Monday 26 September 2022

Diversion

I bought some duck to make chinese style duck in hoisin sauce in pancakes.   It's meant to be marinaded overnight, and I discovered too late that I didn't have any ginger. 

This morning I went to a nearby tiny town, which has an Asian supermarket.  I had decided I'd buy the pancakes rather than make them.  I've made them from scratch before, they were fine - but no better than bought ones.  I decided to pop to the nearby big supermarket to get the ginger, and some vegetables etc to do a bit of bulk cooking.

So today I made the duck stuff.  It's been marinading for about 4 hours, and then I put it in the vacuum chamber to finish it off.  I was going to do that initially,  but I thought it would be better once all the marinade ingredients had had time to mellow and mingle.  It's now simmering on the hob, and it's a 2 hour job.

While all that was going on,  peeled and pressure cooked a 2.5kg bag of King Edwards.    I also cooked some blitzed garlic in butter so I could make aligot mash.   I should have just put the whole cloves in the pressure cooker with the potatoes, but I didn't think until it was too late.     As soon as the potatoes were done, I used Masha to mash them with pepper and I tested a bit. I'd forgotten just how fabulously delicious  King Edwards are for mashing.  I'd already got everything else ready though, so I added the garlicky butter and the cheese, gave them a quick Masha, and they were done.     I measured them out into single portion tubs, and stacked them to cool.

While I'd been waiting for the potatoes to pressure cook, I prepped the ingredients for Catherine Phipps' Chilli.    As soon as I'd potted up the mash,  I rinsed the pot (I was using the other one for the Duck) ,  and got started.  We like our chilli as strips of meat rather than mince,  and it had taken me a while to slice up all the cubes of pork and beef.   

While that was doing, I decided to prep the tomatoes that DH had brought in from the greenhouse.  I thought I'd try dehydrating them to the "sun dried" stage.... or drying them completely and making tomato powder.    I even went to the trouble of skinning them (boiling water then ice cold, skins slip off),  cutting them , and then removing the seeds etc.     I even went to the effort of straining the seeds and centres to get the "tomato stock" which will add an extra tomato zing to a sauce (probably tomato sauce on plain pasta, later in the week).

After I'd portioned up the chilli,  I thought about doing the bolognese (I had defrosted quite a lot of portk and beef mince for this) ,  but I really couldn't face it.  Plus,  I had one pressure cooker liner in the dishwasher and one on the hob.  I did consider prepping the rest of the ingredients but, frankly, I couldn't be bothered.

I've done nothing towards my stated objective, and I've only got a few days left.  But the freezer will have some fab "ready meals" in.  And I've had a productive day, so that's a fair swap. 

Hygienist tomorrow,  and Miss Teen after school (hopefully).  Can't see me making much headway tomorrow either.  Never mind.


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