Tuesday 7th February 2023

Word (and food) of the day: Faggot.

Faggot.

Wikki defines faggot(s) as:

"Faggots are meatballs made from minced off-cuts and offal, especially pork (traditionally pig's heart, liver, and fatty belly meat or bacon) together with herbs for flavouring and sometimes added bread crumbs. It is a traditional dish in the United Kingdom, especially South and Mid Wales and the English Midlands. Faggots originated as a traditional cheap food consumed by ordinary country people in Western England, particularly west Wiltshire and the West Midlands."

We did not have faggots in Suffolk. Or Norfolk.

So, in November on one of the trips to the butcher, I got given what Mark called "artisan meat balls". Known as faggots.

The faggots were meatballs contained withing a sac of caul fat, which gave them the appearance of large testicles.

When I received them, the four faggots were frozen, so I put them in the freezer and thought little of them. Though they were there each time I opened the freezer. Mark said they were best served with creamy mash and lashings of gravy. And as it turned out we had gravy left over from last week's chicken, and there were two sweet potatoes that I could mash and add horseradish too.

A plan formed, then.

I suppose if you knew what were in sausages, you'd not eat them, so best not know what was in these faggots. I had haggis once. I was in Scotland on Burns' Night, and the hotel had it as a starter, so I tried it, and was quite like faggots as it turned, just contained in a sheep's stomach. Rich, slightly spicy mince.

Anyway, that was in the evening. Before then there was the whole day and over seven hours of work to get through.

We slept through the alarm, getting up at six, meaning I had an hour to get ready and set the office up.

Not much to tell, apart from what could go wrong, did. And then some. As the news came in I just sat there, slack jawed. There's chaos and theres this chaos.

Best not think of it, and have lunch.

Lunch was Moroccan chicken sew, which I cooked up some rice to go with it. Not as good as my tagine, but good enough for lunch.

At half three, I wrapped up work, and went out to put the bager/fox food out. By crickey, it was cold. So cold my legs convinced my head that a walk was a bad idea.

You do realise, my head said, this means no excuses tomorrow?

My legs said, "whatever".

So, I seared the faggots, put them in a pot, topped it with gravy and added a glug of red wine, and popped into the oven on gas mark 3 for just over an hour, then peeled the sweet potatoes set to boil on the hob. Some frozen sliced carrots finished the meal, and that was that.

In the end, dinner was most splendid. The caul fat has melted, leaving just the mince balls. The parts went together very well, and made a very nice winter's meal, lots of comfort food.

And after coffee, we went into the garden armed with the binoculars to look for the green comet, C/2022 E3 (ZTF). It should have been near to Mars, so easy to find.

In fact we think we saw the faint haze of the comet, hard to tell, but the new binoculars made stargazing much easier, and as we live in a designated dark skies area, the views even out of the village were fine.

After 20 minutes we came inside, and I joined Scully on the sofa to watch the footy.

Not a bad day, all in all.