Taking Stock (1)

After my last post, I'm going to try not to dwell too much on the current Corona-situation, as distractions from the news are always welcome at times like this. It may still be the starting point for a post - and that is the case this time, I'm afraid - but I promise I'll get onto the tins as quickly as I can.

In recent days many people will have been paying more attention to the food they have at home, making use of what's in their cupboards and hopefully restricting new purchases to what they really need. Now is certainly a good time for a bit of a sort-out - I have had a couple of very productive and strangely therapeutic afternoons taking everything out of my various cupboards, noting down what I've got, what needs using up first, removing anything that has gone too far past its best and putting everything else back in a more orderly fashion.

It's a good thing there isn't a law that we all have to declare publicly the contents of our kitchen cupboards though, as anyone looking at mine would probably accuse me of mass stock-piling of tins. As it happens, I've not actually bought any since the coronavirus situation kicked off - I've just been slowly amassing them over the years this blog has been in existence, but not really using them up at the same rate. So, there are quite a lot of them. To the extent that having found myself with good supplies of some of the more standard tinned items (tomatoes, chickpeas etc), I took a few a long to the local foodbank collection so that someone who's really in need at this time can hopefully benefit from them.

The more unusual items I have held onto, and will do my best to work my way through over the coming weeks. Some tins I have little memory of buying, and/or are already well past their use-by dates. For example, while doing my stock-take, I discovered that I had not one, not two, but three tins of, errr, stock: fish, chicken and beef, from the John Lusty brand. All were very much out-of-date, but in my defence, they probably were when I bought them, as I think I got them at the posh food shop nearby, where everything is so overpriced that I very rarely buy anything that's not in their bargain box and hence nearing its best before date.

These intrigued me, as tins aren't the first thing that spring to mind when you think of stock. Some people would only ever dream of making their own, from leftover bones. If you haven't the time or the inclination for that, there are those pots of fresh stock you can get in the chiller cabinet at the supermarket. And stock cubes, of course. But stock in a tin feels like an odd middle ground between those last two - a long-life store-cupboard item, yet clearly a step up from an Oxo. The labels proclaim that they are Premium Stock - "A perfect base for your soups. sauces, gravies and stews". A long time ago I'd tried a tin of John Lusty's turkey, ham and cranberry soup, which was very good, so I had high hopes for these, too. First up, the fish stock. 



Having forgotten to shake the tin, as per the label's instructions, there were beads of oil across the surface, but otherwise it looked nice and clear, and the initial smell was, just like good fresh fish, not unpleasantly fishy but more reminiscent of the sea itself. The taste too had that briny note, but crucially was not overly salty, as stock made from cubes so often can be. In addition to soups, stews and so on, the label suggested that this one would also make a good base for a risotto, and I was sold on that idea immediately.

I suspect the good people at John Lusty had in mind that I would pay a visit to my local fishmonger, and return with an array of delightful fresh fish and seafood to add to my risotto. Not on this blog, John. When using stock from a tin, it only seems right to stick to what you've got in stock for the rest of the meal, and I had three tins I'd been meaning to use for a while:




Razor clams - these also came from the posh food shop, also from the bargain box. And also out-of-date. But these were properly posh; the tin came in its own little box, with all the wording in Spanish  - aside from a sticker added on which claimed that this was "Tin No.161 of 1250 tins. Consignment of razorshells sold at auction in Cofradia de Pescadores San Antonio de Carabados (Galicia) Fish Market on 09/02/2012". Proper pedigree stuff. I just had to hope I hadn't left them too long, as they were dated best before the end of 2016. Oops.

I've never actually had fresh razor clams, only standard ones, so I wasn't expecting them to be quite as...weird-looking as this. I suppose normal clams are a bit weird looking too, but being small and compact it's not quite so startling as these. But my goodness me, they were delicious - despite their age, a lovely firm texture, a fresh, briny taste, and while the tin contained nothing but the clams, water and salt, it was as if they had already produced their own delicious stock, which I was keen not to waste.

Squid Stew - this tin was given to me by my brother, who had brought it back from a trip to Lisbon a few years back. The Portuguese are mad about tinned fish, and Lisbon is considered to be the best place for it, so I was as keen to try the tin as I am to visit the city myself. This one came in a paper wrapper, with a delightfully tentacular squid and slightly cartoon-like but strangely alluring girl in traditional national dress on the front. Tricana is one of three brands owned by the Conserveira de Lisboa, and a quick look at their website makes me want to go to Lisbon even more, and try everything from their shop, which has barely changed since the 1930s. (In fact - and apologies for bringing up the subject again - that might have to be my first trip once the current situation eventually blows over).

That said however...I was slightly disappointed with the contents. A mixture of strips and rings of squid, the texture was oddly tough, like a tuna steak that has been cooked far too long, and the tomato stew sauce had an unpleasantly bitter note to it. This tin was barely two months out of date so I don't think it can be that I had kept them for too long (and if so that, would be a more metallic taste than bitter). But I won't hold it against them and still want to go to Lisbon and try everything. Just not these again, particularly.

Scallops - these were purchased much more recently, with another three-and-a-half years' shelf-life to them. I'd had my eye on them in Waitrose for a while, as I do like a scallop and was intrigued as to what they would be like from a tin, so I pounced when they were very briefly on offer. I hadn't been expecting a the seafood sauce to be tomato-based from the colour of the picture on the front of the box, though on closer inspection this is clearly just a shot of some uncooked scallops, not the contents of the tin.

It was a sweeter, richer sauce than the squid, but no bitter afternote this time. The scallops are indeed small, and I'm not sure I would have been able to identify them as scallops if I hadn't been told - the look and texture was more like a clam or mussel than anything else. Most of them seemed to have a ridged band running round them - perhaps this was the coral, which is often removed if you have scallops in a restaurant. The richness of the sauce possibly overpowered the subtly sweet natural flavour of the scallops a bit - I wouldn't serve fresh scallops with a sauce like this myself - but the overall taste was pretty good.

So - onto the risotto. As per the usual recipe I follow, I sweated down some onions, garlic and celery before mixing in the risotto rice (a packet I had also had in the cupboard for a long time) to coat each grain in the olive oil. I chucked in a small glass of white wine before slowly adding the heated stock, a ladleful at a time, slowly and continuously stirring until it had been absorbed before adding the next, and carrying on until the rice was al dente. I always find this takes far longer than I think it will, yet at the same time is strangely therapeutic, not least if you have a (not so small) glass of wine on the go as to stir. I also added all the delicious juice from the tin of razor clams, and a little of the sauce from the scallops.

Just before the end, the seafood was carefully stirred in, making sure to remove as much of the bitter sauce from the squid as possible (sorry, Senhorita Tricana, I will still come to visit), along with sprinkle of parsley and pepper, but no Parmesan - the Italians are very pernickety about not adding it to fish dishes.

Whatever your feeling on that, I would definitely say that on this occasion, it didn't need it anyway - the risotto was lovely and creamy already as a result of all that slow stirring to coax the starch out of the grains of rice, and the seafood, sauces and of course the stock provided an incredibly rich flavour themselves. All in all, an excellent meal, and a very tasty way to use up some of the older items in my cupboards.

That said, the risotto only used about half each tin of seafood. The squid and clams I finished off  as a little pre-dinner nibble with a drink, imagining myself in a bar in Lisbon in sunnier times ahead. As for the scallops though, there was another tin in my cupboard which I'd been saving specifically to try alongside them - a tin of black pudding. This can sound a bit of an unusual pairing at first, but as anyone will know if they have ever enjoyed a bowl of steamed mussels with pieces of bacon added to the broth, or a paella with prawns and chorizo, seafood and pork are a winning combination. Scallops and black pudding are a natural extension of this, with the added visual appeal of their stark contrast in both colour and delicateness of flavour - in her book The Flavour Thesaurus, Niki Segnit describes the combination with typical brilliance: "in fancy restaurants, pale scallop is often found perched, trembling like an ingenue, on filthy old black pudding's knee."

Like the haggis and A&B Roll that I'd had previously from Grant's, the tin had to be opened at both ends, and the contents pushed out. This vaguely sinister-looking cylinder emerged, a thin covering of pale fat giving the sides and one of the ends a greyish hue, whereas a mysterious divot in the other end revealed the dark, dense mass within, speckled with flecks of oatmeal and rusk. I broke off some from the top, like a piece of charred wood. It tasted dark and earthy, but not all that interesting in its ambient state. A bit of heat, and perhaps some actual charring, was clearly required.

 

I cut a slice and placed it straight into a hot pan without any oil, reckoning that the beef suet listed in the ingredients would quickly render out - and indeed, within minute a the pudding was sizzling away in its own fat and starting to crisp up nicely. I flipped it over, then turned to the scallops, ridding them of as much of their sauce as possible, and popping them into the pan around the black pudding. They had a brief searing on each side, before it was time, as they say on MasterChef, to "plate up".

Being so small, all four of the scallops were able to sit on "filthy old black pudding's knee", but having been bathing in their deep red tomato sauce in the tin, they weren't quite the pale, trembling ingenues of Niki Segnit's description - more the overly spray-tanned members of a hen party. I put a few splodges of the sauce around the plate for good measure - shame to waste it.

Frying the black pudding had improved its flavour immensely, intensifying the dark, earthy, even slightly ferrous notes, a lovely contrast to the slightly sweet, briny, more mineral taste of the scallops. It certainly is a great combination. It occurred to me after however that it is often served in restaurants with something like a pea puree or similar. Had I thought of it before, I could have cracked open a tin of mushy peas to go alongside. Never mind.

The only problem of course was that I'd only used one slice from the massive log of black pudding. So, you can expect to see it cropping up in a few more meals over the coming few posts, as I tried my best to make use of it all.

Next up: chicken stock!