Frugal food can be delicious, but crubeens proved a step too far for the Doorley family.
I’VE JUST HAD one of those eureka moments, having finally cracked the difference between cheap food and frugal food. Confused? So was I.
Wary as we all should be of statistics and "research" (read Ben Goldacre's Bad Scienceif you have yet to get in touch with your inner sceptic), it worries me that we currently spend less than ever before, as a proportion of our income, on food. On the other hand, I've spent the past few weeks trying to cook dishes that are based on inexpensive ingredients and that taste really good. It's about time, not money.
So, anyway, that's the way I distinguish between the cheap and the frugal. Cheap food, by and large, is rubbish: packed with fat and salt or sugar. Frugal food, on the other hand, is as wholesome as an episode of The Waltons, but a lot less cloying.
Cheap cuts of meat are cheap because they take ages to cook. Braise some round steak and it will take . . . what, an hour, to become nice and tender. Put some shin beef in a stew and give it two to three hours and it will be starting to melt. But what’s an hour or two in the whole scheme of things?
Plus, the shin beef, because of all the gelatine in the muscle sheath, will deliver a lovely, silky texture in the mouth. And because it’s a hard-working muscle, it releases lots of flavour when it’s done. I’ve done my homework on this. Shin beef from the hind legs takes less time to cook, the stuff from the front legs will take an extra hour, maybe more. But – maybe this is imagination – I think it tastes better. Finding a butcher who can give you the choice is another matter.
My approach to shin beef is very simple. I take about a kilo of it (for four of us) and cut it into fairly large chunks, trimming off any fat but leaving the connective tissue. Then I fry a pack of Lidl’s smoked bacon pieces in a little olive oil, remove them with a slotted spoon, and brown the beef in the same pan.
While the beef is taking on a bit of colour, I chop four onions, four sticks of celery and four cloves of garlic. When the beef is browned, it goes into a casserole with the bacon and is followed in the pan by the chopped vegetables. These are tossed around for a few minutes and added to the casserole.
Now, for the liquid. If I have some to spare, I’d consider deglazing the pan with the better part of a bottle of red wine and a cup or so of boiling water. In the interests of frugality, however, I tend to use beer (there’s one from Shepherd Neame called Spitfire that works exceptionally well. Guinness is a little too bitter. Murphy’s is good in a stew).
When all the ingredients are in the casserole I add two bay leaves and a generous bunch of thyme. I bring it to the boil, cover it, and put it in the bottom oven of the Aga for two to three hours. Or longer, if I’m not around.
On a less conventional note, I should mention that I now have the height of respect for chefs who manhandle crubeens into dainty morsels, having had a go myself at home. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall advised me, by way of one of his books, to shave the pig’s feet. It felt all wrong, especially as I seriously considered working up a lather before applying the razor.
After much scrubbing, the feet (75 cent each) were simmered for what seemed like days but in fact was a mere five hours. The smell was not quite as appetising as I would have wished. And it lingered.
When the paws had cooled, I dismembered them, taking out all the bones (there’s always one that gets away), removing clusters of bristle and a number of blood vessels. It all got just a little too anatomical.
After what felt like hours I anointed the squelchy side of the now hairless, boneless and veinless bits of limb with smooth mustard and topped it all off with immaculately buttered breadcrumbs. My appetite was waning.
Going against the advice of all the books, which is a habit of mine, I decided to crisp up the underside, or skin side, on the pan. This resulted in a series of explosions which blew off most of the breadcrumbs.
Having replaced these, I stuck the crubeens under a grill and let them brown. They began to smell almost appetising, but I just felt that I knew them a little too intimately at this stage.
We ate them, not quite with gusto but at least with open minds. And I have to say that I was quite relieved when my family informed me that, interesting as crubeens in the French manner undoubtedly are, they would let me know when they wanted them again.
The butcher was keen to know how it had all gone and I spared him no detail. “They’re a shocking price,” he said. “Look at that,” he added, picking up a hefty ham hock. “You get that for the price of two crubeens, all that meat for €1.50.”
And this is how I came to make my first ham hock terrine, which is another story. But the family have told me they want a second one.