Pork Scratchings the Brenchley Way

[desperance]

People do keep asking, so okay: this is how I make my scratchings.

First, obtain some pork rind. This is probably the hardest part of the process. My own local supermarket (Morrisons, for those of you in the UK) happens to sell it, in among the joints, for extra crackling; I buy it when I see it, and freeze it against a need.

The only ingredient else is a herby salt. I mix granular sea salt with herbes de Provence or erbe di Siena; Lakeland sells a pre-mix called "Good With Everything", which is also good.

Now you need a sharp kitchen knife (sharp, please) and a baking tray.

Light your oven and let it warm. Meanwhile, lay out your slab of pork rind rind-side down, and rub your herby salt into the fatty side. If the salt's at all fine, be abstemious; I'm quite generous, but the salt I use is like hailstones, and half of it goes pinging off in the process.

Now roll up your slab of rind with the herby fatty side on the inside, and slice it into fingers (I did ask for a sharp knife, remember? But it's actually easier to cut through in a roll).

Now lay your fingers of rind on the baking sheet, fatty side down, rind side up. Turn the oven to the lowest possible setting - really truly - and slide the tray in on the bottom shelf.

Close the oven door, and leave it.

Stay away.

Do all this in the morning, and leave it till the evening. Eight hours is certainly not too long.

You will find that some of the fat renders out (yay! it's healthy!); you can drain that off at this point.

Now turn the oven up to middling-hot - gas mark 5 or 6 - and put the tray back in at the top of the oven.

Now you have to keep an eye on it, because over the next twenty minutes or half an hour, that pork is going to scratch.

There are three stages to this, and only two are desirable.

First, your dried-out but still floppy fingers are going to turn stiff and crunchy. This is good.

Second, they are going to pop like popcorn, turning light and crunchy and lacy inside. This is better.

Third, they are going to burn. This is not good at all.

The trick, obviously, is to catch them between stages two and three. You have perhaps five minutes.

They'll probably curl up; they may go three-dimensional. Catch them while they're still golden-brown, before they go black - but try not to be pre-emptive, don't lose your nerve and take them out before they've popped. That way lie broken teeth, as you discover bits that are still leather at heart.

Any questions?

Comments

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

Any questions?

Yes: when's the next flight so I can come have some pork scratchings? OM NOM NOM!

[desperance.livejournal.com]

I b'lieve there are flights from Dublin to N'cle. You can be met at the airport. There is a futon; there are cats who will bite you - om nom nom - but only in fun. Om purr nom purr snuggle.

Or there's P'con next year. I could bring scratchings. If it's legal. Conveying pork products across state borders for thoroughly immoral purposes...

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Oh, and there's a couple of comics shops in town, where you could promote "Take A Chance" - it's a business trip! Nothing at all to do with om-nom-noms, Mr Taxman, honest!

And we could go down to Sunderland and see Bryan Talbot, and...

*tempts*

[samarcand.livejournal.com]

Ooh! Signed Comicky-booky Goodness! (Can I add my encouragement to come over here?)

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

I'd genuinely love to. :)

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

Actually, with how Irish tax laws work, it's not a write-off for me to go do business anywhere. Which doesn't, mind you, make it any less a good idea... :)

Here's the important question: have you *ordered* Chance so your local comic shops might be *getting* it? :)

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Actually, that's a very fine point; I have not done that thing. I will go into the shop-of-choice and do that very thing.

Do I need to be able to tell them who's publishing it, or which distributor is handling it? Or will "C E Murphy's Take A Chance" be enough? (I don't order comics as a rule, so I don't know how the process differs from books.)

(Of course, it's also possible-to-highly-likely that samarcand above has already done this, in at least one of the shops; I'll check that too, and if so I'll go to the other one...)

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

The most important bit you need is the Diamond order code for issue #1, but the whole kit and kaboodle is title "Take A Chance", author C.E. Murphy, and publishers are the Dabel Brothers. It's actually fairly important to do this ahead of time, because unlike a comic by Marvel or DC, many comic shops won't automatically order copies of Chance because it's from an independent press. And if you have them create a pull box (they will know what this means even if you don't, unless English comic shops are totally alien) they should automatically continue to order it for you so you can pop in and pick it up monthly without worrying about missing it.

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

er. Shit. The order code which I mentioned as important and then failed to actually, you know, *include*, is OCT08 4065F. :)

[desperance.livejournal.com]

they should automatically continue to order it for you so you can pop in and pick it up monthly without worrying about missing it.

...she implied, subtly...

*sniggers*

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

I'm just being *helpful*. :)

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Actually, with how Irish tax laws work, it's not a write-off for me to go do business anywhere.

I was going to cry "Boo!" to that - only then I remembered that writers have, or used to have, tax-free status in Ireland. Or so I have grown up believing. Is it true? Or still true? Or was it never so?

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

It is true. They changed the law a couple years ago so it's only tax-free up to 250K euro a year, but y'know, if I ever should be so lucky as to make that much I'll be VERY HAPPY to pay my taxes on the rest of it.

(Either that or I'll incorporate in the Netherlands, where they do not tax any money made on royalties, and since literally every penny I make is from royalties... :))

Mind you, the whole tax-free thing makes significantly more difference when the dollar is at 1.26 (which is about where I start breaking even on living here vs in the states) against the euro than at 1.60, which is where it's been most of the time I've been *living* here....