The pork scratchings made from the remains of the ham brought back from Spain have been a mixed success. I was hoping that the pieces of fat would crisp up to give a good crunch when bitten after they had been in the oven for a few hours. But I think they might have needed another couple of hours. They are still soft and too fatty and not great to eat. I will keep them in the fridge and throw them into the next stew that I make to help give it some body.

But amongst those pieces of fat there were small nuggets of meat that had managed to escape our knives in Spain. They have been worth searching out and preserving. They are mostly hard and crunchy like biting down on a boiled sweet. They still carry with them them the taste of the ham and occasionally there will be a piece that seems to have taken on an even more intense sweet taste. These pieces are soft like a sticky piece of toffee and taste as if they have come from deep inside the pig’s marrow. The taste lingers in the mouth and it is only a shame that there is not much of it left.

I found this whilst looking on the web for stories about husbands who may have been slapped by a mackerel.

SHORE WOMAN

Man to the hills, woman to the shore. (Irish proverb)

I have crossed the dunes with their whistling bent
Where dry loose sand was riddling round the air
And I’m walking the firm margin. White pocks
Of cockle, blanched roofs of clam and oyster
Hoard the moonlight, woven and unwoven
Off the bay. A pale sud at the far rocks
Comes and goes.

Out there he put me through it.
Under the boards the mackerel slapped to death
Yet we still took them in at every cast,
Stiff flails of cold convulsed with their first breath.
My line plumbed certainly the undertow,
Loaded against me once I went to draw
And flashed and fattened up towards the light.
He was all business in the stern. I called:
“This is so easy that it’s hardly right,”
But he unhooked and coped with frantic fish
Without speaking. Then suddenly it lulled,
We’d crossed where they were running, the line rose
Like a let-down and I was conscious
How far we’d drifted out beyond the head.
“Count them up at your end”, was all he said
Before I saw the porpoises’ thick backs
Cartwheeling like the flywheels of the tide,
Soapy and shining. To have seen a hill
Splitting the water could not have numbed me
More than the close irruption of that school,
Tight viscous muscle, hooped from tail to snout,
Each one revealed complete as it bowled out
And under.

They will attack a boat.
I knew it and I asked John to put in
But he would not, declared it was a yarn
My people had been fooled by far too long
And he would prove it now and settle it.
Maybe he shrank when those thick slimy backs
Propelled towards us: I lay and screamed
Under splashed brine in an open rocking boat
Feeling each dunt and slither through the timber,
Sick at their huge pleasures in the water.

I sometimes walk this strand for thanksgiving
Or maybe it’s to get away from him
Skittering his spit across the stove. Here
Is the taste of safety, the shelving sand
Harbours no worse than razor shell or crab –
Though my father recalls carcasses of whales
Collapsed and gasping, right up to the dunes.
But to-night such moving, sinewed life patrols
The blacker fathoms out beyond the head.
Astray upon a detritus of shells,
Between parched dunes and salivating wave
I claim rights on this fallow avenue,
A membrane between moonlight and my shadow.

(From Wintering Out, 1972)

I have mentioned that I brought back with me from Spain the remnants of the leg of ham we had out there. Today I have been turning it into good heart attack material. That’s pork scratching to the rest of you.

This is a simple process that entails putting the pieces of leg and the bits of fat in a tray and putting that in a low oven. The fat should render away so you are left with the small nuggets of meat, that escaped the sharp knife in spain, and crisped up curls of skin.

It has been in the oven for an hour or so now and the house is filling with the smell of slowly roasted pork fat. I have been picking at the small morsels of dark red meat. They pull easily away from the bone and skin now that the fat is melting away. The pieces of skin still feel quite soft but I think they will crisp up once they are out of the oven and have cooled down.

At this rate I will be lucky to make my half century later this year!

There was another Farmer’s Market today in New Ferry and for the first time in about two years I didn’t buy a free range chicken for Sunday lunch. I felt guilty about it and had to keep away from the stall in case I caught the eye of the man behind it and I felt obliged to buy one.

Instead of chicken we, or at least two of us, are going to have a smallish piece of roast beef for lunch. And this afternoon I managed to find in the garden a rather thin and gnarled piece of horseradish root to have with it.

I managed to resist the temptation to buy a great rib of beef which might have been a bit too much for just two greedy mouths. I also resisted the temptation to buy myself an ox heart to roast. It was only £2.00 and would keep me in sandwiches for the next two weeks but I was almost spent out by the time I saw it.

I did buy some bread sticks, a large breast of lamb, various sausage rolls and tarts (for lunch), cheese and two pheasants. I only needed the one pheasant but at £6.00 each and two for £8.00 it seemed silly not to take the second one as well. It is in the freezer.

I am having the pheasant this evening. It has been browned in butter and onions, a chopped quince has been added together with a half bottle of cider. It is bubbling away in the oven. I will have it with a couple of sliced fried potatoes and some good red wine.