Emails to my daughter: Don’t burn your fingers
However capable her daughter is, Mother ‘always knows better’.
Dear Laura
SO glad to hear last night’s meal went reasonably well. A bit of burnt onion never hurt any one – in fact, your grandmother used to say that it made your hair curl. She used to say the same of mutton fat, toast crusts, turnips and anything else I didn’t fancy eating. I didn’t burden you with all that claptrap because I had enough trouble getting a comb through your mop without its curling any more.
Eyebrow tweezers are, as you say, a bit time-consuming as a tool for rectifying the matter. Perhaps you should get some long-nosed pliers, but, for Goodness sake, don’t let Mike get his hands on them. They’ll be all-over motorbike grease in no time!
As for the leftover mince, I wouldn’t try to do something with it tonight. It will be too obviously rehashed. Store it in a plastic pot in the freezer until Mike has forgotten about it, then serve it up as a surprise!
I seem to recollect seeing some nice-looking pork chops in your freezer. Let them defrost in their own good time. Nothing, especially not meat, likes to be hurried from the freezer to the stove. If you have to chivvy up the defrosting of any meat, put it in a plastic bag and immerse it in a bowl of cold water, not hot. Or, if there’s a warm breeze blowing, peg it out on the washing line. In a plastic bag, of course!
Now, you do know how to make chips, don’t you? I know you’ve got the right sort of potatoes, because I saw the packet. But I don’t know if you read the label or just picked them up at random from the supermarket. Potatoes come in mashy sorts and crispy sorts, and a good greengrocer will advise you on the sort you need for the way you want to cook them. I buy them alternately, before the last bag has run out, so I always have some of each.
Just in case you’ve forgotten, immerse your cut chips in boiling water with a dash of vinegar and some salt and leave them for about twenty minutes before drying them and chucking them into boiling oil. You must dry them, especially as you are using gas. If you get a fire in your pan, the best thing is bicarbonate of soda, but you probably haven’t got any, so smother it with mieliemeal and turn the gas off. It’ll ruin your dinner, but that’s a small price to pay for keeping your kitchen intact!
Have you got any vanilla essence? Not that you want to go pouring it on pork chops, but it’s jolly useful for pouring on yourself if you get scalded or mildly fried while cooking. I’ll never forget the surprised look on old Uncle Tom’s face when I smothered him in vanilla essence after he picked up the wrong end of a hot soldering iron. In all his 96 years, he’d never come across that trick!
I don’t know if you are intending to grill or fry the chops. If grilling, cut through the skin and fat at one-centimetre intervals to stop them from curling up while cooking. You can do this for frying as well, and use only a tiny bit of oil to grease the pan, but I usually cut off the skin and about half the fat and make crackling in the dry pan first. Then I use the fat that came out of the crackling to fry the chops.
Serve with a salad. By the way, I’m missing your salad dressing already. That German one that Ingrid taught you to make when you were about seven. I’ve never bothered to watch you do it because I was always busy with the rest of the meal and only too happy to leave the salad to you. Please email me the recipe.
Lots of love
Mom
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