Porcine Holocaust

When it comes down to liv­ing the good life, you don’t have to spend up large.

One of my favour­ite things about hav­ing been a dish­pig or assor­ted-kit­chen odd-body for a num­ber of years is that you soon learn that the most expens­ive foods are often the crappy­est.

So, to help you all out, here’s a few point­ers about sur­viv­ing on a par­tial-gour­met diet in Wel­ling­ton. Now, all of these pho­tos were taken at gour­met and some­times 4x4 cent­ral, Moore Wilsons.

Fact Num­ber One. Pork is good for you. To prove it, here’s a great example right here.

A kilo of pork belly for a miserly $12. There’s a bit of fat on there, but noth­ing you can­’t handle.

Of course, you don’t want to go over­board. Too much pork makes Che a rather fat boy. But everything in mod­er­a­tion, no?

So, I men­tion the pork belly because it’s a main ingredi­ent in cas­soulet, some­thing I’ll be dis­cuss­ing in more length over on Object Dart. Soon­er or later.

Prob­ably later.

But, there’s heaps of stuff you can find at Moore Wilson you can­’t find eas­ily any­where else. So here’s a few more

Braat­wurst is a kind of Ger­man saus­age made of… yup, pork. It’s light and deli­cious, and is good in a cas­soulet, but bet­ter with some­thing like a farm­er­’s plat­ter. These things aren’t so expens­ive when you con­sider how many you get in a pack. Plus you’re doing your bit to reduce the por­cine prob­lem. We all know there are too many of the little bas­tards in this world…

Just so you don’t think my mind only grav­it­ates to dead anim­al, you’ll also be want­ing to buy some of these fen­nel bulbs from Moore Wilsons.

They’re extremely deli­cious, espe­cially if you car­a­mel­ise them in the oven. They’re one of those veget­ables no-one really things about. But even if you’ve cooked the beje­sus out of them the keep a remark­ably sweet fla­vour, and always have that fresh ani­seed zing about them.

Of course if you’re roast­ing fen­nel, or a cassoulet/farmers plat­ter for that mat­ter, you’ll need a tub of this.

Duck fat is use­ful for just about everything. Be warned though, it has a very par­tic­u­lar odour, and will prob­ably keep your kit­chen smelling like an avi­an butt for days… All is for­giv­en when your roast pota­toes are golden brown and charm­ing the Joneses though.

OK. Back to pork. Kassler is a type of smoky bacon used in a lot of European cook­ing. It’s one of the ingredi­ents of both the cas­soulet and the farm­ers’ plat­ter, and the best qual­ity I’ve seen in town is def­in­itely here at Moore Wilsons. You can buy it from the super­mar­ket, but the fat on it just does­n’t have the light “fluffy” white col­our that good pork fat should. If your fat looks dis­col­oured, it is not good for you.

And that means both people and their foods…

OK. Let’s wind this up with this pic­ture. These olives are about $20. The thing to note is that they’re kala­mata olives. Most people have dif­fer­ing tastes in this regard, but kala­mata are the olives of choice in my mind.

Nor­mally I’d buy these from the Medi­ter­ranean Ware­house, but that’s anoth­er post. The trick in this instance is to tip all that brine off the olives, and put them into a con­tain­er like this one here. These green con­tain­ers keep the sun­light off your olive oil and stop it going bad. You can always start out with black olives (pic­tured), and slowly add green, kala­mata, whatever.

The trick is lose the brine by tip­pingthe whole she­bang out into a colan­der. Make a bou­quet garni of some rose­mary, some thyme, maybe some whole chil­is, and some whole gar­lic cloves. Tie them up in some cheese­cloth, and leave it in the bot­tom of the now-empty olive con­tain­er. Put your olives back in, and top up the con­tain­er with half-olive half-salad oil.

Voila. You’ll have the best mar­in­ated olives in all of Wel­ling­ton. Bar my house, of course.

Just top up the oil as it gradu­ally runs down (keep it above the level of the olives each time you refill the con­tain­er), and the fla­vour will improve over time.

Enjoy!

And say you read about Moore Wilsons here. You’ll get a 10% dis­count. Maybe. If you do, tell me.