Yesterday we decided to eat all the meats. Being a bank holiday weekend with the promise of rain, it seemed like the British thing to do. So we made ready.
I don't have all the recipes for everything that was made, but here's a run down:
- Slow-smoked pork ribs
- Slow-cooked brisket
- Burnt ends
- Pork burgers with garlic & Parmesan
- Red cabbage coleslaw with garlic & tahini
- Aioli-marinated aubergines
- Double blue cheese dip
- Skewers of prawns in lime & garlic
- Miscellaneous grilled vegetables
- The obligatory halloumui
It was pretty good. There are pictures:
(I tried to add helpful captions, but the Blogger visual editor is so poor as to be virtually unusable, and the underlying HTML drops the images in as tables with messy local formatting overrides, and I just can't face dealing with that shit, sorry)I've also jotted down one or two recipe outlines. Most of the meat relies on being slow-cooked over very low coals for something like six hours. It wasn't exactly timed, more a case of how long it too the boyfriend and I to watch most of the first season of Game of Thrones. There were also some wood chips on the coals, to gently infuse a smokiness. I'm not entirely clued up on this shit - I leave the playing with fire to my housemate, he seems to do it well.
Pork burgers with garlic & Parmesan
This is a direct rip-off from Nigel Slater. It's the meatballs from p126 of Kitchen Diaries subtly tweaked to make them basically survivable in burger form. So it's pork mince with a few cloves of fine-chopped garlic, lots of Parmesan, a few chopped anchovies, some flat-leaf parsley, and rehydrated breadcrumbs to bind. To work as burgers without being overpowering, you basically just dial back all the savage umami flavours, and maybe the garlic. They're good, but they do risk falling apart on the grill, so you have to be careful.
Red cabbage coleslaw with garlic & tahini
Incredibly simple. Fine shredded red cabbage, a clove of garlic pounded to a puree with salt, a spoonful or two of tahini, a spoonful of mayonnaise for extra filth value, and lots of Greek yogurt. The whole thing has a sharpness that coleslaw often misses. It's an unsettling pink-ish purple colour, stains everything, and really doesn't keep well. But it's delicious in a pita with grilled aubergines.
Aioli-marinated aubergines
Exactly what it sounds like. In a pestle and mortar, pound up garlic and salt to a mayonnaise-like paste, working in lots of dried oregano. By "garlic" I mean that for 3 aubergines, I used most of a bulb, and "lots" of oregano was similarly lacking in restraint. The odd green peppercorn worked into the mix doesn't hurt. Let this out with a bit more oil, and shove it in a plastic bag with slices of aubergine. Smoosh it all around to cover, and leave it somewhere for at least an hour (or episodes 5, 6, and 7 of GoT) before grilling.
Double blue cheese dip
We once had to re-designate this as a soup, because I was eating it with a spoon. It's a sauce for hot wings and miscellaneous sordid Americana. Two cheeses, say Stilton and Danish Blue, crumbled into soured cream and mayonnaise. Add chopped garlic, hot sauce, and Worcestershire sauce, or mushroom ketchup if you're feeling veggie. It is fucking amazing.
Slow-smoked pork ribs, burnt ends, and brisket
I'll have to come back and fill this in when I get the recipe for the various spice rubs. But basically, it's a spice rub and slow hot smoking. The burnt ends are just the hot smoked brisket tips, carved off, and finished with additional slow cooking in rich barbecue sauce.
In hindsight, my digestion might have thanked me for rather less meat, or perhaps just some fibre. But hey, it worked. the star of the show was probably the slow-smoked ribs prepared by my housemate. The sat in a dry rub for the best part of two days, making the entire fridge and kitchen smell amazing. That's a win, right there.
It didn't even rain.
