So, I vanished for a bit (Confined Cocktails excepted). I got desperate about downstairs builders and spent a week in the local Premier Inn, eating Christmas cake and Wensleydale in lieu of actual meals, and wandering into town to go to the theatre and a concert for my birthday. I also lost a lot of hours to doomscrolling for omicron info, despite all of us knowing there's no news yet, and looking for it does not make the pandemic pass faster.
Plus... now I'm back home, and I got pinged because of said theatring and well, living in the pandemic is just GRATE. I'm extremely glad I had a clear lateral flow before seeing my parents for a birthday meal, and now we wait for PCR joy to see whether there's a reason to worry retrospectively. It's so different from the pingdemic of the midsummer, where I just keep buggering on until informed otherwise. Tricky.
Luckily, I am stocked to the gunnels. It's meat week and I seem to have gone a bit overboard despite knowing this is a time when people pop up with a zillion exciting chances to go out for the evening. It's slow-cooking stuff and it is keeping me warm amidst the onset of winter and bad news and such.
One from Rachel Roddy's A-Z of pasta, of course - this is a variant of ragu, Emilia-style. Lots of chicken livers in the meat, and bechamel added into the mix which gives it huge richness. It doesn't need 4 hours of simmering like my main ragu recipe, and I thank it for that.
Process photos were taken, but honestly, I think you know what mince, tomatoes and bechamel look like, and chopped livers are never the most scenic. The final sauce was pretty darned good though.
I decanted the final leftovers into Tupperware today as it'll be a rather hefty packed lunch for tomorrow (PCR permitting, I am in the office again).
In time to reuse the pan for a whacking great bean and pork stew, out of Crave. I never do dried beans if I can help it, despite thriftiness. But I think this one might be better for it. If you're doing dried beans you want to soak for many hours beforehand, and then cook them with chunks of carrot, celery, a halved garlic clove, bay, thyme, rosemary, a halved tomato, some onion... If you're doing dried beans, give it 90 minutes, and then add pork belly strips, and give it another 90 minutes. Strictly for the weekend or a day when you're keyboard-bound and need the odd 5 minute breather to do something practical.
It will look like stew. A gentle mix of flavours and a good wintry stock. I have this down for two dinners but I think the base will end up being soup for a couple more.
But! For the dinners, you're not only doing a gentle stew, you're giving it a good whack of flavour and greenery. Chop green olives and parsley, mix with a slug of vinegar, a pinch of sugar, a slop of olive oil, and you have a salsa.
The combination is delicious for this sloppy gentle stew, and spark it up nicely. It's not exactly pretty food, but it works really well.
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