I live in Margaret Thatchers frot-fantasy.
The developement where Inky Towers rests was pushed through in the eighties just after The Maggon shot the Parker-Morris guidelines in the head. Parker-Morris set a standard for how much space should be allowed per person in a house. Ever wondered why dwellings from pre 1980 cost much more than new ones and are so much larger? That's why. When they went you got what we have now, hutches. our 3 bed semi is actually a 2 small room and a cupboard semi. The largest bedroom gives you a choice: double bed, or the ability to walk around.
The houses on our development, and there are way smaller ones with 3 beds, are sold mainly to young aspirationals. Not blue colour but pastel white. It is quiet and ha a green for them to play on.
I am the only one with a front rose garden, of course, because I love roses. Typical really, it just matures and I have to sell it. Albertine reached 12 ft by 20 ft this year.
In the mornings at 8.30 everyone, me included, gets into their car for the school run. the doors click in unison. On alternate Thursdays we put the bins out. It is the picture of ordered neighbourlyness.
It drives me potty.
Foal has now got used to me singing Malvina Reynolds greatest hit as we drive to school. It is irresistible. I just cannot stand the conformity at the same time as being drawn to its sickly addictive grasp.
Structure and system rule my life and mind. I struggle when I do not understand where I fit in. Or what the people round me are for, what they want. People lack purity of intention, due to woolly-mindedness. So this kind of conformism seems attractive. but at the same time it is all structure without benefit. they all suffer in these hobbit sized houses with their giant sized mortgages because they think they should. Something went very wrong here.
My daily shrink visits continue. Yesterday I met a trainee who I shall call Eric. Eric sat in the meeting where I was pouring out my bitterness and hurt and was clearly moved by it. I spoilt it by asking, at the end, what the hell switch flipped in his head and said "I want to be a Social Worker" but then I suppose there is no answer to that. Unless they are all on community service, or Lizard Men in deep cover.
Anyway on to last nights recipe, which was a kindacassoulet. The idea was a stovetop stew to do while foal and I were out. I included chicken breasts for foal and mrsinky but any tender meat will do, rabbit quarters or pork loin being good ones.
1 onion
3 duck legs (in suffolk even the ducks are inbred)
2 chicken breasts
4 rashers bacon
A smoked sausage of some sort, skinned.
olive oil
1 large can white beans
a good handful fresh green beans
a tray of button mushrooms
a tray of baby corn (optional)
a bouquet garni heavy on the sage
You need a heavy based pan. this is an old fashioned layered stew so respect the order. First bone your duck legs. It isnt hard, just cut down the inner thigh and circle the leg. Remove tendon but keep the bone. Tie the legs up with string into parcels.
Chop the onion and cube the bacon. fry in olive oil until the onion is dark. Add in the duck legs and brown top and bottom, then fish em out. brown the leg bowns on both sides then leave them in the pan as a lattice to form a layer at the bottom. the bottom of your pan should be dark brown here.
lay the duck legs on top of the bones. then the chicken breasts on top of that. then the white beans. then the green beans. then the mushrooms, then the bouquet garni, then the baby corn, then lastly the sausage. Pour enough weak stock or water over to just cover the duck leg layer. put a tight lid on. bring to the boil then turn right down. leave it for 2-3 hrs.
Thicken with beurre manie or cornflour, making sure to incorporate the fat which holds the flavour. traditionally this is topped with breadcrumbs then toasted. Serve with new bread or rice. It is VERY filling due to the fat. You should serve with a spoon and dig down through all layers. at 2 hrs the duck will still be parcels. at 3 it will be duckpaste, which is actually nicer.
RantingScienceZebra The rantings of a bitter, twisted, sometimes crippled and rather mad scientist
Can I admit to feeling an almost instinctive revulsion for post-Thatcher houses?
ReplyDeleteLooking out of my window, I can see a 1950s-60s council estate - Just a small one, four neatly-ordered streets of terraces, square, red brick, big rooms with big windows, square gardens fore and aft, just big enough to grow some vegetables and maybe keep a rabbit hutch or a few chickens. There's allotments across the old railway line anyway, split between the council tenants and the people in the even older houses, which have no gardens at all. These houses sell for approximately a pittance.
I've got one of the houses with no garden - A four-foot patch of grass at the front, with a single row of beans and a blackcurrant bush. In return, the smallest room in my house (Other than the bathroom, which is a cupboard) is still 3x5m. People in modern houses boggle that my three-bed terrace genuinely has room for three bedrooms, with room for double beds and wardrobes in all of them (Not all of them are actually set up as bedrooms, but the point stands). This cost me half a pittance.
The New Estate (there's always one) was built on the other side of the field a couple of years ago. I swear I could fit the whole footprint of their detached houses into my kitchen, plus maybe the stairwell. They also have endless little corridors and built-in cupboards making the rooms themselves tiny. These cost, and I am not joking, the same as buying my house *and* one of the ex-councils opposite.
I don't know why it's become more important to be able to say "I live in a detached house" than to be able to say "I can find somewhere comfortable to sit in every room".
And now I'm imaging buying the house opposite mine, and running a little skyway between my workroom window and the stair window...
That stew sounds amazing, even to a vegan like me, and it's got me plotting to nip down to the butcher's for some rabbit. I assume you're talking about using dried beans, rather than tinned? I miss cooking big extravagant things. Hope everyone enjoys it :)
If you've eaten Eric, I shall be very cross Inky.
ReplyDeleteEric will be made of stern stuff. Social work is not for the faint hearted.
ReplyDelete