Food (ongoing)
May. 17th, 2008 07:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
desperanceI do love making stock. I taste it every half-hour or so, and there's a chartable progression: first it tastes entirely of the herbs that have gone in there (rosemary and thyme, today). Then the vegetables (onion, leek, carrot). It takes a good hour or longer for the primary constituent, the meatiness to start coming through. Then that seems to dominate for a while, before it all settles down into a harmonious balance.
Meaty fatty bones cost me fifteen pence at the market, for a bagful. If you roast them first, which I do, then that takes most of the fat off so you don't have to skim the stock so much, and yields the secondary pleasure of making your kitchen smell gorgeously of roasted beef. The tertiary pleasure, of course, is a panful of beef dripping. Which, spread on bread with a scatter of crunchy salt, is not quite as good as marrow-on-toast, but we're talking minimal distinctions here. It will definitely do. And, as I say, 15p. Three bob in old money. The rewards of thrift are as old-fashioned as its pursuit, but as pleasurable as ever they were.
Meaty fatty bones cost me fifteen pence at the market, for a bagful. If you roast them first, which I do, then that takes most of the fat off so you don't have to skim the stock so much, and yields the secondary pleasure of making your kitchen smell gorgeously of roasted beef. The tertiary pleasure, of course, is a panful of beef dripping. Which, spread on bread with a scatter of crunchy salt, is not quite as good as marrow-on-toast, but we're talking minimal distinctions here. It will definitely do. And, as I say, 15p. Three bob in old money. The rewards of thrift are as old-fashioned as its pursuit, but as pleasurable as ever they were.