MARROW MANIA

The flesh is willing…

For those of us living on reduced means and to a stringent budget the marrow is a beast that’s heaven sent. Nicknamed ‘the jolly green giant’s special friend’ and ‘the fat man’s cucumber’ by yours truly just this second (though I’m only aping some wannabe punster called Shakespeare or something), there’s a glut of this delightful overlarge vegetable (although botanically speaking a fruit) in greengrocers right now. Like its poor relation, the courgette, it’s a lustily versatile fella that’s practically fat-free so you can bake, boil or fry to your heart’s content. Perfect for jams, preserves and even a very potent wine, if you spice up his life a little Mr Marrow will pay you back in spades. Here are three easy-peasy possibilities…

STUFFED MARROW

A simple supper that – should you have a big one – will serve four amply. No need for sides either; simply eat straight from the skin (and no, that’s not some obscure Jeffrey Dahmer allusion)…

INGREDIENTS

1 large marrow

1 large onion

1 tbs olive oil, finely chopped

500g lean lamb or beef mince

1 or 2 red chillies (according to taste), finely chopped

5 or 6 small button mushrooms, sliced

½ beef stock cube

1 glass good red wine

1 good glug Worcester sauce

1 tbs tomato puree

Salt and black pepper

Fresh Parmesan to serve (optional)

CHECK THE METHOD

1. Prepare your marrow. Use a cleaver or large knife to cut in half lengthways, then scoop out and discard the seeds

2. Heat up olive oil in a medium casserole dish

3. Add onion and sweat for a couple of minutes

4. In goes the mince, now brown well all over

5. Chuck in the mushrooms and chilli and cook for a couple more minutes

6. Crumble in the stock cube, tomato puree, red wine, Worcester sauce and a little water, season well and give it a good stir, and allow to simmer for 20 mins, stirring from time to time. Meanwhile preheat your oven to 200C

7. Rest the two halves of your marrow in a large roasting dish skin side down

8. Fill both cavities with the mince mixture (it should be viscous in texture – reduce for a bit longer if runny) and place the stuffed marrow halves on a medium shelf

9. Roast for 40-45 minutes until the marrow flesh is tender to a sharp knife

10. Remove, let cool for a few minutes. Serve with a dusting of fresh Parmesan, if desired

SPICED ROAST MARROW

I tried this yesterday as a side with a roast dinner and it rocked the goddamn spot. The cumin helps the flesh take on a wonderful pale orange hue, and it’s divine at enhancing blander cuts of meat…

INGREDIENTS

1 marrow

1 heaped tsp dried chilli flakes

1-heaped tsp cumin seeds

Salt and black pepper

1 tbs olive oil

CHECK THE METHOD

1. Preheat oven to 200C

2. Skin the marrow, scoop out its innards, and cut the flesh into chunky one-inch cubes

3. Place cubes in a large roasting tin

4. Add the chilli, cumin, seasoning and olive oil. Distribute evenly over the marrow chunks using your hands

5. Wash your hands – especially before using toilet or satiating any erotic urges

6. Roast for 30-40 minutes until slightly charred at the edges

MARROW HOOCH

My dad used to make a marrow wine that was practically sherry like in consistency and taste, but with much more potency. For some reason he stopped yet I’m assured the following recipe will have the desired effect. It’s a tad unconventional (stockings!) but works because the sugar ferments in the marrow, generating liquor that gradually eats its way through its base and collects in the pot below. Only one way to find out for sure… bottoms up!

INGREDIENTS

1 large marrow

Demerara sugar

Fresh ginger root

1 pair ladies’ nylon stockings

CHECK THE METHOD

1. Slice the top off the marrow and scoop out the seeds, but leave as much of the flesh as possible. Don’t puncture the skin

2. Fit one stocking leg onto the marrow, and pack tightly with Demerara sugar

3. Stand upright in a large vase and leave for a day. Osmosis will draw fluid from the marrow into the sugar, dissolving some and leaving a gap below the end of the marrow

4. Add a teaspoon of ginger and pack more sugar on top

5. Replace the marrow upright in the pot, and cover with second stocking leg

6. Leave in a cool dark place for at least two weeks, better still four. Inspect at intervals

7. Drain through muslin into a bottle and chill for at least six hours

SWINE FEVER

Living high on the hog…

BOSS HOG

It’s a feverish August bank holiday weekend and I’m part of a scene being partially replicated across the length and breadth of the UK. I’m with a group of people, we’re outdoors, somewhere greenly pastoral, and we’re talking, drinking, smoking, some even dancing awkwardly to ward off the oncoming chill. And whether we’re at a party, a festival, a celebration or just with maxing and relaxing with a large group of friends, the one constant is we’re all waiting for the same thing. Only in this particular case the star of our show has gone AWOL. He’s a star that will be the subject of frenzied anticipation before he arrives fashionably late – after taking an unexpected detour at a venue down the road – encased within a sleek space-like vessel, specifically designed for his reassuringly rounded porcine frame.

Wide-eyed children gather round to gaze unerringly as a flustered-looking, slightly balding man in a butcher’s apron methodically dismantles this vessel. Once hard-bodied village toughs, with faded tattooed eulogies to their long-dead grans on crocodile tans, lick their lips and drool into their Summer Lightnings and Scrumpy Jacks as a dense waft of roast meat escapes his craft. Ladies of a certain vintage briefly pause their Chenin Blanc-fuelled conflabs for a good 30 seconds to deeply inhale the exotic aromas, grinning as beatifically as their crumbling dentures allow. All are lustily transfixed.

Forget barbeques – so terribly old hat and passé – there’s a new kid on the block and he’s got mass catering on lock. He’s the hog roast. And he’s the daddy now.

PIG BUSINESS

Along with the sudden ubiquity of the beer festival (and often in tandem with it), the hog roast is currently the du jour al fresco dining experience – achingly popular from the hoi polloi downwards for weddings, christenings, funerals, you-name-it, though not, of course, bar mitzvahs.

Research conducted by the Independent on Sunday backs this up – with a 100% increase in bookings in recent years, and a roast hog the rather unromantic star turn at 50% of British weddings (and at a recession busting £400 per pig it’s not difficult to understand why). And while its soaring popularity is undisputed it’s also estimated that 65% of hog-hosters are moonlighters, non-professional caterers with a neat entrepreneurial sideline. All that crackling is making them rich!

SQUEALADELICA

Much of its popularity, its fervent admirers allege, comes from the ‘Wow’ factor of witnessing a whole pig on a spit. From where I’m standing this is more of a damp squib. Eyes may be solemnly trained on the flustered-looking man’s gradual unsheathing of our upcoming repast but as a ceremony it leaves a lot to be desired. In turns out the pig is already cooked, clad in a not unattractive brittle-brown crackling, and after a few seconds of breathless marvelling further that yes there really is a whole pig on a spit (albeit a headless one, so which end is which?), our flustered friend starts hacking at the carcass with a Psycho knife as his cohort starts set up a serving area to his right.

  

That ‘wow factor’ is diminished further by the plated results. As a queue snakes hungrily towards the stall, those at its apex are offered a floured white bap, a chunk of moist grey flesh, some sage and onion stuffing (more Tesco Value than Paxo) and a shard or two of crackling. That’s it. Though help yourself to applesauce and salads if you so desire. As pork sandwiches go it’s adequate, nothing to write home about, even though the crackling is as irresistibly earthy and primal as it should be (though a carnivore who doesn’t like crackling isn’t worthy of the name). And while there’s plenty more for seconds, thirds if you can take it, somehow the ceremony feels slightly hollow, and a lot less than it was cracked up to be.

UNLEASH THE BEAST

And while I’ve partaken manfully and all other guests appear blissfully serene with such indulgence, it’s hard not to summon up indelible images of the boys in William Golding’s Lord Of The Flies, or recall the brutal descent into savagery that unravels once a renegade Jack has killed, and roasted, his first pig. And with more crackling and jungle juice being passed around as darkness falls, the spectre of Golding’s novelised beast looms ever larger. So I take the only sensible option and make a sharp, if slightly uncoordinated, exit.