Bacon and eggs

[desperance]

Charcuterie: it is a panacea, or cure-all. (Heh: d'you see what I did there?)

Yesterday I put up seven pounds of bacon in a dry cure, and a whole ham in brine. Also, because we are all about proof-of-concept*, I tested out my new method of hard-boiling eggs: put the eggs in a pan with an inch of water more than you need to cover them. Bring to a rolling boil, then clap a lid on and turn the heat off. Twelve minutes later? Hard-boiled eggs.

Today, I have broken down lamb offal for the freezer, in preparation for Burns Night to come.

First, pluck your sheep(s):



Then disconnect all parts, together with concommitant "I wonder what exactly that is?" and "Well, if that's one lung, I suppose this must be the other; I wonder why they seem so different?" and "D'you suppose there's any good at all to be had from all this, ah, extraneous matter...?"



Then invent a joke:

Q: What's red and plucky?
A: A sheep's pluck!


*We're hosting a baby shower for thirty-some people on Sunday. My instructions are English tea sandwiches: to whit, egg salad, cucumbers with cream cheese, and turkey-and-cheese. Only a cad would challenge the Englishness on display here. I was working on a sandwich loaf, but then we realised how many we'd need, and that we're up in the city all day tomorrow. Tomorrow morning I go prospecting to see if there are any local candidates that bake acceptable bread. It is hard to express how I feel about this: wait, what? People are coming to our house and I will be serving them shop-bought bread? Filled with deli turkey? This is so very, very far from what I do. But hey: it's good to poke at your discomfort zones, right? Right...?

Comments

[movingfinger]

Acme makes a couple of decent white loaves, one of them a pain de mie. It is available from their bakeries; I don't believe I have ever seen it in the shops that carry Acme. There is an Acme bakery at the Ferry Building. The pain de mie from La Boulange is sweeter and, well, gummier, but it's also squarer, so it may well suit your purposes better than the Acme loaf, which is stubbier and more rounded. I do not know whether any of the La Boulange outlets have slicers, which would make this much simpler, yes? The Andersen bakery (there's one in Japantown mall, I think, and one in the Embarcadero Center) MAY also make a sandwich loaf that is suitably squishy and white, but I don't know. I've see sliced milk bread for sale there (for toast), but that's always thick. May I suggest smoked salmon among those sandwiches?

[clanwilliam]

Cream cheese? Cream cheese in cucumber sandwiches?

Chaz, darling, what have those awful colonials done to you? (Love to your lovely wife, btw.)

Plain white bread, salted butter and freshly sliced cumcumber are all you need.

BTW, if you have excess cucumbers, have you tried thinly slicing them and steaming them? As much of a flavour revelation as cooked lettuce.

[desperance]

Oh, tell me about it. Or no: don't tell me, tell m'wife. America is another country; they do things differently here.

(And no, 've never tried steaming cucumber. Now I am all agog...)

[clanwilliam]

It's very quick - or you could give them a quick fry instead. Add lettuce and you have stirfried salad.