Hash

Last Sunday, both being somewhat convalescent after some bug or other - we thought not Covid - a lower key lunch was indicated, and we opted for corned beef hash.

A dish which I used to cook quite often as a child as an accompaniment to our evening meal, the assumption at that time being that we had all eaten properly in the middle of the day at our various schools and canteens. Cooked in an aluminum frying pan with lard, neither pan nor lard being acceptable these days, and covered with an enamel plate in lieu of a lid for the last half hour or so. Which resulted in a savoury brown crust at the bottom, provided, that is, that one had managed not to burn it.

A dish which BH used to cook reasonably regularly say thirty years ago, but only recently revived. I took charge on this occasion, which meant larger lumps of potato and a little water rather than rather more milk. The complete recipe being to boil potatoes in egg sized lumps for about ten minutes. Gently fry some onions in oil. Stir up potatoes, onions and a 12oz tin of corned beef. Add a little water. Put in glass dish with lid, put dish in oven at 160°C for about an hour. Serve with brussels sprouts if available, otherwise something green.

Plus, on this occasion, it being a Sunday near Christmas, a drop of Waitrose's Fleurie.

Dessert taking the form of a small amount of left over orange jelly, dried figs from Grape Tree and walnuts from Waitrose. It being a while since I have noticed walnuts in their shells in main line shops. These ones were quite dark and dirty looking, with no red diamonds, so not the ones you get from California. But they tasted fine just the same.

I went on to lose at Scrabble by an embarrassingly large margin when my penalty points for not going out are taken into account. Note that, according to OED the s* word is an Old English word, with the first use listed being from 1328, but now described as being no longer in decent use. The ruling here in Epsom was that this did not rule it out for the purposes of Scrabble and on this occasion it served to unblock an otherwise rather blocked game. While belling is perfectly respectable, if not in common usage. Although to be fair, I had been thinking of belling the cat and had forgotten about the dog hunting usage.

References

Reference 1: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/search?q=corned+beef. Just two mentions of hash here, both from more than ten years ago. Maybe I will checking the interval.

Reference 2: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/07/shanklin.html. Later: one of the few recorded hashes since 2012. As it happens, in Brading, in the Isle of Wight.