scarlatti said to me "You really are something."Just now, she said "You really are something else."
I'm trying to work out when it changed.
We sat down to watch a film, "Secretary". I'd seen it once before. I've described it as one of very few films which actually captures the sub's mindset accurately, and this viewing confirmed my position. It's a good film. What we really needed was one of those public service announcements at the end, "if you are disturbed by the issues raised in this film, then call 0870..."
Then we ate.
This isn't a recipe I was following, of course -- like all the others, I'm just documenting what I did. This is one of the ones in the "find anything that looks tasty and put it in a pot" chapter.
scarlatti has a slow cooker, a "crock pot", something that can keep things simmering all day.This morning, after she'd gone to work, I went shopping. I came home with a big bag of carrots and turnips and some beef shank.
I cleaned and cut up the vegetables. I sealed the beef shank in a frying pan, and threw it into the crock pot. I braised the vegetables in the same pan for a couple of minutes, and then added those to the pot. There was a bag of garlic left over from
scarlatti's mother's stay, so I took three bulbs of that, broke them into cloves, peeled them, braised them and chucked them into the pot too. I added a generous slosh of cooking wine and topped it up with stock and water until the meat and veg were covered. I turned the pot on low and left it to bubble. A little later, I thickened the fluid with some cornflour.We just ate the result. It was very good. The meat was falling apart, the marrow had melted from the inside of the now hollow bones and disappeared into the gravy, and the garlic had disintegrated too. Carrots and turnips were soft but still held their shape. The leftovers have gone into two pots -- one with meat and veg and a little gravy, the other with gravy alone -- and they'll go into the freezer when they're cool. Oh, and
scarlatti isn't a gravy fan, apparently. 