The Untied Kingdom? - the British thread 2021

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  • PigletPiglet All Saints Host, Circus Host
    Piglet wrote: »
    I really must investigate the local butcher's.
    Tragedy! The best local butcher we know, where we bought both our Christmas venison and New Year ham, is closing down.
    Oh no!!!!! :cry: Brexit, pandemic or both?

    It's awfully sad that so many local butchers just can't compete with the big supermarkets. My local one, which is just across the road from the flat, appears to have cut down his opening hours; I'd thought of dropping in on Saturday afternoon to see if he had any lamb shanks, but he'd closed early.
    There was a change of plan re the porcine supper: the "baking potato" that I had in the cupboard turned out to be not much bigger than an ordinary spud, and certainly not enough to feed a moderately ravenous piglet.

    However, I had part of a bag of prawns in the freezer, and some rather superannuated tomatoes in the fridge, so I introduced them to each other in the company of some rice, and made a really quite decent risotto.

    Re: cabbage with gammon - there's a recipe in the old Delia books for cabbage with garlic and juniper berries (to which I would add a splash of GIN), which goes beautifully with baked ham or gammon.
  • SarasaSarasa Shipmate
    Hmmm cabbage with garlic and juniper berries sounds interesting. I bought some juniper berries on a whim and was wondering what to do with them. Maybe I'll try that out with my vegan sausages on Sunday.
  • Penny SPenny S Shipmate
    What you shouldn't do, when a French person asks if you can speak French, is to say "Un peu, un petit peu", because they will then assume fluency, and ignore what you said.
  • Piglet wrote: »
    Piglet wrote: »
    I really must investigate the local butcher's.
    Tragedy! The best local butcher we know, where we bought both our Christmas venison and New Year ham, is closing down.
    Oh no!!!!! :cry: Brexit, pandemic or both?
    No, just exhaustion and difficulty recruiting good staff.

  • PigletPiglet All Saints Host, Circus Host
    Still very sad. :(
  • la vie en rougela vie en rouge Circus Host, 8th Day Host
    edited March 3
    Husband en rouge's assistant has caught the Rona. He's feeling quite under the weather, although he's young enough that he's unlikely to be seriously ill.

    Consequently husband en rouge been banned from going to work for a week. He's quite pleased - the only downside is that the price of his week off was having a swab stuck up his nose (he tested negative).
  • NenyaNenya Shipmate
    I hope the assistant has a mild case and that Husband en rouge enjoys his enforced working from home. Will Captain Pyjamas think Papa has taken a week off to play with him?

    One of our local pubs has not survived the pandemic; it's a drinker's pub (no food) and I don't know how well it was frequented as we never went there.

    We currently don't have a butcher in the town - there used to be three and they all closed for one reason or another. One was closed down due to rumoured poor practice behind the scenes. There's a butcher not that far from here who's reputedly very good, also a farm shop, and I keep meaning to try them, but they're both a car journey away and a click of the mouse on the Sainz Breeze website is Just So Easy. :flushed:
  • FirenzeFirenze Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    Firenze wrote: »
    Tomorrow gammon and cabbage. Friday poor Mr F is having dental surgery, so probably cheese soufflé.
    Red cabbage with apple? That's really nice.

    Poor Mr F.

    It's Savoy, so butter and black pepper.
  • Not quite as nice, IMO.
  • PuzzlerPuzzler Shipmate
    Our butchers is probably the best shop in our small town, together with the greengrocer and the hardware shop that sells everything.
  • Savoy with butter and pepper sounds delicious to me. I like spring cabbage with a handful of salted roasted peanuts.

    Off for a walk shortly, then I need to do some admin, plan a tutorial with a colleague over the phone (colleague is also my study buddy so we can have a good gossip too) then I need to do some marking. The subject is inequality and children/young people.
  • We have a splendid butcher* in the village - he also sells vegetables and basic groceries, so is a lifesaver when the snow is on the ground (or you forgot to put something on the online shopping list). AND he sells wild boar sausages, which I cook in the slow cooker with red wine, mushrooms and crushed juniper berries (see what I did there? :grin: )

    *I never thought I'd be able to do what all those old-fashioned recipe books say - 'ask your butcher to...' :grin:
  • MiffyMiffy Shipmate
    Penny S wrote: »
    What you shouldn't do, when a French person asks if you can speak French, is to say "Un peu, un petit peu", because they will then assume fluency, and ignore what you said.

    I know, I know. 😎

  • Barnabas_AusBarnabas_Aus Shipmate
    edited March 4
    Piglet wrote: »
    I really must investigate the local butcher's; I haven't had Sossidges and Mash since David died (it was one of his specialities), and I doubt that I could replicate his mashed potatoes, which were most excellent. :cry:

    The secret to good mash is to drain the potatoes well, and then return them to the heat to drive off residual moisture, shaking the pan as you do. Next, mash them well with butter or margarine. Finally, add just a splash of milk while stirring vigorously with a wooden spoon. The milk seems to have an effect on the starches in the potato, making a smooth mash.

    Edited to fix code - Piglet, AS host
  • PigletPiglet All Saints Host, Circus Host
    edited March 4
    David reckoned that lots of butter was the secret (margarine comes from Beelzebub), and occasionally a splat or two of Philly cheese.
  • O - I used to love Bread and Margarine! (Bread? You 'ad Bread? You were Lucky!).

    We don't seem to have a Beelzebub shop in our town - is marge still available, from somewhere else?
    :wink:
  • Penny SPenny S Shipmate
    Stork is available from Waitrose, and also Sainsburys, who have a couple of other brands as well, labelled vegan. You have to hunt among the tubs of spreads for the blocks.
  • Penny S wrote: »
    Stork is available from Waitrose, and also Sainsburys, who have a couple of other brands as well, labelled vegan. You have to hunt among the tubs of spreads for the blocks.

    Thanks! *Stork* was indeed the brand My Old Mum used, but the name had escaped me.

    Neither Weight Rose nor Sainz Breeze are handy for me, alas, but I'll have a look in Tess Coe next time I make an Expotition therewards.

    Are all margarines vegan by nature?

  • NenyaNenya Shipmate
    O - I used to love Bread and Margarine! (Bread? You 'ad Bread? You were Lucky!).

    We don't seem to have a Beelzebub shop in our town - is marge still available, from somewhere else?
    :wink:
    :lol:

    My Dear Old Mum used to save the dripping from the Sunday roast in a Pyrex dish in the fridge. It would congeal into a brown jelly on the bottom and a layer of white fat on the top. This she would re-use the next week and also eat, with great relish, spread on bread with a sprinkling of salt. I never acquired the taste for it myself.
  • No, not all margarines are vegan. I usually buy Pure from Tesco's as the only dairy free alternative available. Most margarines have large amounts of whey powder included, which is a form of milk powder.
  • My father, a true Lancastrian, loved bread and dripping; it's not something that ever appealed to me. Mind you, I didn't like the tripe and onions (with vinegar) either.
  • Fawkes CatFawkes Cat Shipmate
    Nenya wrote: »
    O - I used to love Bread and Margarine! (Bread? You 'ad Bread? You were Lucky!).

    We don't seem to have a Beelzebub shop in our town - is marge still available, from somewhere else?
    :wink:
    :lol:

    My Dear Old Mum used to save the dripping from the Sunday roast in a Pyrex dish in the fridge. It would congeal into a brown jelly on the bottom and a layer of white fat on the top. This she would re-use the next week and also eat, with great relish, spread on bread with a sprinkling of salt. I never acquired the taste for it myself.
    My father, a true Lancastrian, loved bread and dripping; it's not something that ever appealed to me. Mind you, I didn't like the tripe and onions (with vinegar) either.

    I had Marmite on dripping (and in turn, on bread) for elevenses this morning, and will be using some of the stock from under the dripping in a casserole at the weekend. It's what I've always done so I don't think of it as being in any way unusual...
  • Nenya wrote: »
    O - I used to love Bread and Margarine! (Bread? You 'ad Bread? You were Lucky!).

    We don't seem to have a Beelzebub shop in our town - is marge still available, from somewhere else?
    :wink:
    :lol:

    My Dear Old Mum used to save the dripping from the Sunday roast in a Pyrex dish in the fridge. It would congeal into a brown jelly on the bottom and a layer of white fat on the top. This she would re-use the next week and also eat, with great relish, spread on bread with a sprinkling of salt. I never acquired the taste for it myself.

    Yes, My Old Mum would save the dripping, too. Once a year, or thereabouts, whenever we could afford Meat...
    :wink:
  • PigletPiglet All Saints Host, Circus Host
    ... I didn't like the tripe and onions (with vinegar) either.
    Tripe and onions was the only thing my father wouldn't eat, which is probably why I've never tasted it (and tbh I have no desire to).

    My mother-in-law, on the other hand, had a father who came from Yorkshire, and she loved tripe; I remember her buying it ready to eat from a stall at Great Yarmouth market.
  • Piglet wrote: »
    I really must investigate the local butcher's; I haven't had Sossidges and Mash since David died (it was one of his specialities), and I doubt that I could replicate his mashed potatoes, which were most excellent. :cry:

    The secret to good mash is to drain the potatoes well, and then return them to the heat to drive off residual moisture, shaking the pan as you do. Next, mash them well with butter or margarine. Finally, add just a splash of milk while stirring vigorously with a wooden spoon. The milk seems to have an effect on the starches in the potato, making a smooth mash.

    Edited to fix code - Piglet, AS host

    I think that probably depends on the type of mash you're used to. Broadly, if you can stir it your potatoes are not so much mashed as whipped. To my mind mashed potatoes should be fluffy rather than smooth. These days we tend to cook them with a chopped leek and mash them with cheese.
  • I think that probably depends on the type of mash you're used to. Broadly, if you can stir it your potatoes are not so much mashed as whipped. To my mind mashed potatoes should be fluffy rather than smooth. These days we tend to cook them with a chopped leek and mash them with cheese.

    Right, I'm off to @Arethosemyfeet's for dinner. I like to put an onion in mash. Haven't tried it with leeks, but I tend to chop leeks quite coarsely, which might be odd in mash.
  • I think that probably depends on the type of mash you're used to. Broadly, if you can stir it your potatoes are not so much mashed as whipped. To my mind mashed potatoes should be fluffy rather than smooth. These days we tend to cook them with a chopped leek and mash them with cheese.

    Right, I'm off to @Arethosemyfeet's for dinner. I like to put an onion in mash. Haven't tried it with leeks, but I tend to chop leeks quite coarsely, which might be odd in mash.

    We just slice them into circles, maybe 1/4 inch thick, and the cooking and mashing does the rest.
  • MMMMMM Shipmate
    I had no idea dripping was regarded as an odd thing. Fawkes Cat, I’m with you, it’s just what’s always done when we have a beef joint. Mmmmm, dripping toast with a bit of salt...

    MMM
  • KarlLBKarlLB Shipmate
    edited March 4
    Penny S wrote: »
    Stork is available from Waitrose, and also Sainsburys, who have a couple of other brands as well, labelled vegan. You have to hunt among the tubs of spreads for the blocks.

    Thanks! *Stork* was indeed the brand My Old Mum used, but the name had escaped me.

    Neither Weight Rose nor Sainz Breeze are handy for me, alas, but I'll have a look in Tess Coe next time I make an Expotition therewards.

    Are all margarines vegan by nature?

    No. Not by a long chalk, if you're defining margarine as "stuff you can use as butter that isn't butter". They all taste much the same to me though and I struggle to tell them from real butter, but I think I'm missing a dairy receptor as I also find cream pretty much tasteless yet people rave about it.

    Love cheese though. It's my heroin.
  • KarlLBKarlLB Shipmate
    Nenya wrote: »
    O - I used to love Bread and Margarine! (Bread? You 'ad Bread? You were Lucky!).

    We don't seem to have a Beelzebub shop in our town - is marge still available, from somewhere else?
    :wink:
    :lol:

    My Dear Old Mum used to save the dripping from the Sunday roast in a Pyrex dish in the fridge. It would congeal into a brown jelly on the bottom and a layer of white fat on the top. This she would re-use the next week and also eat, with great relish, spread on bread with a sprinkling of salt. I never acquired the taste for it myself.

    Yes, My Old Mum would save the dripping, too. Once a year, or thereabouts, whenever we could afford Meat...
    :wink:

    What do people make the gravy from then? That jelly at the bottom goes into mine; I put the whole lot through a gravy seperator and chuck the fat.
  • Bishops FingerBishops Finger Shipmate
    edited March 4
    Gravy? Ah - Bis*o, surely?
  • NenyaNenya Shipmate
    If I recall correctly, some of the meat juices were poured into said Pyrex dish to go into the fridge. The rest were heated on the hob in the roasting tin - once the meat had come out of it - and thickened with Bis*o powder, with the water from the vegetables added.

    I don't recall doing roasts much, even at all, when Mr Nen and I first got married. By the time I was doing roasts for the family, once our children were old enough to enjoy them, I couldn't be doing with the faffing for the gravy and instead used gravy granules. I know. Is Outrage.

    Nowadays, even more Outrage, it's usually a ready made pouch of appropriately flavoured gravy zapped for two minutes in the microwave.
  • PigletPiglet All Saints Host, Circus Host
    All the talk up-thread about SOSSIDGES set me thinking about a fridge-clearing dish I made when we were in Fredericton. On the way home I dropped into M&S and got some Italian-style ones, which I cooked with the last of the needing-to-be-used tomatoes, a red pepper, shallot, garlic, mushrooms and pasta twists. It was really nice, and there's enough left for another day.

    The SOSSIDGES in question had exactly the right amount of spice for my taste, and as I only needed half the packet, the rest are nestling happily in the freezer for future use.

    I felt a little bit bad about not getting them in the local butcher's, but he'd have been closed by the time I got home.
  • Penny SPenny S Shipmate
    Hovis and dripping. I miss it.
  • When we visited Master S on his semester in Wroclaw, what we were given to accompany our first beers was bread and dripping! \i must admit, I didn't even try it - just drank the beer :smile:
  • O - you missed a real Treat!

    Bread, Dripping, and BEER are much to be looked forward to in Heaven...
  • daisydaisydaisydaisy Shipmate
    Penny S wrote: »
    Stork is available from Waitrose, and also Sainsburys, who have a couple of other brands as well, labelled vegan. You have to hunt among the tubs of spreads for the blocks.
    I had an initial “really?!” until I read on... I honestly thought these 2 supermarkets are onto a new line of meat. After all, Tess Coes have done ostrich, and Lee Dell has done kangaroo and reindeer.

  • FirenzeFirenze Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    I remember dining in a local restaurant in the Rheinland where the basket of bread came accompanied by what we took to be tubs of pate, topped with fat. But no, it was bacon dripping all the way down.
  • Wesley JWesley J Shipmate
    KarlLB wrote: »
    [...] ganddi hi [...]

    Undoubtedly, that's how to address a certain "Indian lawyer, anti-colonial nationalist, and political ethicist, who employed nonviolent resistance to lead the successful campaign for India's independence from British rule, and in turn inspired movements for civil rights and freedom across the world." (Wikipedia)
  • Wesley JWesley J Shipmate
    Boogie wrote: »
    We’ve cracked open the Prosecco!

    My son has just had the wonderful news that he’s got a mortgage. He’s been trying for nine months but as he’s in an insecure job (he’s a pilot!) he just met brick walls all the time. [...]

    The birth of a mortgage. Very glad to hear it, Boogie! :)
  • Wesley JWesley J Shipmate
    edited March 5
    Piglet wrote: »
    [...] Not quite sure what to have for supper - there may be a baked potato on the horizon. [...]

    Wouldn't that simply be the moon, seeeing the time of day? :)
  • PriscillaPriscilla Shipmate
    My father loved bread and dripping.
    My mother made real gravy - meat juices, flour and potato water. Chicken or pork gravy was pale, beef gravy was dark.
    Bistro or any other gravy browning? Definitely infra dig! Which is why I was quite so surprised when I found that my mil, who was a very good cook, used gravy browning.
  • SojournerSojourner Shipmate
    You mean the unspeakable Bisto? Here is Oz we had the equally unspeakable Gravox.

    I taught a friend how to make Proper Gravy with ( among other things) home made stock. He had once flirted with Traditional ( pre-V2) Catholicism & still refers to my gravy as “Tridentine”
  • "Hurrah for Bisto, what a delightful small,
    The stuff that every self-respecting grocer ought to smell"

    Goodness! That just popped into my head from who knows where.
    I never understood that jingle, nor the "Aaah, Bisto!" ad, with the two deeply inhaling cartoon kids. I could not taste nor smell anything in the Bisto gravy I came across in other people's houses. To me it was just colouring and thickener. I assume that today's gravy granules fulfil all three requirements, flavour, of a sort, colour and texture.

    My mother's gravy was made with meat juices and an oxo cube, flour to thicken and gravy browning for colour. Gravy browning came in a bottle and was a very dark caramel solution.

    I rarely cook a joint, so don't get meat juices to work with - and don't usually have gravy on my meals. Mr RoS likes gravy, so he gets granules. He has no sense of smell or taste any way, so it's all the same to him as long as it looks & feels like gravy
  • KarlLBKarlLB Shipmate
    Wesley J wrote: »
    KarlLB wrote: »
    [...] ganddi hi [...]

    Undoubtedly, that's how to address a certain "Indian lawyer, anti-colonial nationalist, and political ethicist, who employed nonviolent resistance to lead the successful campaign for India's independence from British rule, and in turn inspired movements for civil rights and freedom across the world." (Wikipedia)

    No, that'd be Gandi. Dd is the th sound in 'this', 'the'.
  • PigletPiglet All Saints Host, Circus Host
    David used to use Bisto gravy granules in his shepherd's pie, but when he couldn't get it in Canada, he used Oxo instead and it worked just as well.
    Really quick commute today - the bus was practically waiting for me, and I was actually first in to the office - so I can leave nice and early too.

    Chippy for supper, I think.
  • KarlLBKarlLB Shipmate
    Gravy granules are basically corn flour and dried stock, I'd guess.
  • SandemaniacSandemaniac Shipmate
    I think they are mostly caramelised onion - I was startled to discover, when a vegan friend asked me to buy some, that at least some varieties are actually vegan.
  • BroJamesBroJames Purgatory Host, 8th Day Host
    Original Bistro powder was (is) starch, onion powder, (caramel) colouring and seasoning. Effectively it makes an onion gravy. My mother always made it in the roasting tin with the meat juices. More was used for beef or lamb, less for pork, and less again for chicken or turkey. Nowadays it is marketed in different flavours for different meats, and granules are available in addition to the traditional powder.
  • SandemaniacSandemaniac Shipmate
    That's the one! I either do meat juices or don't bother, so don't have any at hand to check - though, thinking of it, I do recall Mum always crumbled an Oxo into the gravy as she made it.
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