heir to, this week much like a foie gras goose I have gorged on comfort food. This has meant an obscenely unhealthy number of Krispy Kreme donuts (bought to comfort the seller just as much as my flat, which is how it has been justified), several boxes of biscuits (I’m talking family at christmas around the open fire size) and most importantly, stews. Firstly there is nothing, I repeat nothing wrong with eating the weight of an American toddler in donuts as long as it’s fried dough or neat gin as your companion in a catatonic heap weeping in a corner. Moderation is fine, but a little excess is magnificent. I do not particularly like the taste of neat gin but it does go wonderfully in a pork casserole, which is a comfort in these darker days (melodrama much?)
Firstly, take some cubed pork shoulder and dust with seasoned flour. This will go under the worrying title of cubed pork or the like in a supermarket. The trick of a freezer bag and flour is a great boon *see earlier post for details). Fry these chunks in butter in a casserole or any heavy bottomed pan. You don’t want to cook the pork through merely brown it, so once it has taken on colour, a sort of middling golden brown similar to manila envelopes, take them out of the pan and reserve for later rehabilitation in the dish. Take some chopped onions, half-moons or just chunks are fine, and fry them in the same pan until they’ve lost the raw edge. Add some halved new potatoes and stir in, let them take on a little colour but nothing spectacular. Then, pour in a gill (that’s 142.065371 millilitres) of gin or any other spirit that comes to hand, yes even vodka. In a gas kitchen you would flame the alcohol off, with electric you’ll merely have to boil it off. I am not going to suggest setting the stuff ablaze with matches or such because I can see smoke clouds as it is. Return the pork back into society (the pan) and there should be enough inmates therein to make the said container as cramped as the black hole of Calcutta. If so pour stock enough in to hug the contents, if not either transfer the lot into a smaller vessel or add some more potatoes because they are dirt cheap and very nourishing. Stock here means anything from a lovingly made chicken stock carefully infused for several hours (Essays make people do funny things) through stock cube to a mixture of grated carrot, Worcestershire sauce and soy sauce. This latter one works wonders if you need something but have nothing to add soups or stews. If times are that hard (such that you can’t afford a carrot but the onions and pork for this dish?) then you can use Aldershot Stock (water) with a little salt and sugar –a good pinch per half pint-, which is easily procured in nice little sachets from certain institutions. Bring to the boil, then cover and put into an oven for an hour on 120C for every pound of pork. Stir occasionally, but it shouldn’t burn anyhow. As you can tell I do not care for modernisms of measurements or time and increasingly literary, but watch as they get thrown in for hoots and giggles. A little thyme, citrus peel or even red wine will not harm this dish. If you have a slow cooker then you can do the main work hours in advance and just leave it simmer away. Plonk has no place in the kitchen, nor does Vosne-Romanée. For cooking you want something which is drinkable, but something is generally better than nothing and with a longer cooking time the rougher (that implies a certain smoothness which in some of the things drunk would be better described from Gale force 10 through Hurricanes and Monsoons to Croydon last summer) qualities will be exorcised. Serve with bread and butter.
A pork stew is something which I do not shrink away from, a puff pastry beef and potato pie is something very dear to me and should indeed be to every true Englishman. Take stewing beef, which will be rump if you’re lucky but more likely silverside or flank, or shin of beef. Cut the latter up into chunks and dust in flour as described above. Continue as above until you add the potato, then add some chunks of carrot, cut as big as the beige tubers. Cover in beef stock, cube is fine as are the rest if need be. Red wine will not hurt, nor will thyme or a bay leaf. Put into a stew pot, if not in one already, and put into a slow oven (120C) for an hour a pound. You can have this on its own with bread or make it into a pie. To do the latter you might need to thicken the sauce, but first take all the solids out of the juices and put into a pie dish. Bisect the waters Moses-like into two. Boil one half down so that you have a thicker liquor, anywhere between a third to two thirds of what you had originally, and then pour over the meat and veg. I am well aware of the cliché of those three words. Cover with pastry and bake at whatever the packaging tells you to. I adore puff pastry and unless trying to desperately waste time or impress someone will buy it. It is easier, it is if not superior to homemade pastry not that much noticeably worse. You can use short crust if you are weird and enjoy having tastes which are wrong. You can make shortcrust because it’s easy and cheap thus; half fat (butter and lard) to flour, 100g: 200g will do it. Rub them together until you get a mixture that looks like bread crumbs, add a teaspoon of cold water and the mixture should come together in one ball with a few crumbs still in the bowl. Chill then roll out and cover the dish, making an X in the middle of the pie to let the steam out. Bake at 150-170C with either a beaten egg dabbed on top or a little milk if times are hard- but they’re obviously not that hard if one can afford pastry or booze. The other half of the juices will make a gravy; first put a dessert spoon of butter into a pan and when it froths add two teaspoons of flour and stir. If it becomes claggy add a little more butter and vice versa if it’s too runny. When the roux (that’s the technical term) goes a blond colour add the beef juices and whisk. Other recipes will tell you to add it bit by bit, I’m telling you to add it all at once and whisk hard. Boil and it’s done. Season everything as you go along, which should go without saying. Shin of beef is very cheap I should add. If you like mushrooms they could be fried and added before the pastry lid is nailed down.
If unctuous meat does not fill your boots then find solace in good, old fashioned nutella. I adore it alone, in a darkened room where nobody need know that I’ve consumed a jar in the space of half an hour, but mixed with mascarpone, or any other cream cheese if need be, and a little sugar I’ll be able to catatonically rock my way through any number of rehearsals, essays, or anything else which might dare cross paths with an exhausted and hungry student.