music and cooking

[aryanhwy]

Today's music & cooking antidote to a long weekend (made longer by the fact that a) Gwen is ill; b) I am ill; c) Joel is ill; d) Gwen was home from nursery yesterday, so I got TWO Saturdays this weekend [grand]; and e) between being sick, some lingering jetlag, dealing with Gwen being sick, and grief, I haven't gotten to bed before 1:00am (and sometimes much later) for a week or so) was Asia's self-titled album (so what if Christmas is over? I can still listen to Christmas music. What, that album isn't part of YOUR Christmas music repertoire? Hmph. YOU never "decorated all the generals" as part of your traditional Christmas traditions) and starting up some lamb bresaola a la Madbaker:



Two comments so far: 1) damn it smells good. 2) Next time, I should pay more attention to the cut of meat I'm ordering on the internet, and ensure I get one without a bone. Ah well, I eventually got the bone hacked out, and it's now sitting in the freezer awaiting to be turned into something, soup most likely. Thankfully, no one is going to score me on my butchery skills. (Speaking of butchery: I asked one of the butchers in the Marketplace today if they carried beef bung (intestine). They carry pork and lamb, but not beef, and when I asked if they could order it, the answer was "not really", because if they did, they'd have to order the whole thing, and that is A LOT of intestine.)

Comments

[hrj.livejournal.com]

I'll love to hear how the lamb bresaola turns out! I keep having impulses towards joining the charcuterie brigade, but in the past decade I've cut way down on the amount of red meat I consume, and I think it would be hard to maintain that if I were playing with meat all the time!

[madbaker.livejournal.com]

That's one reason I give so much of it away...

[aryanhwy.livejournal.com]

I suspect I too will be bringing lots to events and sharing -- but if I can figure out how to cure and smoke my own streaky bacon (something that the Brits just don't really understand), I will never look back. We don't eat much meat, at all, but we do love our bacon.

And, [Unknown site tag], I'll definitely report back on the bresaola!

[madbaker.livejournal.com]

Bacon is just about the easiest charcuterie project there is. If you're interested I'll send you how I do it, but beware - you can never go back to commercial bacon.

[aryanhwy.livejournal.com]

I don't want to go back to commercial bacon (unless it's the bacon we could get at the butcher on Eerste van Swindenstraat in Amsterdam, which butcher no longer exists. The first Dutch phrase I learned, and one of the most useful ever, was "een halve-kilo mager spek, alsjeblieft")! Partly because what is called "bacon" here is back bacon, not streaky bacon, so that's the default; while I can find streaky bacon, it's often not smoked, and so it just isn't right.

I've actually got three portions of pork belly in the fridge, as I had to defrost all four but only used one in tonight's beef provencal, so was thinking of trying to cure the rest, except that we have neither a meat slicer nor decently sharpened knives, so we couldn't get it into rashers.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm sorry I had nothing for you on the cat-grief, I'm not much of a pet owner. But spending time in a kitchen with such a cute little apron sounds like good antidote.
This winter I tried my butchery skills on a hare, it was much harder than seemed strictly neccessary
hugs.

[aryanhwy.livejournal.com]

It's ok -- what I needed most was the writing out of it, not any specific reaction from people.

Isn't that apron cute? My mother-in-law made one for each of us for Christmas, which was perfect because we cook a lot and yet somehow none of us had one.

[(Anonymous)]

those previous hugs from Valery..

[aryanhwy.livejournal.com]

:) Thanks!

[madbaker.livejournal.com]

Be careful when you roll it up that there are no loose cut bits; mold can grow there.

[aryanhwy.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'll do my best to make sure it's rolled really really tightly.

[(Anonymous)]

Sounds lovely, and G looks so charming! I have been able to do my version of this on some of the MANY MANY days that the kids have been home lately, and it really is a good combo. -Bunny

[aryanhwy.livejournal.com]

It's such an easy thing (comparatively), and I don't know why I have such a hard time remembering how well it works. That's partly why I write about it here, so that I have an archive of "see, look? Turn on some music and get into the kitchen, and you'll look back on the weekend happy" evidence.