Prick With A Fork

Mrs Prick has been working like a trencher(wo)man lately, right down to Sunday shifts down at the salt mine, and it’s all a fella can do to keep things together on the home front here at Stately Prick Manor. Thus left to my own devices for the day, and idle hands being the tools of the Devil and all that, the Lord’s Day was spent in procrastination (in terms of real work that could and should have been done) and gluttony (in the form of a bit of a Sunday feast) with perhaps a bit of prayer thrown in (God, don’t let me screw up the timings for this).

Thus Sunday dinner kicked off with some scallops – fat Japanese numbers done simply, wrapped in prosciutto with a cauliflower puree and some leek confit and basil:

The leek confit came about as the shops had sacks of “skinny” leeks – not ramps exactly, but not quite the big fat numbers one normally sees – and after a while barely poaching in oil on the stove, the rest is history. There’s also a heap more of the stuff now in a container in the fridge as well, waiting to be stirred through something (risotto, perhaps?).

For a little transition I knocked up a chestnut veloute – chestnuts are also just hitting the market, and with a base of bacon, leeks, homemade chicken stock, as well as a bit of madeira and sherry vinegar, its a helluva silky thing as we start to move, eventually, into winter in these parts.

Finally, a bit of veal: Chops, actually, big thick ones from Casino in northern NSW. Veal is supposed to be calf, and if that’s true whatever youngster this came from was one of those lazy kids who sat around all day playing video games. Fifty minutes in the sous-vide, a quick sear in the pan, some spinach, a white onion puree, and a sauce of madeira and veal glace (a bit of sherry vinegar and porcini powder balanced it when it was looking too sweet), happy days:

There was not, naturally, room for dessert, which was good, because the pastry chef had the day off and we were well sated. As Pepys used to put it, “and so to bed”.

And they wonder why they get a bad rap:

[Jack and Toby Litsky’s vegan] dietary choices have made dining out a challenge…

Jack Litsky said they’ve learned that not all pasta advertised as 100 percent whole grain actually is, so they’ve taken to bringing their own to Italian restaurants.

Not only do they bring their own pasta, they have taken to “writing their dietary needs and cooking instructions on cards, which are handed in when they place an order.”

This is not the limit of their neediness, however. Read on. Coupons are involved.

And by “feminists”, I don’t mean the vast majority of nice and normal people who believe that men and women should treat (and pay) each other equally and with dignity but who also don’t fly into a paroxysm of rage when a fella holds a door for a dame. Or uses the word “dame”, for that matter.

Rather, I mean political feminists, those overgrown undergraduates for whom life is a constant search for something against which to take offense.

Let me back up: Last night I was riding to dinner and scanning the headlines when I came across this curious item, picked up by the Sydney Morning Herald from the UK’s Telegraph:

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Laugh, cry, or hold a protest, foie gras is one of the Prick’s top five pleasures in the world. Unfortunately it’s very hard to come by in Australia except in imported, pre-packed, and heat-pasteurised forms: An unholy alliance of class warriors and nanny staters have conspired to make producing this lovely luxury as illegal as setting up a meth lab in the garage and twice as frowned upon.

Fortunately, the Prick can live vicariously through Canada’s own Le Canard Enchante, who’s latest culinary school adventure involves cooking and eating her way through “a duck-load of foie gras“. A shame those sliders aren’t available in the Westfield.

And if you want to make a torchon as shown in her post, here’s a quick guide to pulling one together in 70 easy steps.

Via Bruce Palling at Gastroenophile, this Brasserie Chavot joint in London sounds like fun:

“The point here is the food, which is the sort of brilliant faux paysanne stuff you get when you put a culinary aristocrat in the kitchen. Just as we always knew, when I was a kid, that it was the girls from the most expensive public [private] schools who were the filthiest, so it takes a cook schooled in the ways of luxe to slum it with style.”

Rarely have truer words been put to paper. And can you imagine our own Terry Durack ever firing off a line like that? Or the likes of Anne Summers and the rest of the Misogyny Police letting him get away with it if he did? No, no, not really. Not at all.

Speaking of London, the Pricks are heading that way – as well as to Rome and a few other points in between – later this year. Besides the obvious, where should we go?

Gambling is not the Prick’s thing, but it’s hard to argue with Gai Waterhouse:

“They’re anti every industry in Australia, every industry in Australia they want to completely kill, and then they wonder why we’re going belly up. I tell you one
thing he’s [Tom’s] out there working his butt off and if everyone worked as hard as my son Tom we’d have a much better society in Australia, they should stop criticising. They don’t have to pick up the phone and have a bet, they don’t have to pick up a cigarette and smoke it. They don’t have to do anything, people have got intelligence and can make up their mind”. – Gai Waterhouse on Meet The Press, 01/04/2013

A happy and blessed Easter to all. More posts coming next week.

UPDATE: At least one commenter points out that the dates around this quote, well, don’t exactly marry up, and that the Prick may have egg on his face for reasons beyond his over-enthusiastic hollandaise-making. But hey, “fake but accurate”, right?

Suzanne Moore, writing in The Guardian, speaks out on behalf of Britain’s poor, living in a country where food has become (though hasn’t it always been?) a class signifier:

We are the seventh richest nation in the world, but there were increasing reports of teachers forking out to feed hungry pupils. This was also the year when people went baking-crazy. In grand marquees, people made gingerbread houses, madeleines and sugar swans, which were oohed and aahed over. Indeed, I see dough-boy from that show has now got a whole series on bread. Wow, how much can you say about bread when you have the charisma of a Kingsmill loaf – but carbs ahoy!

In this world of endless gastronomy, the superstar chefs say eat seasonally and simply. Again, this requires dosh. Choice costs. So what so we do for genuinely poor people? We take away even the most basic of choices. We infantilise them. They are not our problem any longer, but charity cases.

Ms Moore is referring to the limits on what can be purchased with food stamps, though certainly here in Australia everything from high alcohol taxes to attempts to introduce a fat tax to calls for the government to keep milk from being sold too cheaply also hit poor people who must get the most caloric bang for their limit buck, disproportionately.

But that’s beside the point: Check out The Guardian editorial page from the same day:

The thought that Cypriot halloumi could be the latest casualty of the crisis, admittedly not the most serious one, is sad … The cheese itself little deserves its current marketing difficulties in Europe. With a higher than normal melting point, it is generally dismissed as a culinary cheese and is usually to be found grilled on the barbecue, consumed with lunza (smoked pork loin) and Greek bread. But wrapped in mint leaves and aged, it becomes both drier, saltier and stronger. Either way it is a great cheese.

Comment may be free, but a great cheese is priceless.

This is not what it looks like:

Better living through chemistry

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