Wednesday, August 11, 2010


Some friends have just got a new flat and we had to go there on Sunday evening and christen it with champagne and crisps. This meant feeding the fussy one prior to going to the flat, while we ourselves would have to eat later. Fortunately, I had been to the farmer's market the previous day and had scored the fussy one a nice piece of lemon sole, which was duly served up with a little broccoli, most of which broccoli didn't get eaten, but that's three-year-old girls for you. The Cake-Mistress and myself were supposed to be sitting down at some point to a leisurely meal of delicious roast pork belly, Sunday dinner if you get my meaning, so I put some in the oven at 6.30pm to do a long slow cook before we left for the flat-christening, but what with lingering over the champers and strolling home and getting the fussy one to bed, the idea of making roast potatoes and all that other stuff combined with the fact that it was suddenly 9pm and none of the vegetables were even out of the fridge led me to propose that I just make a salad, which idea the Cake-Mistress fortunately agreed to. So we had somewhat overcooked roast pork belly and salad. The pork belly had sat in the fridge in a light slick of olive oil, pounded garlic 'n' rosemary and salt all afternoon, which probably hadn't done it any favours (i.e. the salt probably robbed it of moisture, and being a Sainsbury's cut and therefore boneless it wasn't exactly succulent to begin with) and then the long cooking dried it out a bit, but it was still tasty. But, as usual with me, the crackling didn't crackle (there are various theories about this. More in future posts). The salad was a lightly modified version of one by Fergus Henderson: the leaves from two little gem lettuces mixed with a handful of chopped flat-leaf parsley, a couple of tomatoes finely diced and half a dozen torn-up anchovy fillets. So that took care of Sunday.

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