A gigot for Valentine

It was convenient to have a frozen leg of New Zealand lamb from Sainsbury's on St. Valentine's day, rather than the shoulder of English lamb from Manor Green Road which we have been having recently. 

Plus some chocolates, on this occasion from Leonidas rather than Fortnum's. Confused by being directed to somewhere called Chocolate Express and from there to the St. Helier in the Channel Islands, in fact to the middle of the large covered market snapped from Street View above. Which somehow we had managed to miss on our one visit to St. Helier, which was odd as St. Helier is not a very big town. 

It seems a very long time ago when I was still working at the bottom of Whitehall and occasionally used to buy chocolates from the Leonidas shop in Victoria Street - now removed to nearby Broadway. A time when there were at least two respectable cigar shops in the same street. One run by a couple of brothers, Ugandan Asians, who drove in each morning from somewhere in the wilds of East London. They once told me that they did quite a brisk business anonymising Cuban cigars by removing their bands and sending them under plain brown covers to the US where they were and are not allowed. The US can be spiteful. I was too discrete to ask what they put on the customs declarations.

Quite a cold morning, so I put on my hard-core red sno-jacket from Animal for my spin around Jubilee Way, the first time I have been so wrapped up. And I did not overheat either.

For a change, celery with the brown rice and crinkly cabbage, rather than our more usual carrot with parsnip. The drill being to cut the celery sticks into about three inch lengths, coarsely chop a couple of onions and then gently cook them in a little oil and butter. Maybe a little juice from the meat. Very good it was too.

The lamb was entirely eatable, but I had forgotten that frozen can be a bit chewy compared with fresh and should have been cooked more slowly - as, indeed, BH had first suggested. I remembered that the naval aunt, who used a lot of frozen lamb used to add some white tenderising powder to the mix, a trick she may have learned when they were stationed out in Singapore, that is to say before we learned the error of our imperial ways.

Bing is keener on tenderising hammers than tenderising powders, but paging down, I got to the Amazon offer above. I think the idea is to rub the stuff into the surface of the meat, maybe helping it along by jabbing a knife in here and there.

Taken with a spot of Waitrose Pomerol, a brand we have had several times before and have found satisfactory. This time I noticed that it was 14.5% rather than the wine usual 13% - which, having noticed, made a difference. See reference 2 for an earlier purchase of same, albeit the 2016 vintage rather than the 2018 vintage on this day.

The lamb which is snapped above at the end of the first shift, was followed by the ceremony of putting the left over bits of fat out for the crows and magpies. With their not playing the game at all on this occasion. The fat went, but not while we were looking out for them. Usually they are on the case within a couple of minutes or so. Must have very good eyes, at least when they are hungry.

Next stage, some apple and blackberry. Apples from Sainsbury's, blackberries from some hedge hereabouts. BH tells me that supplies are holding up well. But will they hold our until this year's are ready, which was the case last year? See references 3 and 4.

Last stage, crack into the chocolates. Chocolates which came in a fancy red box, which must have accounted for a fair proportion of the purchase price. But we did not mind as we thought the presentation very good. We rather liked the way the chocolates were not all crammed together, in the way of many of the chocolate shops in London, where the assistants are keen to maximise the weight sold, their being sold by weight. 

The chocolates lasted into the third day. I had one - possibly involving pineapple - which I was not that keen on, but the overall verdict was that the more conservative style suited us better than Fortnum's who were more into following the latest flavour fads.

Took in a nocturne before Scrabble, finding it easy enough - on this occasion anyway - to follow the score. Which I like to do occasionally as it makes one hear things which one otherwise misses. On the other hand, not being that good at it, it takes a lot of brain power away from musical appreciation proper. 

I wondered where I got my score from, edited by Paderewski and published in Warsaw. Seems a bit grand for a Hook Road Arena car booter. Reference 5 says that I have had them for more than five years, but more than that I cannot say.

I lost the Scrabble which followed, by 259 to 246 points, exclusive of any penalty points there may have been. Perhaps I took a spot more Calvados to smooth over my irritation.

PS 1: the rapidly changing weather had tricked the buds on the pussy willow over the fence at the bottom of the garden into Spring action, with the wind knocking this twig into our garden. But I don't think that the buds ever matured.

PS 2: the crows did much better with the scraps from the cold cut of the day following. Into action more or less instantly.

PS 3: further puzzle about remove and resection. So we say that someone or something was removed, perhaps somewhere, without regard to the iterative sense of the 're' prefix. While the iterative sense is not present at all in the case of resection, mostly used in a surgical context.

Reference 1: https://leonidasbelgianchocolate.co.uk/.

Reference 2: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/06/date-fail.html.

Reference 3: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/08/fifth-and-last-blackberries.html.

Reference 4: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/07/first-blackberries.html.

Reference 5: http://psmv2.blogspot.com/2015/12/by-appointment.html.

Reference 6: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/02/a-moan-for-st-valentine.html. Will we ever make it to Rome to touch the box which contains the skull of the man himself?