Heritage mince

Having some cold roast lamb to use up today, our thoughts turned to our heritage mincer and the making of mince from cold roast meat rather than from raw mince - often of uncertain provenance - from the butcher.

First task was to locate our No.8 Spong mincer, which had not been used for some years. As it turned out, quite quickly retrieved from the attic, in rather better condition I might say than the one from Etsy snapped left, for which someone wants near £70, at least twice in cash terms what I paid new, perhaps 40 years ago. Gave it a wash and we were ready to go.

Selected the grinding plate with the quarter inch holes, thinking this fine enough for the purpose.

Cut the cold meat off the bone and into one inch cubes. Cut up a couple of onions, a couple of large carrots (new season from somewhere) and a lump of brown wholemeal bread (homemade). Mince the whole lot up. Add a little water and simmer for about an hour. Take off the heat.

Half an hour or so before you want to eat, warm it up again, add a little more water, about three ounces of white rice and a little brown food colouring, what used to be called gravy browning. Simmer for the further half hour or so.

With the result, rather oddly given that I came from a colour conscious, lefty family, being called black sambo. A dish of which I was fond as a child.

Served on this occasion with calabrese, not a heritage vegetable at all, although it was a little past its sell by date.

PS: over the years, the mincer has probably done more time on mincing up the ingredients to make beer with than on mincing up the ingredients to make mince. In the case of the beer, followed by much boiling in large pans and foaming, white plastic tubs in the airing cupboard. A fad which might have lasted a couple of years. I note in passing that this long barrelled mincer, unlike its smaller relatives, can cope with raw meat, so if you are fussy about your mince you can buy the stuff in lumps, as it were. However, the impression given by the people at Etsy, is that people buy them as kitchen or dining room ornaments, rather than for use. Kitchen heritage ware.

Reference 1: https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/467036382/vintage-meat-mincer-meat-grinder-spong.

Reference 2: https://www.etsy.com/uk. I think they are a sort of cut price ebay, but I have not bothered to check.

Reference 3: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/search?q=spong. Which reminded me that what we actually have is a No.10, rather bigger, but otherwise very similar in appearance to the No.8 model.