My old greyhound is over his high temperature this morning and is eating a lamb bone behind me with great cracking relish. It's by Cross and Blackwell. I am supposed to be working on a website but find my feet jigging back and forth in a white-girl salsa to Ibrahim Ferrer whose CD arrived in post just now.
Down at the river the wild garlic is covering the earth and I have an appointment in an hour to meet a man about a cold store and food-prep premises down in the town. The plan is to buy local rare breed pork and convert it into Italian style cured meats and sausages. There has already been some success; a half a pig (Tamworth/Saddle Back cross) was reared in a back garden in Reston (the whole pig was raised there, it later became a half-pig) a village about 5 miles away and has rendered, amongst other things, a huge tenderloin, a beautiful ham (now nearly all eaten) flesh dark as mahogany, melting and salty-sweet and creamy fat which seems to carry even more flavour.
The back fat was cured and then left to hang in a dark shed, whose roof, sadly, leaked and left the beautiful pearly blocks all green and furry, I didn't try eating it, it was just too far gone.
The shed failure led to discovery of an old boat-building shed being used by Long Suffering and his almost business partner, it's a draughty old place, but water tight and down by the river. It occurred that the moist cool air from the river and the occaisional Harr might mimic the soft mountain mists of Emilio-Romagna. So far it has, and I wonder if it is my imagination but the seaweed in the tidal part of the river might even have added a certain iodiny quality to the ham.
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