What's Cooking with Dive? Pork Cheese (aka Head Cheese)

After yesterday's petite can of deliciousness, I feel it's time for a good Old Dive "TLDR" post (where those of you who've gotten used to FB can take one look and moan "Too Long, Didn't Read)."

So unlike the good old days of Blogville.

Anyhoo, yesterday's pork brains in milk gravy brought terrifying flashbacks of my early teen years, when I worked as a butcher's skivvy after school (before heading off to play gigs).

Looking back, I must confess I did learn some practical things during my tenure, such as how to peel and chop a hundred-odd onions without crying, taking the skins off whole with one single wrist-flick, how cow-cheek was one of the best parts of the cow, though back then it was only sold for dogs to eat, the joy of cubes of pork fat and how meltingly delicious they are and how it did no good tossing the mice the evil butcher trapped each night in the grain tub, over the wall to freedom as they'd only come straight back and I swear the old bugger put them in the mincer for sausages.

He did - a few years later - get condemned and was henceforth only allowed to sell pet food and nothing for human consumption; he reminded me a lot of Hilary Briss in The League of Gentlemen, peddling his "special stuff" under the counter.

I also learned to pluck and draw hundreds of bloody turkeys for the Christmas rush, how to knit sausages like a champion (four to the pound, bang on, every time), how to clean and dress tripe but more importantly how to spend the next fifteen years as a vegetarian.

"But what about pigs' brains?" I hear you clamour …

Well, my dears … gather round.

A couple of evenings a week I'd be sent out to the concrete shed at the back of the yard, where there stood several tall pressure cookers, each containing four whole pig's heads; tops undone, steaming away, all ready to scald the skin off my fingers.

First up, dredge one of the things out of the greyish filthy slop, marvelling at just how bloody heavy it is. Slap it down on the counter and enjoy one of the only good bits; attack the smegger with an enormous cleaver, straight down the middle … THWACK!

I actually got pretty good at that, though of course the first few weeks involved getting cussed at and and cuffed around the head and having to pick bone splinters out of the flesh.

Next up, scoop out the brains. Hot and squishy!

Then comes the nasty stuff; poking in the shrivelled eyes, tearing off the snout and yanking out the long, snot tubes, scouring out the palate, removing the tongue and ears and then stripping every scrap of steaming, reeking flesh off the skull, without getting any pig teeth falling into your quivering pile.

Throw the skull out onto the heap of offal and fly-covered rot that waits for the daily morning pick-up from the rubber-clad men in a truck … what the hell they did with it all afterwards doesn't bear thinking about.

Rinse and repeat until all the heads are stripped bare.

Keep the brains separate as them's good eating; toss the ears in a bucket for dog food, then set about chopping the remaining lava-hot quivering grey slop into half-inch chunks before mixing it all up with a load of aspic (jelly) and doling it all out into individual glass ramekins.

Eaten cold the next day they were rather yummy, though I had to blank out the previous evening's disgusting shenanigans every time I took a bite.

These days, of course, you may pay a fortune for pork cheese, trotters, tripe, udder, ears, tail, jot et al at monstrously pretentious nose-to-tail restaurants. If you have a pig, an enormous pressure cooker and a whopping great cleaver, you can make it yourself much cheaper.

Though I'd advise against it , having been there and done that …

What's Cooking With Dive? - Nothing

I've not done a cookery post for a while and I'm not about to start again just yet, so here's a non-cookery post featuring my regular Saturday lunchtime treat.

Ingredients:

One decent chunk of AAA-sashimi-grade tuna;
Some wasabi paste;
Some soy sauce (low salt for me);
Chopsticks;
A plate to stop your table getting messy;
Something to read;
BBC Radio 3.

Non-cooking method:

(1) Slice the tuna as thinly as you want it.
(2) Assemble all the ingredients.
(3) Enjoy!

What's Cooking With Dive? - CAAAAAAAAKE!

This cake, to be precise.

My entry in the office Christmas Bake-Off.

Deck the halls with manky bits of holly whose berries have shrivelled up. 'Tis the season for eighteen hardy volunteers to battle it out in a flour-strewn gladiatorial arena.

No prize except the honour of stomping your rivals into the dust, and the fact that for eighteen days (one competitor per day) we stuffed ourselves stupid with wonderful cake.
And those cowards who declined to take part didn't get a single crumb. Ha!

I'll post the best and worst from the Christmas Bake-Off after this.

But first … Don your pinnies and follow me into the kitchen …

Nope, not my kitchen. In my bid for Bake-Off glory I'm bringing in some heavy fire power to help me and borrowing mum's kitchen and oven (way better than mine) and her Jedi cake-baking powers.

The Guinness is there because I'll be baking the only cake I ever bake: Guinness Cake.

Happy, drunken sultanas! Basically, you soak these suckers in Guinness overnight, which is as good an excuse as any to be sociable and not force them to drink alone.

Eggy.

Hokay … time to get nasty. Smash the skulls of three innocent eggies and whip them suckers until they scream.

Or go frothy.
Actually, frothy's probably better for this dish.

About yay much butter.

You know how I hate using any measurements. Unfortunately baking requires precision, so here's a list of ingredients you'll need if you want to join me in enjoying one of the finest cakey experiences known to man:

6oz. raisins

6oz. sultanas

Whaddya mean, "How much is that in kilogrammes?" I have not the faintest idea. Bollocks to the metric system. I was raised on Imperial measurements and I can only think in them. I have absolutely no idea how long a litre is or how much a kilometre weighs and frankly, my dears, I don't give a damn. If I have to give measurements they'll be in roods and perches and pecks and barrels and yards and furlongs and hundredweights and stones and real money; none of this "I can only count up to ten" malarkey.

Okay?

Right …

Raisins, blah, sultanas, blah …

8 tablespoons of Guinness. Yay!

Soak that lot in a bowl overnight, while you drink and then sleep off the rest of the Guinness.

Next day, grease and line a seven-and-a-half inch tin and pre-heat your oven (or mum's in this case) to gas mark three (which is the equivalent of something whatever-ish in electric ovens, apparently).

You'll also want:

6oz. butter (about yay much)

3 eggs

6oz dark sugar (a mix of natural molasses sugar and soft raw cane is good)

8oz plain flour (don't ask me what that is in American. We have plain or self-raising flour; across the pond I suspect they have something else; it's like when they call single cream haff'n'haff, or chickpeas garbanzo beans … Garbanzo beans? That sounds like a circus act, not something I'd want to put in my mouth - I just don't get it … anyhoo, you'll want 6oz of whatever plain flour is in America)

2 teaspoons of mixed spice

A generous grating of whole nutmeg

3oz peel

3oz chopped mixed nuts.

Ready?

Let's go!

Cream the butter and sugar together until it's what mum calls "light and fluffy" and I call yummy.

Gradually add the frothy eggs, floophing a little flour in there each time you get eggy.

Oh, and I claim dibs on the neologism "Flooph" for the sound flour makes.

Another reason I'm over at mum's is that she has a food processor and, as I don't bake, all I have at home is a bunch of knives and a pestle and mortar. Great for what I do but crapola when it gets to cake time.

So … onward.

Time to get gloopy … yay!

Sift whatever flour you've got left together with the spices and fold into the glop.

Add the soaked fruit, the Guinness, the peel and nuts and slowly FOLD them all into the mixture.

"Fold" is the important word here (though not like in origami … origami with sloppy gloppy cake mix is something that should only be practiced in the bedroom between consenting adults). You want to combine everything in as gloopy a way as possible but you DO NOT want to knock the air out. This sucker's got to be light. It's not cloying like most fruit cakes; this is seriously good to eat.

G.L.O.O.P.

Hell, yeah.

Slop that lot into the tin and flatten softly with a metal spoon (you get to lick it clean afterwards which 'as any fule kno' is the REAL reason to bake cakes).

A stupid moustache is not mandatory, but as the next time I bake a cake is likely to be next Movember, I'll probably have to grow another one for that.

Okey dokey. Cake in the oven … like so.

Now we get an hour and a half to spend in decadent leisure.

Er … doing the washing up.

Ninety minutes later, check the cake is done by sticking it with a skewer. If the thing comes out clean, it's perfect.

Like this one.

Now comes a few weeks of cakey alcoholism.

Wrap your cake in greaseproof paper and foil and stick it somewhere out of the way.

Once a week, unwrap it, make a load of holes in the bottom with a long needle and sloooowly dribble Guinness Extra and twelve year old Armagnac into it.

Actually you can add what you want, but as you'll be left with lots of booze it may as well be something you'd choose to drink anyway. I've never understood people who cook with cheap wine or bake with crap brandy. What the hell would I do with three-quarters of a bottle of three-star smegging Napoleon? Bugger that! Twelve year old Armagnac it is.

I couldn't be arsed to ice it, so I boiled up a glaze with apricot jam and a little water, glazed the top, plonked on a load of nuts and glacé cherries, slopped some more glaze on to keep things in place while I drove, drizzled on some more Armagnac and headed out the door for the office.

It tastes way better than it looks. Holy crap, that's a good cake. Moist but not TOO moist, light and still fruity and nutty, and every bite you take brings a face full of Armagnac fumes.

Make one. If I can do it then you certainly can.

Enjoy!

What's Cooking With Phil And Dive? - Haggis!

"Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face,
Great chieftain o' the puddin-race!
Aboon them a' ye tak your place,
Painch, tripe, or thairm:
Weel are ye wordy o' a grace
As lang's my arm.
Etc. …"

I won't go on for all eight verses as you'll need to have poured an awful lot of Scotch down your throat to enjoy that.
Suffice to say we missed Burns Night this year, what with one thing and another, so Phil invited me over on Sunday to enjoy a belated Burns afternoon (and a splendid victory for England over Italy in the Six Nations Rugby).

I only really enjoy one of Burns' poems: To A Mouse: the one that starts "Wee, sleekit, cowran, tim'rous beastie" and includes the line so brilliantly deconstructed by Eddie Izzard: "The best laid plans o' mice an' men, gang aft agley."
So instead of an incomprehensible Scottish poet we shall dedicate this post to Mr. Burns and Waylon Smithers.
Excellent!

So …
What do we have here?
Yes, you guessed it: it's a sheep's stomach stuffed with the heart, liver and lungs of a cute little lamb, all minced up with onion, oatmeal, suet, spices and stock.

The Scots of late appear to have abandoned their glorious culinary heritage of copious quantities of offal, mountains of root vegetables and fantastic whisky in favour of salt, industrial fats and oils, sugar and more salt; their current diet consisting of deep-fried pizza, deep-fried Mars bars and puke-inducing fizzy lager.
Shame on them! They are certifiable idiots for neglecting something so sublime as the haggis.

So let us wrap the beast in foil and put in the the oven in a tray half filled with water for about an hour and a half (up to three hours for a big one).

While that's cooking, come hither and admire the other ingredients for today's feast: viz. some root vegetables.
Tradition has it that haggis must be served with "Neeps and Tatties" but Phil is a damned good cook and we are filthy heathen Sassenachs so we shall be adding a couple of extras today.

Neeps, by the way, is not an abbreviation of turnips, but for some linguistically perverse reason is the Scottish term for Swede (that's rutabaga for any Colonials from across the water).

Like myself, Phil is a great one for sauces, and the phrase "'as tha' nowt moist wi'it?" can oft be heard at mealtimes. He's accompanying the haggis with a rich, red wine, mushroom and red onion gravy, hence the non-traditional mushrooms and red onion on the chopping board.

As well as dicing and boiling the neeps and tatties (and mashing them with a little milk and butter and ground black pepper) and reducing the gravy he has steamed carrots with thyme in a nice popcorn-style sealed foil envelope. Yum!

At last, the haggis emerges from the oven!
Lacking the traditional - and somewhat cumbersome and impractical in the kitchen - ceremonial sword, he pierces the beastie with his Sabatier knife and the fragrant innards gush forth as the thing tries to turn itself inside-out.
To quell the raging beastie he anoints it with good malt whisky, as is only right and proper.

And here it is.
Lashings of good, hearty spiced offal, sweetbreads, diverse innards and oatmeal. Haggis is a true taste sensation and this one was awesome!
Add to that, the traditional neeps and tatties and perfectly al-dente herby carrots, enriched with that glorious gravy and you have a fantastic winter feast.

Many thanks to Phil for cooking up a storm.

What's Cooking With Dive? - Quickie Sucker Salad

I've not done a 'What's Cooking With Dive' post for ages. I keep meaning to, but time is a problem right at the moment.

Having said that, Lulu's story from last week's 500 Words assignment (which she just rushed in late) is such a doozy, and probably the most scary and disgusting thing ever written about seafood - check it out: it's at the end of the last Story Time post from a couple of days ago … just don't eat before you read it - that I decided to post a quickie 'What's Cooking' today.

I read Lulu's story just as I got home from David the fishmonger and it's only the fact that I am a truly gross and disgusting person myself that enabled me to eat seafood after reading it.
David's just expanded his mighty emporium with an enlarged shellfish section and as well as my usual stuff I grabbed a bag of marinaded octopus and some little prawns to make a donburi-style lunch.

With a true donburi, you pile the food on top of the rice but I had too much octopus so I plopped it in a plate.

Anyhoo … Not much cooking involved in this one. Just crank up the rice steamer, add a handful of Jasmine rice, boil the kettle for some miso soup, then plonk the whole lot on the table and eat it. The green stuff's wasabi by the way.

I promise I'll do some proper cookery posts soon, but this tentacular affair kinda suited Lulu's story as most of you find such things icky.
For any newbies, do click on the "Eat Me" link in my sidebar and check out further forays into cephalopod heaven, including the utterly disgusting "How to dismember fresh squid with your bare hands" post that grossed so many of you out. The creepy one with the live razor clams is in there somewhere, too. Squeamish, beware!

What's Cooking With Dive? - Heart Attack Pasta Sauce

Afraid you might not be able to stick to a diet after all the overindulgence of the holidays?
Well whoop-de-doo, it's a whole new year so I say fuck diets!
Start 2010 as you mean to go on: by heading right around the other way, straight through those glistening, lard-dripping, shimmery Pearly Gates of Fat Heaven with Old Dive's übercheesy, thick'n'creamy pasta sauce.
If you're going to choke your arteries to death, at least do it in style!

As part of my Christmas prezzies Phil got me the complete Sopranos DVD box set (not being a TV person I'd missed it when it came out) so I've been talking like a wise-guy and cooking Italian ever since.
To save myself from drowning in passata I'm switching to cream today.
Lots of cream.

Hokay, team, get your pinnies on and let's head for the kitchen and make something suicidally artery-clogging!

Just as there are a million stories in the Naked City, there are a million creamy pasta sauces. This is one of my favourites; simple, quick and deadly.

You'll want (all organic, of course, and all local or home-made apart from the Italian cheeses and pancetta, which should always be the good stuff … hassle your local shops to get it):

- Pasta of some description. I'm using my own home-made pig-fat tortellini (for the heart-stoppingly calorific recipe see here);
- onion or shallotts;
- garlic and lots of it;
- single cream; gallons of the stuff;
- mascarpone, ditto;
- Cheddar;
- Pecorino;
- Parmesan;
- Smoked pancetta, cut into ickle cubes;
- Herbs and stuff.
- A defibrillator, fully charged up.

Right-ho, here we go!

Boil some water (unsalted; salt makes everything taste of salt - blech) ready for the pasta, which should take four minutes once the water's bubbling.

In whatever pan you have to hand heat the cubes of pancetta until they begin to get a leetle crispy, say five minutes or so.
As always, ensure it's organic or you'll get about half a pint of greasy water leak out of it (they add it to agri-chemical intensive factory 'meat' to add weight; buying non-organic meat means paying for about 20% water and means your pancetta will boil rather than fry, which is deeply, deeply unpleasant).

Add your chopped onion and garlic and turn the heat right down for a few more minutes until it all softens and the fat from the pancetta makes you slaver down your pinnie.
Oh, yeah; another quick reminder. Fat is where meat gets its taste; lean meat is simply an exercise in chewing.

When that's gloriously glistening, stir in a goodly amount of luscious single cream, a couple of massive slippery wodges of mascarpone and a scrumptiously stinky heap of finely grated cheddar, pecorino and parmesan.

Do NOT turn up the heat!
Add the ingredients slowly and sensually, swirling your spatula in slinky circles and letting things heat up from their own sexual chemistry. This sauce should be only palate-hot, gently warmed through on your lowest heat.

While we're getting all unnecessary, add some olives, basil, oregano, flat parsley and black pepper and check on your pasta; it should be almost ready.

All that remains to do is add the pasta to the sauce, swirl it around a couple of times, plate it up with plenty of parmesan on the side, grab a spoon and call for an ambulance.
You're gonna need one.

Enjoy!

What's Cooking With Dive? - Kedgeree

Hoorah for kedgeree, the true breakfast of champions!

Or at least hoorah for the breakfast of the luxuriantly-moustachioed colonial exploiters who ruled the Raj for centuries with a splendid mélange of silly hats and sickening violence.

This is what their Indian servants and cooks would have served up to them at breakfast time, as the sun rose over the Empire after a night of debauchery and curry.

Basically it is the most awesome way ever devised to use up leftover Basmati rice, though for today's post I shall be cooking it from scratch.

So, to commence: for authenticity's sake, we shall first head for the nineteenth century Kashmiri inkstand that serves as my spice rack.

And from it we shall purloin, to whit:
About yay much (look at the picture to gauge amounts) coriander seed,
Ditto cumin seeds,
a bunch of green cardamom pods,
and a teensy-weensy bit of star anise.

It's been a while since I've had a ranty cooking aside (check the early cookery posts for some real doozy swearfests if that's your thang) so it's about time I went off on one about spices and alleged curry mixes.

For this curry I am using the few spices in the photo above, plus I'll add a little turmeric and black pepper once the liquid goes in.
All I'll do is dry-fry them until the air turns toasty and delicious, then pound the crap out of them in a pestle and mortar, sieve them and add a few drops of water …
and THAT'S IT.

Not exactly rocket science. It takes less time than it does to pick your nose and have a really good scratch. It is really, REALLY therapeutic, plus the aroma is to die for.

And yet - for reasons beyond my ken - some people still insist on opening a jar of curry paste.
Do bear with me here; I am straining every sinew not to get sweary.

Just do this mental exercise with me.
Please.

In the palm of your left hand picture the few spices in the photo.
Making them into a curry paste takes not much more than a minute and is pure pleasure from start to finish.

In the palm of your right hand, try to picture this: (I photographed the ingredients list from a well-known brand of posh curry paste. This was one of the better ones, with no smegging MSG in it, yet it still gives me the creeping horrors):

Water - fair enough; I add a few drops to my spices to make a paste;
Vegetable Oil - hang on a minute … The second largest ingredient is oil? Eww!
Gram Flour - Er … why? It's for making chapatis, NOT curry paste;
Concentrated tomato purée - Somebody please tell me there are some spices in this!
Salt - For fuck's sake! We've not had any curry spices yet.
Sugar - Okay; I give up.
Ginger - at last! A real ingredient!
Maize Flour- Aww crap.
Coriander (3%) - THREE FUCKING PERCENT!
Turmeric,
Cumin, - At last - right down the bottom: some tiny traces of spice.
Acetic acid - and … er … acid.
Chili,
Spices (contains mustard) - Whoop-de-fucking-doo!
Lemon Juice,
Garlic,
Black Pepper,
Cracked Coriander Seeds,
Dried Coriander Leaf,
Onion powder,
Dessicated Coconut,
Garlic Powder, Tamarind,
Lactic Acid … Mmmm … Lactic acid. How could I have forgotten that.

All that. In your hand. Now which one would you rather put in your curry?
Tell me, honestly.

Sheesh!
Making proper curries in the kitchen is child's play. Here's a link to another one if you want to try it. It's great!

Don't EVER let me find you using a jar of fucking curry paste. I've got a curry-covered spatula here and I'll not hesitate to use it!

Anyhoo … Let's get back in the kitchen and make a real kedgeree. Not one full of oil, flour and salt with three (count 'em … three) percent coriander. Sheesh!

Kedgeree's a fish curry and the best fish for it is undyed smoked haddock.
Here's a nice piece.
Stick a few bayleaves on it and then cover it in boiling water and leave it to steep for five minutes.

When it's done, save the water (it's a pretty basic fish stock) and simply flake the flesh off the skin with a fork, taking out any pinbones as you do - though there should be none if it's been filleted properly and mine was (thanks, David).

Surprise, surprise, it's Old Dive's chopping board with an organic onion and some yummy French purple garlic on it.
Now where have we seen that before? Yeah, yeah … just about every darned cookery post. Hey ho. Onion and garlic are good for you and they taste delicious, so there! Plus they are essential ingredients here.

Melt a nice knob of unsalted Irish butter in pan together with your onion and garlic. Turn the heat right down and let them go soft.

Add about blah much organic Basmati rice (if you need to measure rice you shouldn't be reading this … just put in as much as you need).
Add the home-made curry paste and some yummy turmeric (according to all the medical journals over here, the latest wonder food in the fight against cancer, so eat lots).

Now put on Bob Marley and The Wailers' 'Stir It Up' and follow his instructions for a couple of minutes … "Stir it up, little darling, stir it up … etc."

When it's looking like all the rice grains are nicely coated, whap up the heat and add the fish stock you made earlier and hopefully didn't pour down the sink.
Add just enough to cover the rice and it should be fine. Keep a little back in case it dries too quick but it shouldn't.

An alternative way to make this is to use leftover Basmati rice that's been in the fridge overnight. It's just as good but you don't need so much stock.
Anyhoo, this method is for making it from scratch as I tend to eat up all my rice like a good boy.

Once the stock is bubbling, reduce it for around eight minutes.

While that's reducing, shell and quarter the medium-boiled eggs I forgot to tell you to cook before you start any of this. Then put 'em on a plate to wait their turn.


When the stock is nicely reducing, stir in flaked haddock together with a handful of peas and some parsley.

Then cover the pan and simmer for four or five minutes until the rice is tender and has absorbed the liquid.

Take the pan off the heat, dot the rice with a few ickle bitties of butter, leave for a minute then give it a last stir to glaze it.

Dish it up, add the eggs and serve with lashings of mango chutney and lemon/lime wedges if you have guests.
If you're me and guestless, pig the whole damned lot and then lie back and grin.

Enjoy!

What's Cooking With Phil? (and … er … Dive) - Wabbit!

"What's up, Doc?"

"I'm huntin' WABBIT!"

This post goes out in honour of the perennially disappointed Oryctolagus cuniculicide and famed rhotacistic Elmer J. Fudd.

Yup, we're eating bunny.
Say "aaah" and I'll slap you.

Cute, my ass!
See? Take off the fluffy bits and they look like a cross between pork, poultry and baby meat.
Chop the wabbit up into two big ol' hind legs, a couple of mid-sections and keep the forequarters for making stock.
You can give the head to the children to play with.

Today we're over at Phil's house and we'll be cooking wabbit stew.
Keeping Bugs company at the table will be Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head and their friends Rosemary, Corporal Carrott (sorry, Pratchett fans), Monsieur Onion, Larry Leek and some mushrooms whose names I didn't catch.

Taking photos for a cookery post is so much easier when you have someone else doing all the work.

See? Done already.

Right. Let's get some flour, season it and roll our bunny corpse in it bit by bit.

Then brown that sucker off in a little olive oil.
Mmmmmm … Looky!

Time to:
(a) brown off the onions, carrot and garlic (I forgot to mention the garlic earlier);
(b) toss 'em around in the pan like a poser; and
(c) apologise on Phil's behalf for the colour of his kitchen. It came with the house and he'll be changing it for something marginally less 1970s at his earliest opportunity.

Ooooh, yummy! Cider! This is getting good!

Greek honey, too!
At least I think so … Either that or beeswax, my Greek's not good enough to tell but we'll find out when we open it.

Hokay: veggies ready and some nice bayleaves from the garden popped in with them.

Add the rosemary to the wabbit in a big stew pot and drizzle honey (yes, it WAS honey) over it.

Now whap up the heat, throw in the veggies and pour over the whole bottle of cider.
Add just a splash of water if necessary to cover everything.

Bring your stew to the boil then turn the heat right down and let it simmer for about one hour forty.
In the meantime, get nasty with Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head.
Slice and dice! Ignore their pitiful screams, you're about to eat a bunny for Pete's sake!

An hour and forty minutes later (much watching of rugger and cricket on Phil's TV) and it's time to grab the tongs, yank your wabbit out of the stew pot and tear its flesh from its bones.
Don't be squeamish; this tastes gooooood!

Check the seasoning (we added a little more pepper), add in a shitload of cream, a dollop of grain mustard and some peas (I like peas).

Give it a stir and then Bugs can go back in for the last ten minutes or so, minus his bones.

While the stew is finally reducing your potatoes should be done, so drain them, add a knob of butter, a splash of cream and a teaspoon of Colman's English Mustard and mash those suckers to bits!

Dish up your stew and plop the potatoes in the middle.

Then raise a toast to Elmer J. Fudd and Eat That Wabbit!

Yes, I know Phil's dining table is posier than mine.
Anyhoo … Wabbit Stew à la Phil.

Enjoy!