Welcome to 2025 - I’m pov this month and my Slopalong choice is reflective of that.
I should say that as well as being a recipe of sorts, it’s a decent test of a method we all know and love, so I hope you’ll enjoy.
I will also now apologise for the repetitive nature of the photography; this was a deliberate way of showing the slow progress and trying to get the clock in at the same time.
Tonight’s recipe is:
a month’s worth of husks and celery bums vegetable peelings I’ve been saving since Christmas, made into a stock. I decided against photographing the vegetables going into the pot as they’d been in the freezer for a few weeks and at that point I wasn’t sure it was definitely going to work. In hindsight I should have photographed the whole thing.
I had two large pots of vegetable peelings and put them both on the hob with some water, added some pink and black peppercorns and didn’t add any salt - Jack didn’t cost salt but said this was salty. I haven’t tasted it so can’t confirm.
Anyway, Mr Laz is out having a deep tissue massage this evening, so away from the male gaze, I thought I’d kill some time. I just never knew how much…
stock boiled - this took around an hour. Not added to this is the estimated 3 weeks it’ll take to remove the smell from my house.
Sadly, as I’m not a lesbian, I don’t own any carabiners or S-hooks. I do own a sieve (in fact I own two) but thought I’d attempt the method she used, draining the husky liquid
over the sieve and into a pot.
I’m very glad I’m not using this method with pasta because let me tell you, it’s as slow as a week in the jail. I started this draining method at 18:50GMT; keeping in mind it’s liquid only, no pasta…
this is when the repetitive pics start; please note the time.
Time is marching on; 11 minutes have passed since the stock went into the
British Airways Premium Economy
square cloth; so far very little has seeped through.
I decide to potter around the kitchen, making busywork. I clean the sides down and pop the dishwasher on. I realise there is a lot of gunk blocking the sink so I clear that too. I’m glad Mr Laz is out being pummelled
5m back to the pot for another check-in.
I decide to fill the mop bucket and give the hallway floor a quick going over.
back to the pot, progress is SLOOOOOOW; it’s like water torture TBH. I’m growing increasingly concerned about the smell in the house. I’m worried it’ll seep through the walls and into the neighbours houses.
I open most, but not all of the windows and the back door.
gone off to light some expensive candles and will come back for another check soon enough.
22 minutes past 7; more than half an hour has now passed by. I popped a clean dish towel over the oven door (Timourous Beasties, no less. Found in a puddle)
off I go; few more tasks which I’ve made into a collage here. Read a few pages of my book; swept the kitchen and living room floors and filled up the washing thing.
back for another pot check. Im getting bored of this now, so contacted a very close friend of mine who is a very good tattoo artist. I asked him to create something deeply personal to me and tattoo it somewhere nobody will ever see. It’s gone through the healing process before the stock has drained through the square cotton.
as you can see, I’m getting bored of this now. I’ve brought a spoon out and started prodding the cloth to force the liquid through it a little quicker
With some gentle prodding it’s all gone through finally. The cotton looks like Steptoe’s drawers and doesn’t smell much better so it’s been chucked in the washing machine.
Quick tidy up and leave this to cool down - I’ll use it in a risotto maybe Wednesday. How it tastes salty is yet to become clear…
recipe rating:
It’s not much of a recipe really, is it? This was all the odds and sods i had leftover and had been chucking into bags in the freezer - it only works if you have space, though.
she doesn’t say how long you should simmer this stock for, or if there’s any veg you shouldn’t put in, so that won’t be helpful for many people.
method: what is there to say about this ‘Jack’s hack’ that hasn’t been said already? It’s dangerous; it’s slow; it’s unwieldy and not in the slightest bit practical. At more than 30 minutes to essentially drain liquid, I can’t imagine the mess you’d be left with trying to do this for rice or pasta,
without a sieve and into a piece of cotton hanging over a tap. She’s never tried it; and neither have the people who shamefully allowed it to be committed to print. It would be
so dangerous.