As I have said in an earlier post I am much better at cooking for other people and better at cooking larger meals. I also love slow cooked food, like pies and a shoulder joints. Some of the things I cook take days, even a week or more to prepare and cook. Things like hams, and salt beef and confit goose legs. All of these are regular features of the Christmas celebrations. Over the last two Sundays I have had people round for lunch and I have used this as an opportunity to do some long, slow cooking. This really is the last opportunity to do this type of cooking before my project begins properly.
The Sunday before last I cooked a huge piece of lamb, a shoulder joint, cut long. It only just fitted in my small oven (I only have one of those 50cm width cookers). I spent a very happy Saturday morning preparing all the food for Sunday, whilst listening to some old records, all either records that came out or that I was introduced to in my first few years at University. Make Yourself by Incubus, Hundred Reasons’ second record and One by One by the Foo Fighters all featured, among others. I got up really early on Sunday morning to put the lamb in the oven. In part this was due to the size of the joint, in part due to the crappiness of my oven and in part because I had to leave it in the oven whilst at church and the nervous part of me does not like leaving the oven on at much above the lowest possible setting. All this meant it was a very long slow cook, after being marinated for the best part of a day, which could not be more different to what this project is about. The accompaniments all have a bit of a Greek theme going on. The nine people I had round for dinner all seemed to enjoy it and with the most complements for the lamb. I think that this has a lot more to do with the quality of the meat than what I did with it, so thanks Ron and Jill. The photo is of the dishes in their uncooked state, I forgot to take a photo of the finished product.
This Sunday just gone, was a beef and pork pie, made with a porridge oat pastry and served with loads of lightly boiled vegetables. Just dinner for five this Sunday, with my friends Andrew and Carol, their son Josiah, and my friend Gavin for dinner. The pudding, a particularly lovely trifle, was supplied by Carol. It was another happy Saturday morning of cooking with the pie mix simmering away for many hours. This time the record listening was more up to date with the new Vaccines and the new Mumford and Sons records featuring. I have enjoyed both. Lots of leftovers served to make a nice lunch on Monday and dinner on Monday night.
In reality this won’t be the end of the cooking longer, slower food. If I manage to cook all these meals over the next 6 months then there is Thanksgiving and Christmas, New Year and Burns Night in the way. All these require lots of cooking of celebration food. I have threatened to do a proper American Thanksgiving meal for the last several years and never quite got round to it. I will do it this year, I promise. My three-week holiday in southern states of the US earlier this year made me remember just how good (and also how bad) American food can be. I really must do a Thanksgiving meal this year. I also brought a great (southern) cookbook on holiday and I haven’t been that good at cooking from it yet. However with 115, 15 Minute Meals to cook, the amount of the type of cooking I have done over the last few weekends will have to get less. I am excited to start this project. Thursday night looks like it is when the first meal will be cooked.
