I actually remembered to shake the tin before opening this time, but in this one there seemed to be practically no fat at all to be dispersed. Except, weirdly, for this one yellowish clump, about the size of a bean, floating near the surface:
At least, I hope it was a clump of beef fat. I don't really want to consider what it might have been if not. This time, I was quite happy just to discard it.
The stock itself was very clear, like a consomme, and by far the most full-flavoured of the three - deliciously beefy, as if many hours of simmering beef bones had been involved in making it. This boded well for some tasty times ahead.
First up, a little sharpener. Some time ago, I had seen a suggestion for a variant on the classic Bloody Mary recipe, adding beef broth to create a "Bloody Bull". I think I had raised an eyebrow at the time, but then last year on a visit to the US I had seen (and sampled) some of the extraordinary garnishes they add to Bloody Marys - encompassing everything from cubes of cheese and pickled peppers to prawns and sticks of salami - and I returned feeling more open to innovation. Beef stock and beef broth being pretty much the same thing, now felt the time to give it a go.
I thought I would keep it fairly basic this time so as to get the full effect of the beef stock, without too much distraction from other flavours, so I just went for equal measures of vodka and stock and a teaspoon of Cox's Bloody Mary Spicer (highly recommended), topped up with tomato juice. No additional garnishes this time. A good Bloody Mary should achieve the perfect balance between the basic tastes: salt, sour, sweet, bitter and umami. The addition of the beef stock here really ramps up the last of these, giving a rich, meaty boost to the drink. It might pack a bit too much of a punch for some, particularly if you're having it for breakfast or brunch, but the Bloody Bull is certainly something I'd try again - perhaps taking the punchiness a step further, while giving a nod to the classic pairing for beef, by adding a sprinkle of freshly grated horseradish on top.
Talking of breakfast, for the remaining stock, I was keen to try out a recipe I'd seen a while back in the book Comfort by John Whaite, a previous Great British Bake-Off winner. His 'Breakfast Ramen' recipe is, by his own admission, a hugely inauthentic mash-up of a classic Japanese ramen noodle soup with some of the flavours of a traditional full English breakfast, achieved through the addition of bacon and baked beans. It sounded bonkers yet brilliant - but limiting it to just those two breakfast items seemed to me to be stopping a little short of the dish's potential. It was not long after this that I spotted a tin of "All Day Breakfast" in the supermarket, and I knew immediately that it would be perfect. If, possibly, an utter abomination.
The label describes it as "an all day tasty filler with: baked beans, sausages, mushrooms, pork and egg nuggets and bacon". Which all sounds fairly standard Full English fare, apart from the pork and egg nuggets. Where did they come from? What even are they?!
My initial thoughts on opening the tin: "that's a lot of sauce". Hard to tell at that stage quite what else I would be dealing with.
Decanting the contents to a bowl gave a better idea - clearly a lot of beans, but still a lot of sauce. More than anyone would really want on their breakfast plate. Bottom left in the picture above is identifiable as a mushroom. Above it, a sausage, and another at the top of the bowl. Even together, I fear they would prove ineffective as a breakwater (as Alan Partridge might say) for all that beany sauce. Between the bangers, two of what appear to be meatballs, which I had to assume were the pork and egg nuggets. Which meant, by a process of elimination, that the flat disc to their right was the bacon. Not that it looked anything like any kind of bacon I've ever seen.
The ramen recipe calls for a a base of spring onion, garlic and ginger, sweated down in some oil. You would also add the bacon at this stage, but given that there was (supposedly) already some in my breakfast tin, I instead chucked in a crumbled slice of the black pudding from my previous post, to give an extra breakfasty boost. Once the aromatics were softened and the black pudding nicely crisped, in went a full whack of authentic Asian flavours with soy sauce, miso paste, sesame oil and 5-spice powder, and also some Worcestershire sauce, bravely flying the flag for the British storecupboard. Then the stock - Waite actually uses chicken stock in his recipe, but I couldn't see that swapping it for beef would make much of a difference, other than boosting the flavour even more.
That was all left to simmer away for a bit, before adding a packet of noodles and a bit of greenery - Waite suggests spinach, but you could use pretty much anything.
On serving up, you add in a few of the standard ramen garnishes - coriander, shredded spring onions and carrot, and finally a soft-boiled egg, which neatly bridges the chasm between the classic Japanese soup and the English breakfast.
It actually looks quite impressive and appetising in the picture above - until you register the sausage, that is. There's something a bit turd-like about it, particularly as it doesn't appear to be incased in a skin of any kind.
Fortunately that did not extend to the flavour, which is pleasantly porky. In terms of texture it wasn't very close to the substantial meaty banger you'd want and expect on your breakfast plate, but was much softer, not unlike a larger version of the little sausages you get in a tin of baked beans and sausages. Those were always a favourite for me growing up, so this momentarily took me back to my childhood. We're not talking a full-on Proustian moment here - these are no madeleines, after all - but I was reasonably happy with the sausage situation.
I had been dubious about the pork and egg nuggets, but they turned out to be like those miniature versions of scotch eggs that you sometimes see on a buffet table or at a picnic, bought from the supermarket in a plastic tub ("snack eggs", I think they call them) - just without the outer breadcrumb layer. Essentially they comprised a little core of scrambled egg, encased in a pork layer, whose texture was not dissimilar to the sausages. So, not actually that bad, but still a bit weird as part of a cooked breakfast.
The disc of 'bacon' both looked and tasted like a rather thick slice of pepperoni from the top of a pizza - no bad thing in itself, but here it was unpleasantly rubbery rather than lovely and crisp. I would happily have done without this entirely. The mushrooms nothing to write home about, rather watery and lacking in much flavour.
In stark contrast, the ramen broth itself was bloody delicious - but how could it fail not to be, with all those delicious, bold flavours added in. I think the beef stock held its own against the other ingredients, as there was still a noticeably meaty note to it. And, to give credit where it's due, the copious amounts of tomato sauce from the breakfast tin provided a nice sweetness. My only criticism really would be that with soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce and miso, it was probably a bit salty - I didn't really notice it at the time, but woke up in the night with a raging thirst. The broth was thicker than I had expected - perhaps I had reduced it down too much - so in hindsight I should have added some more water to thin it and reduce the effect of all the salt.
I could have made another stab at it, as while the tin of stock was all gone, I only actually used half the tin of All Day Breakfast. But I went for a quicker option instead. The one breakfast element missing from the tin was toast (though I am very glad they had not attempted to include it - that really wouldn't work). The rest of the tin on toast would have been nice enough, but having recently brought my toasted sandwich maker out of retirement (i.e. the very back of the least accessible kitchen cupboard), an All Day Breakfast Toastie was begging to be tried.
I'd put most of the sauce from the tin into the ramen, which meant the leftovers were a bit drier and more suitable for filling a toasted sandwich. Again, I added a bit of black pudding as there was still masses of the stuff left. Having said that, there was some leakage into the toastie maker, which took a bit of cleaning afterwards, but that may have been caused by me overfilling the sandwich - the edges didn't seal as well as they should have. This also meant that on eating, the beans had a tendency to slip out from the gaps in the toasted pocket. But, dipped in a puddle of HP Sauce, I was reasonably pleased with the result.
So, there we go. Three tins of stock used, another six or so additional tins from the stock cupboard used up alongside them, and some tasty meals enjoyed in the process. Maybe the current lockdown situation won't be so bad after all.
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