The butcher at Manor Green Road did not have any proper shoulders of lamb, just shrink wrapped with the knuckle removed, not the same thing at all. But, as luck would have it, he did have this hand of pork, 6lbs 4oz of it for a tenner. A joint which the impoverished classes made a lot of use of in the olden days, but which I have not seen, let alone tasted, for years. FIL was keen on their price.
We had some debate about the appropriate mode of cooking and settled for sea salting, then giving it an hour of hot, say 180°C, followed by covering it with foil, followed by several hours of warm, say 160°C.
On the serving plate, a relic from a long-gone paternal aunt. Note the speckled effect of the salt, top right.
Served with a bottle of 2020 Savagnin, a new to us wine from a vigneron we have used before. People who have a website at reference 1, but who are a but careless about updating it, as they are still advertising two forthcoming salons (a new use of the word for me) in the spring of 2020. Not careless about the wine though, which we liked. We have some more tucked away under the stairs, having bought two or three bottles on spec, our usual brew from Tracy-sur-Loire having gone AWOL from the Guildford wine shop's website.
Tending the vines. The way it should be done...
Served with the usual boiled vegetables, plus the slow roast vegetables from underneath the joint, visible top right. Carrots, onions, possibly a spot of swede.
Still a good bit of meat left after the first cut.
Followed, I think by mince meat and apple tart, the 10p jars of post-Christmas mince meat from Sainsbury's still going strong.
Not quite sure what has happened here, as this shot taken in the course the day following suggesting something with much less meat. Maybe I had been snacking. Snacking certainly finished it off after this second meal, so what had seemed like quite a large joint actually did the two of us for two and a half meals.
The dripping did not last long at all, with BH taking it on toast over a couple of days.
All in all we were very pleased with our nearly new cut and we will probably try it again when there is an opportunity. Will it start turning up in fancy restaurants as the latest thing when the fashion for belly pork, another cheap cut from the olden days, wears a bit thin?
PS 1: trying to work out this morning why Google has suddenly started advertising H.M.S. Belfast via my email account. Advertisement which must also be timely as I am prompted to think about another visit to this ship, whose six inch guns could just have about made it to Epsom from where it is moored at London Bridge. At least that I what I remember from a handy map provided on the bridge. A ship on which the naval uncle served during the Korean war, during which the ship took a serious hit amidships. I remember him saying that they had done a good job on the repair and that you would have a job to tell now: something else to look out for.
PS 2: error! It looks as if I had made a habit of taking this wine at Terroirs, back in the days before the plague. See reference 2 - where the iberico presa looks rather better than that which we subsequently managed at home. For which see reference 3.
References
Reference 1: https://www.les-vignes-de-paradis.fr/.
Reference 2: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/01/no-spatburgunder.html.
Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2021/09/iberico.html.
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