Beef stock

Some throw-away comment from Rosa on Friday inspired me to ask in the butchers if they had any beef bones. They gave me a large plastic bag-full for free, so I spent Sunday stinking out the kitchen with a simmering pot of beef and scum.

Having never made beef stock before, the first thing I did was track down a recipe. All my classic cookbooks failed me. I found no mention of it in Mrs Beeton's Household Management. Edouard de Pomiane simply uses it, he has someone to make these things for him, probably in these new-fangled 'cubes'.

Getting a bit more contemporary, an excellent book mum gave me for christmas, Living and Eating by John Pawson and Annie Bell (which is a bit of a snob's bible to all you need to know) told me that there was a virtual PhD in stock-making available it could attain such artistry, and then proceeded to only give me a recipe (which I made with good results just after christmas) for chicken stock. Hugh Fernley-Whittingstall got me all excited by having a reference to it in the index of The River Cottage Cookbook, but it turned out only to refer to its existence as a recipe. Finally! Gary Rhodes came up with the goods in his New British Classics book. Here's his recipe in summary (from memory):

• 5kg beef bones
• 6.5-7 litres of cold water
• 3 onions
• 2 sticks of celery
• 2 carrots
• 1 leek
• 4 tomatoes
• 1 clove garlic
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 sprig thyme
• salt

Roast the onions slowly for two hours or so. The Roast the beef bones at 200^oC for half an hour. Ten minutes in, chuck the roughly chopped carrot and celery in with the bones. Put everything in a big pan. Bring it to the boil and keep it there for 8 hours, skimming the scum off the top every now and then.

I ballsed up the thyme and chucked in some dried stuff, that I then skimmed off twenty minutes later. I also ballsed up by not having a large enough pan to fit all that water in.
By about midnight last night it was ready, if a little too reduced, even. I strained off the lumps, and took the bones out of these. Then I pureed the remainder into a further stage opf soup, that made a grinding noise with the blender as the bits of gristle and bone whizzed round (I had to hack the some of the roasted bones in half with a butcher's cleaver - no simple task for a first-timer). Two minutes later, this final by-product was in the Council compost bin, which marks the territory of our doorstep like the piss of a randy old alcoholic fishmonger. Can't wait for summer!

By 1 am, I'd finished pouring it into various containers to cool, and sort the skimmed-off matter to get some second servings of stock, true blemished skimmings and purest beef lard (pure except for a bit of thyme and leek).
I'll let you know if it was worth the effort when I actually make something.

The chicken stock has made some really really nice stew with a recipe from Nigel Slater's Kitchen Diary, which I got for christmas and am spending the year reading so that I can appreciate the food and get inspiration for seasonal cooking.

Omega 3 oils

Following on from an interesting series of articles in the Ecologist the other month, the Guardian is now highlighting some research into the effects of diet on Anti-social behaviour and in particular the ongoing discussion over whether we should be force-feeding schoolchildren and prisoners cod liver oil.

He has been rocking his 6ft 2in bulk to and fro while delivering a confessional account of his past into the middle distance. He wants us to know what has saved him after 20 years on the streets: "My dome is working. They gave me some kind of pill and I changed. Me, myself and I, I changed."
...
The UK prison trial at Aylesbury jail showed that when young men there were fed multivitamins, minerals and essential fatty acids, the number of violent offences they committed in the prison fell by 37%. Although no one is suggesting that poor diet alone can account for complex social problems, the former chief inspector of prisons Lord Ramsbotham says that he is now "absolutely convinced that there is a direct link between diet and antisocial behaviour, both that bad diet causes bad behaviour and that good diet prevents it."

I'm not sure how good for sustaiable fisheries this news is, but that your diet has a huge impact on your life is clear to anyone who's in my house about 8 o'clock; typically, I'll still be halfway through crashing about the kitchen and swearing about how there's no coconut milk, oblivious to some burning onions. The rage and the fury will be beautifully counterpoised by my girlfriend's drained expression as she stares with blank hunger at the half-chopped vegetables on the chopping board.
As soon as we've eaten we get sleepy and then about an hour later we can get stuff done again.
Proper eating is like proper sleeping. If you don't do it correctly it's not surprising you go a bit doolally. I can't really speak. I have been skipping breakfast for about a year now, and generally don't get hungry until about eleven thirty in the morning.
Anyway, do clcik on the title and read the article above, it's quite interesting.