Month: February 2016

Hack, slice, chop! Money saved…

Mr Tesco let me have two chickens for £9. That was nice of him.

I sharpened up one of my favourite knives, ready to save some money, and attacked.

The prices below are my guesses, based on the Tesco website.

Four chicken thighs, £2.


Four chicken drumsticks, £2.


Yes, I know they are a bit untidily cut. I’m badly out of practice at this sort of thing.

Four chicken breasts, £4.

Four chicken wings, no idea, as they aren’t sold in such small numbers.
All cling-filmed to keep them separate, apart from the wings, which I am saving up until I have a big box of them packed and ready to cook. And off to the freezer they go!

So, you might wonder, where’s the money saving? Ah, well, you see, all the bits that were left are currently bubbling away cheerfully in the stock pot. There will be quite a bit of stock, and the fat that I will take off the top is lovely for cooking.

Did I forget to mention the Pastrami?

I think I did forget to tell you about this. It started with a nice bit of brisket from the Tesco meat counter, all rolled up, tied, and ready to roast. I took the string off, opened it out, and removed as much fat as I could.
Next, I made up a brine cure, for it, following the suggestions in “Food DIY” for the choice of spices. There’s 200g of salt and 100g of sugar in the cure, all boiled up and allowed to cool. That went into the fridge for six days, with fairly regular shaking to help things along. After that, the meat was drained and dried, before being coated with freshly ground black pepper and coriander seeds.
The next step is to hot smoke the meat over wood chips, until the internal temperature is 75°C. I used a probe thermometer to make sure I got this right. I nearly ruined the roasting tin, while doing this. Since then, I’ve bought a galvanised dustbin, so I can do hot smoking outdoors, and not destroy things. After that, the meat gets steamed for at least three hours.
My apologies for the rather badly out of focus picture of the sliced meat after I steamed it. I was overcome by the excitement, and anticipation of a nice pastrami sandwich. There should really have been rye bread for that, but there wasn’t. Never mind. It was a nice sandwich.

Roy Batty is ready to be eaten!

The Lomo I started on Roy Batty’s inception date reached its target weight yesterday. I’ve cut it into several pieces, and wrapped and frozen most of it. Here are some slices  from the piece I have kept ready to use. I can assure you that they were delicious.

My next project? Probably a real meat pie… or something…

Crab!

Here’s an impulse buy from the last time I went shopping! A cooked crab at an irresistible price. I had never dealt with one before, and was a bit bothered about it, because most of the books that mention crab say that after you have opened the crab up, you should “Remove the Dead Men’s Fingers”, without any clues as to where they might be. One of our newer books, Prue Leith’s “How to Cook”, has pictures that make it quite clear where these disturbingly named features are, and I’ve labelled them above. 
After about half an hour’s work, I had a large amount of broken crab shell, dead men’s fingers, and assorted gubbins, and a small bowl of actual crab meat. A very small bowl.



In the end, I decided to add it to this risotto of butternut squash, beans and asparagus. It made a great improvement to the flavour.