A festival of pork

For a recent family festival we settled on pork, ordering a piece of rolled shoulder from the butchers in Manor Green Road.

But first to Kingston, the day of the water rats noticed at reference 3. Also the day when one of the clothes shops in the market square put out a whole lot of good quality wooden hangers for passers-by to help themselves to. I would have taken a dozen, but for some reason, BH drew the line at my taking just three.

Next to Bachman's, with my having been a little economical with the truth when I mentioned apple strüdel at reference 3. Yes we did take some strüdel, but we also took a lemon meringue gateaux, a sort of gateaux version of the humble lemon meringue pie. Sadly I forget to take a picture of the one we bought, and while the picture provided by Bachmann's is the right cake, it is not a very arty shot, and neither Bing nor Google could turn up anything better.

Next to the butchers where a fine looking piece of pork was waiting for me. I forgot to make a note of the weight and it was too much for our scales, so I was reduced to using a balance in the garage, with five pounds at the far end, as snapped above. From which we did the sum 47cm / 23.2cm times 5lbs equals 10.12lbs equals 10lbs 1.92oz equals 10lbs 2oz.

Snapped here after salting the crackling (all the better to crackle with), having been pleased to find that it did fit in our roasting tin. No need to take a slice off. But how long to cook it for? The last 5lbs piece was cooked for three hours at 160°C plus rest. It was getting on for twice as heavy as we usually had, but it was long and thin. So probably not twice the time. We settled on 5 hours: in at 07:45 and out to rest at 12:45, perhaps dropping the temperature 20° at the half way point. Which we did, giving it a good baste at the same time.

Snapped above at the point of service. I thought it rather overcooked, but others thought it was fine and four fifths of it went at a sitting, leaving just about a cold meal for the two of us the next day.

On the next occasion we have a pork joint of this size and shape, I shall drop the time by maybe an hour. Maybe even use the thermometer. Maybe take a look at reference 4, where there was a similar problem and which I should have turned up on this occasion.

Preceded by a spot of smoked salmon, for a change, and taken with boiled potatoes and salad. This last for another change. Taken without dressing and I don't recall anyone asking for any.

Also taken with some white wine, some of the sparkling variety (right), some of the almost sparkling variety (left). Both taken in the past but it is left as an exercise to the reader to find out when.

For dessert, the cake, which all went. Plus jelly (orange jelly with added tinned oranges, a dessert dish I am fond of, but which is not to be had from the sort of restaurants which we use), plus ice cream, plus cheese and biscuits. Lincolnshire Poacher with Carr's water biscuits of course.

I had intended to crack out some Calvados to wind up the proceedings but got diverted to entertaining younger guests outside and forgot about it.

The only items actually bought were the two beams from Travis Perkins. The bench was inherited. The necessary blue rope was picked up in the margins of a visit to the Barrowboy & Banker at London Bridge. The pole middle left was probably an estate agents' pole picked up on my rounds. Ditto the black sand filled bags from BT (perhaps intended to hold down lively cables stretched along the road) being used as markers. The fibre board came from a neighbours skip - although I did have to buy the screws.  And we free-sourced the tyre on the Isle of Wight (see reference 6). With the back garden sloping gently downhill towards the back of the house, there was quite a variety of challenges. Plus the emptying challenge proved popular: place tyre on its side and fill the under-side with water. Then the challenge is to get all the water out by shaking the tyre around (or otherwise) without getting wet oneself. Surprisingly difficult. Self bottom left.

PS: File Explorer has taken to rotating the odd thumbnail in the window used for image insertion. I think it is something to do with overwriting an image which has been rotated, with the file properties retaining some of the rotation bit but not the file itself. What you actually get on your screen varies.

Reference 1: https://www.masterbutchersepsom.co.uk/.

Reference 2: http://www.bachmanns.co.uk/.

Reference 3: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/07/water-rats.html.

Reference 4: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/search?q=two+legs+lamb.

Reference 5: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/04/having-noticed-dry-run-at-reference-1.html. It was also an occasion to crack out the special card holder, first used on the occasion noticed here, having decided that the regular cards on offer in the Ashley centre were not quite what was needed.

Reference 6: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/07/a-tale-of-tyre.html.