Pork imperfect

A fortnight ago it was time for rolled shoulder of pork. The story was, no need to order that sort of thing. Just turn up and take it away, which is what I did.

The pork appeared to have been delivered to the shop in two plastic bags, one for the skin and one for the piece of shoulder. So much for butchers taking in whole pigs and doing the job themselves. And even in this butcher, in the past, he has got the best part of a fore quarter out of the cold store and cut my piece out of that. Reckoning a head, four quarters and two sides to the pig. In this case, one did not even know if the skin and the meat came from the same animal, which seemed oddly improper, if probably unimportant.

Sold as 2.2kg or so, weighed in the next day at 5lbs 13oz. Doesn't look too bad in the snap above, even if the skin was very thin and very white. And as it turned out, the bristles had not been scraped off properly - leaving it a little unsightly cooked - it had not been very scored very well. Maybe the skin was so thin that the butcher had to go easy in that department.

Started the vegetable stock first, bringing it to the boil at 09:40. Onions, celery, a little carrot, a bit of greens. Potato peelings later.

Checking the precedents for the pork, it seems that the last such pork, looking very much the same as this one at the off, was taken in March last year, as noticed at reference 1. A little overcooked was the story there.

So I settled on 170 minutes at 160°C. Salted the skin thoroughly, a wheeze which has usually worked in the past. Plan: oven on at 10:30, meat in at 10:40, aiming for 13:30. The salted meat actually got in at 11:05 and was looking quite pale at 13:00, so I turned it up to 175°C. Greased and added the parsnips around 13:!5.

Oven off, meat plated at 13:45 and then put back in the oven for 15 minutes. Strained off the stock and used it to wash out the roasting tin. Roux'd up some of the fat and made the gravy in the usual way, less my principal assistant.

In the event the parsnips were overcooked, the pork rather less so. But it was still nice and moist inside, which was good, improving as one got further in.

But the crackling was not right at all: wrong colour, too thin and no succulent brown fat. Plus the bristles and the scoring already mentioned. We did not eat very much of it.

Fortunately, the other vegetables, the gravy and the wine (the last of the Vulcaia) were spot on.

Pineapple for dessert. From the man in the market, who has interesting stuff, but who is not terribly reliable. Del Monte Honeyglow, so probably from Costa Rica and for which see reference 2.

We took it sliced crosswise, just the one slice each, despite some mutterings about how the proper way to do it was lengthwise. We also opted to chew the flesh off entire segments, rather than attempting to cut out the sort of clean lumps you get in a tin. Very good it was too - so it must have been absolutely full of sugar of some kind.

The day following, cold pork, microwaved old potato, new white cabbage and swede, warmed up gravy. All good.

Polished off the pineapple: still good but it was pretty ripe and needed eating up.

The day following, instead of gravy again, I knocked up some sauce with butter, garlic, onion and tomatoes (rather pale, from Morocco). Plus some chou pointu (which was a bit feeble and limp, even lightly cooked). Plus rice. But good overall.

The day following that, down to last knockings, so augmented the pork with some (butternut) squash soup, livened up with the harissa we had bought some weeks previously. Which I now find from reference 3 to have been some months previously. But date of purchase aside, the harissa did very well at geeing up a type of soup which I often find a little bland, even for my salt-and-sauce-lite palette.

What was left of the pork visible top right. What was left of the blackberry apple in the stainless steel bowl to the left of that.

And then, at what we call tea-time, later that same day, the remains of the gravy were poured hot onto my thick slice of brown and topped up with the last few bits of pork. Closing the proceedings with a few brick dates from Cullompton, via Grape Tree. Consumption of which has fallen right off, perhaps because I am not getting the exercise I used to.

PS 1: given my previous foray into the world of pineapples from Costa Rica, which closed with the post at reference 4, I have been interested to start reading at reference 5 of the troubles in neighbouring Guatemala. Maybe I will get to the bottom of why the one place seems to be doing quite well, and the other not so well.

PS 2: a spot of heritage on a postcard, sent in by a correspondent. My thought was that it would have been hard work pushing the barrow around all day. Wouldn't want too many hills - either up to down.

PS 3: while another correspondent is keeping me posted with the doings of the bent crane, last noticed, with a slightly different snap, at reference 6.

It seems that a chunk of it has been sold off to interests in Abu Dhabi. In effect, another chunk of our green and pleasant land sold off to the petrocrats to help balance the books, to help us carry on living beyond our means. But I suppose flogging them peregrine falcons and golden eagles only goes so far - and our new government has bottled out of the overt tax rises we need to pay for our hospitals and so forth, settling for more modest covert tax rises. And debt. And the gentry from the financial & legal services department have no doubt taken commission.

In due course, before they start cladding the lift shaft, I must go and have a go at counting the floors. Before, as I suspect that counting well-spaced holes in the lift shaft will prove a lot easier than counting the floors in the finished building.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/03/pork.html.

Reference 2: https://www.honeyglowpineapple.com/.

Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/08/up-to-downs.html.

Reference 4: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/12/o-henry.html.

Reference 5: Guatemala: Democracy Imperiled: Bernardo Arévalo’s inauguration last year as president of Guatemala symbolized the revival of democracy in a notoriously corrupt country. A concerted effort by obstructionist elites now threatens to oust him on specious grounds—and bring repression back - Aryeh Neier, Amrit Singh, NYRB - 2025.

Reference 6: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/01/kensington-journey-home.html.