Brawn, not brains

I have six cousins and two grandsons who will probably not care for this story.

On a recent Sunday morning Kay and I called in to our local supermarket on the way home from the gym. We were walking past the meat counter when we both paused, looked at the same item, then at each other and uttered the same word: “Brawn!”

It was not muscular strength we had in mind. The object in question was half a pig’s head, offered on special at $2, and gazing up at us from its black plastic tray with a single glazed eye.

For those who were born and raised on farms, the annual autumn killing of a pig was something of a ritual. Today’s farmer usually has his killing done for him (that is, if he still has a pig to act in the place of the mechanical gadget that fits in most kitchen sinks to dispose of otherwise useful peelings and scraps).

I won’t go into the gory details of slaughter, but traditionally the pig was killed in the autumn on a clear, cold night to ensure the carcase was firm and ready to be butchered the next day. Legs and shoulders became hams, sides were boned to become flitches of bacon that would hang from the kitchen ceiling, and all these were destined to be salted and turned over the next 10 days.

But from all the trimmings and offal came a week of special meals. Liver and kidneys, heart and trimmed meat were often made into a haslett, a mixture of coarsely minced meat mixed with onion, sage and breadcrumbs and wrapped up in the veil of fat that surrounds the intestines, before being baked and then allowed to cool before slicing. There was absolutely nothing like it in a school lunch to draw envy from the other kids. Sometimes there would be a rough country sausage, that was either in skinless blocks or packed into cleaned intestines. The boned out ribs were gently roasted and nibbled on, hot or cold.

But the head of the pig was reserved for the best dish of all. Split in half, it was slowly simmered with onions, carrots, herbs and spices until the meat fell from the bones. It was then drained, the meat roughly cut up and put into a bowl, the liquid was poured over it and it was left to set into a firm jelly that was served in thick slices with salads and pickles.

We took our half-pig’s head to the checkout counter where a high school lass doing duty took one look at the eye and shuddered. “That’s gross,” she said.

We went home and got out the large pot.

Three hours later the brawn was in the bowl and cooling. Kay remembered her mother cooked the pig’s head outside on an open fire, rather than fill the house with the  aroma of meat and spice. We have an Xplair that transfers our cooking smells to the neighbours.

Suffice it to say, we enjoyed the final product.

Biltong in the making

Biltong is a dried, salted and spiced beef that, cut in wafer thin slices, is a tasty snack, or a nice addition to a salad. It is also a useful way of preserving meat without refrigeration and thicker slices can be soaked for 24 hours and made into a casserole or stew.

I was shown how to make it years ago during a visit to South Africa. There, it is traditionally made from venison and ostrich, as well as beef.

Biltong should not be confused with jerky, which is thinly sliced beef that is dried in the sun to a stiff, board-like consistency. It should retain some flexibility to enable slicing.

After the trimming, a solid slab of fat-free young beef

My choice is a muscle from the silverside of a heifer that can be

trimmed out to remove every vestige of fat and that shiny sheath that surrounds each muscle. It takes a little while but the effort is worth it, and the trimmings are not wasted. They make an excellent stew with carrots and onions and some mixed herbs.

My favourite source is the butcher at Waipawa, a small Hawkes Bay town between Waipukurau and Hastings. While they no longer kill their meat on the farm each week, they still make their own smallgoods and the shop produced a champion sausage some years ago in a national competition. They still make real saveloys that bring back childhood memories of the days when butchers’ shops had sawdust on the floor and a big wooden chopping block surrounded by carcases and joints hanging on great hooks from iron rails. The housewife engaged in banter with the butcher while her order was wrapped up in brown paper and tied with string, and the final flourish was the cutting of the string above the knot with the point of the knife that then went back into the scabbard at the butcher’s waist.

Kay's grandmother's scales

There was a wonderful smell that was a blend of sawdust, manuka smoke and mutton fat. There were no plastic wrapped, expiry date stamped trays of meanly sliced meats. Each enamel tray was piled with thickly cut chops and cutlets, and the centre of attraction was a large corner rib, or a tightly rolled roast. A pile of honeycomb tripe, livers, tongues, kidneys and brains completed the display

For the small child in a push chair there was another delight. A cold saveloy(in those days they were safe to eat without cooking) was cut off the big bundle beside the sausages hanging from the rail above the counter and presented to the youngster. It could be gnawed on happily for the next half hour.

The Waipawa shop is an honest reminder of those days when meat was plentiful, reasonably priced and dietary fads were of little interest to those who worked hard for their living and enjoyed each meal. I enjoy calling in there each time we take a load up to Napier for the ship.

But I digress. It is not much use going into a supermarket and asking if they have an uncut heifer silverside, and then expect to obtain a part that is cut lengthwise. Waipawa is another matter.Even with the best co-operation and a careful selection, there is still a fair amount of trim (hence my comments above about making a casserole). Kay and I use an old set of scales in the kitchen and it is a good mental exercise to have to convert the old Imperial pounds and ounces to kilograms and grams.

The brown sugar and spices are massaged into the meat

Covered with salt

From the 2.2 kg of silverside I trimmed 540 grams of fat and unattached muscle to end up with a fat-free 1.66 kg of meat in a single piece. Then I massaged it until it had totally absorbed 160 grams of brown sugar and about 40 grams of allspice, mace and powdered cloves, plus a good dash of black pepper. It is surprising how the meat takes in the sugar and the spice and it is several hours before one sees any liquid in the bottom of the bowl. The ability of the meat to take the sugar and then the salt is very much determined by its freshness, and I wouldn’t try making biltong with beef that had been aged and had dried at all.

A pretty pickle as the salt takes hold

Held overnight in the refrigerator it was ready next morning for the salt, and I poured 500 grams of plain non-iodised salt over the meat and put it away again. Another half day and the salt begins to melt in the juices that are being extracted. A turning in the morning and again in the evening spreads the salt and shifts the area of meat that is immersed.

It should take about three and a-half days for the weight of the meat to be reduced by about 15 per cent. (This is determined by the thickness of the piece of meat and on this occasion it took four days.) It can then be taken from the heavy brine and hung on a string in a shady place with a good draught of air.

Hung under the carport where there is a good drying draught out of the sun

The carport is ideal, providing it is not close to the street. A couple of years ago I had a nice biltong just about ready to take down when it disappeared. I suspect a passerby, but I doubt whether whoever it was found it to their liking, particularly if they tried to put it on the barbecue.

It will probably take a couple of weeks to dry properly and lose another sixth of its original weight, bearing in mind it has also taken up salt into the tissues. In that time it will probably sweat overnight and the beads of moisture can attract flies. These can be discouraged easily by dusting the biltong with cracked black pepper.

Finally, a sharp knife and the wafers are cut across the grain. The salty, spicy, chewy meatiness has its own attraction. If I was in Auckland someone would probably ask to recommend a suitable wine. For me, biltong goes well with good friends and good conversation.

The finished product: all it needs now is a piece of bread and a beer

Daily weight loss (over days 5 to 8 we have had high humidity and rain, so the loss should have been greater:

Day 1   1.66kg

Day4   1.44kg

Day6   1.32kg

Day8   1.24kg

Day11 1.1kg

However, on day 12 the job was complete and a first few slivers were  taken for a testing. Spot on, not too salty, and still with a good even level of density that makes for even slicing. In a month or so, that won’t be so easy and it will have dried out some more. Wrapping in paper will slow the further moisture loss, without the risk of sweating. There is no need to refrigerate.

A glass of matching fulness

For most of the 15 years that I’ve been retired Kay and I have sat down around 5 pm, poured ourselves a drink and talked about the day’s events. Usually we then do something about preparing dinner or, in some cases we have actually gone back to working on what we were doing before we stopped.

We have now been married almost 27 years, if we disregard the several earlier years of what Kay calls “apprenticeship”. When we married we received a lot of unexpected gifts from friends who believed they knew us well. So well, in fact, that we were given a considerable number of sets of wine glasses and a number of wine carafes and decanters, all of which we have cherished. I think we can be rather proud of the fact that in that 27 years, and with a fair amount of use, only three of the wineglasses have been broken.

But our 5 pm drinks have been served mostly in glasses that were distributed by Mobil petrol stations to its loyal customers many years ago, and these have proved equally durable.

From time to time Kay’s Bundaberg rum and Coke, and my whisky and soda,

The happy pair

are replaced by opening a bottle of wine. These are usually poured into two glasses that just happened to be handy on the first occasion, and from then have stayed on a readily accessible shelf.

These two glasses are not the same shape. One has the markings of the 50^th anniversary of the New Zealand Woolscourers Association in 1989, and the other has the trademark of the wool exporting firm Black and Baer and dates from about 1985 when Eric Jenkins, who was managing that company, and I shared a suite of offices.

I’ve always been uncomfortable about those two glasses, because in marriage one should not be apparently taking the larger of the two. Tonight I resolved my dilemma. I filled one glass and poured the wine from it into the other glass. Amazing,and a finding that, of course occasioned a demonstration of equality to the other party. The two glasses have the same volume. I can, without fear, take or proffer either glass.

Some may think this a small matter: I think, however, it might call for some celebration!

First step to an island return

We went to Napier today. It was a reasonably early start at 6.30 am, after packing the car the night before and, in spite of a multitude of delays due to resurfacing of roads and major reconstructions that need to be completed before Christmas, we were still back home by 3.30 pm, and another 530 kilometres on the car odometer. There will only be one sailing from Napier to the Chathams before Christmas and the cut-off is in two days’ time. That means my cargo will get there a month before I do, and I will have to prevail on George to take my wagon down to the wharf shed and collect it for me — all eight cartons and a large plastic fish box. There is a strange mixture of goods — some needed, and some that will come in handy. There are several bottles of wine, one of rum, two of whisky and one of Kay’s Christmas cakes. Two large packets of tea bags were put into several plastic bags and put between the necks of the bottles. We have got used to packing for the ship. The ideal container is a banana box. It is strong, readily obtainable from the supermarket and it can be slightly over packed and the lid still slides neatly down into place. It also has handle slots. Banana boxes are also a module that fits stacking on to a standard shipping pallet that then goes into the standard shipping container. When one is paying on volume and the freight is close to $400 a cubic metre, this sort of knowledge is valuable. It also makes for less risk of damage. The oddball items this time are three very heavy isolating power transformers. These were a safety requirement for power tools years ago, before the days of double insulation and special circuit overload devices. Most building firms probably still have one or two of these lying in the shed under a bench. But for me the transformer may solve a problem that comes from small power generating plants where a change in load or even fuel flow can produce a spike with expensive consequences. In the past year I unfortunately fried the power pack in my computer, and the television set died in a spectacular display of brilliance on its screen. I am reliably informed that one of these transformers may lessen the risk of this happening again. Why three, I hear you asking? Very simply, I searched for a transformer on TradeMe, the online auction of strange and wonderful goods. There were several, but the owners appeared to have a rather exaggerated idea of their value. They are, after all, vintage pieces that have been supplanted by modern technology. The cheapest had a reserve price of $70. We were talking to a friend a few nights later, a worthy handyman, and he volunteered the belief that he had one under his bench. I offered him $10 which he readily accepted on the grounds it was better to do that than take it to the tip. The following week I was in Christchurch and told my brother. “Why did you buy one?” he said. “There is one in my garage you can have.” About a week later I visited Martinborough where I was building a glasshouse for a friend. We acquired some vintage louvre windows from a retired builder, who also had a transformer under his bench that he presented to me. My cousin George was delighted when I told him. “I’ve wanted one of those for a long time,” he said.

Kay's annual stocktake, January 2009

 The rest of the cargo is somewhat mundane — flour, sugar, Weet-Bix, tins of baked beans and tomatoes, jams and kitchen items to restore the past year’s reduction in stocks. There are also some oddball items like stainless steel screws and hangers to finish the installation of the Tiltador on the garage. The island is a wonderful place to teach one the discipline of thinking through just what will be needed to build or repair something. It is very easy to have six screws that are required to hold some fixture in place and then drop one irretrievably before the job is done. Chatham islanders invariably overorder and then try and put the surplus in a safe place, which is often forgotten. Spark plugs are a good example. No two machines use the same spark plugs, and I have yet to meet the man who stores away spares with a note saying which is which. But really, the best part of making that trip to Napier is seeing the forklift drive away into the store with my pallet of cartons. Part of me has already started the journey back to the island, and I know it is not long before I will follow.

When the power fails

We had a power failure last evening. It was somewhat more spectacular than the usual lights going out without warning.

Every so often along our street there is a round steel pillar that houses the electricity supply connections to the houses and street lamps. Ours caught fire. There were clouds of swirling black smoke and a torch of flame that surrounded the steel pillar in a manner that was reminiscent of an engraving I once saw of the last moments of Joan of Arc.

The fire brigade was summoned and, because no life was in danger, took their time to assess just which of the extinguishers they would use. It seemed an anticlimax to see the smoke and flame change to a dull grey cloud of fumes.

We had experienced several flickerings of the power during the day and the computers fell over twice, before we shut them down. The relay control in the meter box had chattered and vibrated vigorously until I pulled out the fuse. The power company man arrived and scratched his head. The best he could do was to bridge out the relay and ensure we still had hot water. He muttered something about another fault being reported nearby. He went back to his van, held a brief conversation on his mobile and disappeared to find another multimeter. We did not see him again. Another serviceman is required for dealing with flaming steel pillars.

With the prospect of no power for some hours it was time to set our civil defence system in place. We have a gas camp stove, a pot and several tins of food and packets of noodles in a large box in the old office at the back of the garage for such an event (or worse). We even have rechargeable LED lights.

Kay and I sat down and without panic reviewed our needs. Our neighbour Ruby arrived and joined the review. First things first, we poured a modest whisky to calm the nerves.

Later, we set up the gas stove and, in another anticlimax, we cooked dinner while we listened to the transistor radio. I suspect, however, most of our other neighbours sent out for takeaways and from such minor events there is always someone who benefits – even the Colonel, or the boy who delivers pizzas.

It was about this time that we realized we could not make use of our new heat pump, and it seemed a waste to set and light the fire, so we went to bed. And, reflecting our age, we went to sleep to wake some hours later to find the power restored.

This morning I investigated the corner berm where the pillar once stood. There was a huge hole that extended some distance each way to expose the temporary cables that had been spliced in and taped. It was, of course, Saturday and the hole will remain fenced off with brilliant orange cones and barriers until Monday when at ordinary rates of pay, a permanent remedy will be achieved.

Such is the excitement and happenings of retirement and suburbia!

 

It’s a dog’s life

Abby awakes

As one gets older it’s good to be greeted by friends one hasn’t seen for some time. Usually, they are human: this time it was a dog.

Remember the dog that switched on the television?

I was working at the computer out in our office, which is down the back of the section, when my step-daughter called. The first I knew was when the door opened and a large Golden Labrador raced in and madly greeted me with licks and beating of her tail on the carpet.

I hadn’t seen Abby for some time, but she remembered. While Gayle and Stephen were overseas for about six weeks last June we looked after their house, youngest grandson James and Abby. Abby and I got used to driving back to Paraparaumu every day or so and, after I had cleared my emails and done some work, we would go for a walk on the beach and she would find interesting things like half-decomposed fish heads and equally unpleasant but attractive objects the seagulls had left behind.

But she knew we went out to the office each time and she would curl up on the floor under my chair (much of her) and sleep while I worked.

Kay tells me she and Gayle arrived and Abby lead the way from the car to the kitchen. Then someone said: “Let’s go and see Bill”. Abby was out the door in a flash, down the path and to the office.

It’s nice to be loved, particularly by a dog one hasn’t seen for some time. I wonder if it is really me, or the superior kind of kennel I seem to spend my time in?

Putting it back together

One of the quirkiest court hearings I’ve ever struck turned up in our research for “Decade of Disasters”. It involved a charge of sheep stealing brought against a Chatham Islander and was heard in the islands’ magistrate’s court.

Man does not live by bread alone

A carcase of mutton, found hanging in the accused’s meat safe, was part of the evidence, together with a woolly sheep skin found hanging on a fence and a separated sheep’s head with the ears attached.

Now, when I was a boy and our source of meat was the weekly sheep my father killed on the farm, it was always impressed on me that when the skin was removed the ears had to be retained as an integral part. This requirement came from the old Stock Act, one of the first pieces of general legislation passed in New Zealand, that required the registration of ear marks that identified each farm. When lambs were tailed the ears are still notched with the registered farm mark. Retaining the ears with the skin meant, of course, there was an immediate proof of ownership, and its corollary of proof of sheep stealing.

The magistrate was also a part-time farmer, as was the accused and also the main witness. Only the policeman was not a farmer, although he, too, probably had to kill his own mutton.

The case proceeded with the magistrate leaving the bench and, with the accused, witness and probably a number of the public commenced an enthusiastic effort to prove or disprove the joining up of the head, skin and carcase on the court room floor. Proof was not possible, which is probably just as well as in the absence of refrigeration a guilty verdict might have resulted in an appeal to a higher court in New Zealand 500 miles away. There were no cameras in those days.

There is something about a book

We had a very successful book launch recently. Rhys Richards and I had put together a book compiled from the New Zealand National Library’s digistised collection of newspapers, concentrating on Chatham Islands reports over the 10 years from 1866 to 1875. We called it “A Decade of Disasters” as it covers a tumultuous period of the islands’ history.

Tumultuous it was. A major tsunami that was caused by a huge earthquake  in Chile far greater than the recent one that devastated Samoa and Tonga wiped out a Maori village and destroyed farm houses; epidemics of viral pneumonia and measles had a disastrous impact on an isolated population that had no immunity; the New Zealand Government imposed on the islands a penal colony for troublesome Maori who were held without trial or conviction; the first land claims were held through the Native Land Court, and; there were a number of shipwrecks, a couple of murders and a general exodus of most of the Maori back to Taranaki to establish their ancestral land claims there.

We drank a little wine, talked a lot with friends and family and were interviewed at length by a National Radio reporter who extracted about a couple of minutes worth for the national radio news programme this morning. Kay sat all the time at a table, selling copies of the book and a number of others that Rhys and I have written separately.

In a world that relies increasingly on Google, emails, twitters and texting, it’s somewhat satisfying to reflect that there is still a worthwhile place for the book. I use Google frequently to identify and access places and events, and even resource addresses. My emails have to be edited rigorously or I would end up with unnecessary megabytes of stored messages. I am rather fond of this blog, but I have to admit I don’t understand twittering and my arthritic fingers prevent me texting.

But I still love the printed word and a good book is a delight to take down from the shelf and greet again, like a friend who turns up unexpectedly for a cup of tea and a chat. The computer and four compatible programmes, Word, Photoshop, Pagemaker and Acrobat, have enabled desktop publishing of many small books like ours that do not compete with the mass production of more popular titles. And, in between those two extremes, there are many worthwhile books produced professionally that prove there is a continuing demand.

Long may that continue.

A flight down Memory Lane

It’s nice sometimes to look back through old photo albums (remember, we used to have these before we all bought digital cameras and kept all our images on hard discs or emailed them, and then forgot some of them should have been made into hard copies).

But many of the old albums also had plastic pockets

Kay climbs aboard

and sheaths and now, twenty or thirty years later, the plasticisers are wreaking havoc on the colour prints. Not all are affected in the 20 or so large albums Kay and I put together over the first 20 years we have been together.

It was while looking for a particular print to scan I found the photos I took on Kay’s 50^th birthday. One was badly damaged, but fortunately the better of the two is fine.

It was a great day to remember. The Sport and Vintage Aviation Society from Masterton brought their Harvard aircraft over to Paraparaumu and offered aerobatic flights as a fund raiser. Those of us who were pilots were able to log the 30 minute flights.

The flight was Kay’s 50^th birthday present and she still remembers looking up through the canopy and seeing the beach and the waves below.

The smile says everything!

Old man drinks wine, eats chicken, steals car

My father had a saying: “All cats look gray at night”, but that was in a different context I won’t introduce here. The other night I went down to Happy Hour at the Waitangi hotel and in the course of two and a-half hours I drank two glasses of white wine, ate a very substantial bar meal of Family Style Roast Chicken Dinner and had a number of extended conversations with various island residents and a couple of distant relatives who were visiting. It was a very dark night and when I left the bar

The Waitangi hotel in early morning light

to find my car there was no moon and no stars. My only guidance (having left my torch in the car) was a fresh breeze coming off the sea into my face and the knowledge there was a railing between the roadway outside the hotel and the sea. I carefully made my way along the row of dimly silhouetted parked vehicles until I recognized the outline of an Isuzu Bighorn. I got in, the key was in the ignition and it started with the familiar diesel rumble. I put on the lights and drove off. Driving up the road towards my house I was intrigued by a somewhat rough ride on the unsealed road. I had checked all the tyre pressures earlier in the day at George’s and made use of his compressor, but I was sure I hadn’t pumped the tyres so hard. Oh well, I could always check them again in the morning. I noticed also that the leather covering on the steering wheel had worn through the stitching in a couple of places, but it is, after all, not a modern vehicle. Back home I parked the car, got out and moved towards the house. A glimmer of light came through the clouds and for some reason I looked back. The car was a Bighorn but it was a different colour. I hastily got back in and drove to the hotel where the headlights soon illuminated my off-white car parked just behind where I taken the other. I made a quiet exit from the parking area and headed home again. You may ask why both vehicles had their keys left in them. We tend to do that in case someone needs to move them in one’s absence. A few nights later I was talking to someone who shall be known only as Jim. He readily agreed I had been particularly abstemious that evening and had noted I had changed from my usual large bottle of Speights to white wine, which is the usual tipple of our retired vicar Riwai. Jim inquired earnestly whether I had been “done” that night by our local policeman. I assured him that was not the case and told him the story. Jim responded by telling me the story of another resident who had perhaps been less abstemious and having taking his wife’s car to Happy Hour had returned and commented to her that her car was running roughly and needed attention. She replied that this was nonsense and demanded to know what he had done to her car. As he had gone to sleep in his chair by this stage there was no response forthcoming. She went out to inspect the car and found it was someone else’s. A phone call to the hotel soon established there was an owner of a white Subaru and, yes, it was no longer parked where it had been left. The message was passed and accepted that if her car was driven to her house the owner could have his car back. Her husband was not in a condition to drive again. It put me in mind of another Happy Hour story where a resident returning on the Monday from his annual leave that he had spent in New Zealand, elected not to return to work the next day but to spend it spring cleaning his house. As may be guessed, he is a bachelor. The cupboards were cleared and cleaned, the washing was brought up to date and, before he started on cleaning the stove he took a morning break sitting in the sun looking at the newly hung washing and enjoying a stubbie. Lunch followed a similar pattern and so did a break mid-afternoon. Just before five o’clock the house was spotless, the washing brought in and with feelings of achievement he decided to drop down to the hotel for a beer with his mates who by then would have finished the day’s work. On the way his car was stopped by the policeman who was conducting an education campaign on safety belts. He was invited to blow into the bag. His only comment was to express great resentment that he was surely the only driver to be unfortunate to be found over the limit on his way to the pub.