Bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad! Oh god, so so very bad. I'm still not sure why I even had lard in the fridge (I bought it months ago thinking I needed it for a recipe only to get home and find - thankfully - that I didn't need it after all. I never threw it out, and that was my first mistake. Well, no, actually, the first mistake was buying the damn stuff in the first place, so keeping it would be the second horrifying error in judgement). Tonight's dinner was meant to be homemade fish and chips, and for some mysterious reason (akin to the judgement call which left me with half a pound of lard in the fridge) I decided to try deep fat frying on the stove top. We were very late getting dinner underway though, and it wasn't until I went to start the process that I realised I didn't have enough vegetable oil. It was then that mistake no. 3 took place...a tiny all-knowing voice in my head chirped 'use the lard'! Genius.
Oh god. The smell. The revolting nostril-gagging smell. It smelt like dead animal carcass. No, worse, it smelt like many rotting animal carcasses. In fact, it smelt like the rendering department of a freezing works factory (a smell that no good person should ever have to know).
I went through the motions and fried the chips and battered fish, but I just couldn't bring myself to eat them...fish should not taste like rendered hog fat. It just shouldn't.
In the end we dashed 2 doors down the street and got a curry...the strong Indian-food smells have helped to weaken the lingering lard stench - that and some scented candles, having the doors open all night (even though we've had snow on and off all day) and brewing some strong coffee are starting to make the place smell slightly more livable again. But only slightly...
I may never eat pork again.
Oh dear!!! All sympathy to you, girl. Yes, lard is very bad. I was told it's what they usually use to make pastries in Chinese cooking like those delicious little egg custard tarts, dammit, so I'm ill-fated never to eat them again. Sigh. Curry, on the other hand = good, very good! Mmmm... What sort did you have?
ReplyDeletep.s. This is really very funny...
ReplyDeleteHehe, thought you might find it amusing. I just turned on the extractor fan while I was making lunch and wafts of lardyness started to float out. Gag! However, brewing several pots of very strong coffee this morning and stewing apples with cinnamon seems to have eradicated most of the residual smell horror!
ReplyDeleteCurry was okish but to be honest, most curry places here pale in comparison to what you get in NZ and Australia. That sounds mad, I know, because they claim to be all about the curry in the UK but for the most part Anglo Indian food is super sweet and usually dyed frightening fluro colours. I had a vegetable biryani which came with a random vegetable side dish. I couldn't work out what exactly the side dish was, but the 2 cm of oil floating on top of the mushy brown gloop underneath was enough to make me toss it! Not a great food night all in all! :-P The poppadoms were good though!
I didn't mention in the original post but when scrubbing my kitchen from top to bottom last night (so as to remove any trace of spattered lard) I ended up sloshing the cooled lardy-oily horror all over my favourite round-home sweatshirt. That moment very nearly ended in a full-on lard-enduced hissy fit! :-P
ReplyDeleteAnd I now have a bottle of semi-solidified lard on the balcony that I really should take down to the rubbish bins, but I just can't bring myself to touch! I wonder if there are lard-removal crews you can call....