Imperative cooking en chamage T he column this week is for
the poor. Perhaps, from my hazy notion of Spec- tator readers, I should say the genteel poor but none the less genuinely poor for that. .Socialists implausibly identify poverty with one social class. In fact many people go through periods of poverty. I can remem- ber when Mr Moore, now the editor of the Spectator, was poor, at least by the relative standards fashionable among socialists. Young married people of all classes may be Poor as may the elderly. I am sometimes Poor after going to the races or my wine merchants . . . . Enough.
Can poor people eat well? Certainly not badly especially if they are unemployed and take advantage of the excessive spare time they have. Moreover there is good food to be had, naturally and free, though a cult should not be made of it. Yet I have been cockling, winkling and mushrooming for years and never met a poor or an unemployed person, not a miner in sight. I can be sure because I have never met anyone. Again, the British are so ignorant about food that many excellent ingredients can be obtained cheaply or even free at shops: liver, kidney, sweetbreads, brains, melts, pig's feet, or white fish heads for fish soup. Despite repeated publicity given to this fact, throughout increasing unemploy- ment and supposedly increasing poverty, the relative price of these items has, if anything, fallen. Last, food goes through several hands before reaching the shop customer, particularly if processed. Cooks on a restricted budget must cultivate the Cheaper sources of supply early in the Process. These points are well exemplified fll the case of hare.
Shoot the hare in the head. Quite apart from any humane consideration we do not want the fur damaged. Take it home and hang it in a dry shed suspended by its back feet from a peg. It is possible that a few of the vast number of new readers subscribing to the Spectator may not go rough shoot- ing. They should find someone who does. All competent cooks should make it their business to know someone who will supply them directly with wildfowl, game, rabbits and pigeons. The quality will be better than in the shops and prices less than half. The hare might cost one to two pounds. If Possible you want last year's leveret but depending on age it will weigh five to eight Pounds. Buy it in its skin and, of course, unpaunched. If the weather is mild, hang it for ten days, if cold three weeks.
I always paunch high hares onto the letters page of the Guardian. Somehow it seems appropriate. Chop off the tail and feet (keep them). Pulling up the fur, cut a vertical line up the stomach but not pierc- ing the abdomen wall. Peel back each side and ease out the hind legs, then pull the skin towards the head, easing out the front legs. Chop off the ears, cut out the eyes and pull the skin off the head (keep it). Now slit up the abdomen and cut through the pelvic girdle so that you can pull out the entire stomach, liver and intestines without breaking them. Keep only the liver and remove its gall bladder. Now cut into the diaphragm, pour out and keep any blood and remove the heart and lungs. Joint the hare. With a little practice this whole process takes ten minutes or less. Now cook it according to one of many recipes. For economy, try a Spanish dish which uses olive oil and wine vinegar. Whatever you do, some oil or fat must be added since hare is a dry meat. The unemployed have the time to lard it.
Now the important bit: peg out the fur on a board, inside upwards, and rub with salt crystals and put in a dry shed. Occa- sionally scrape the inside of the fur and re-salt. After several weeks, depending on the weather, the fur will be ready to make gloves for the family, one large hare per pair of gloves (the fur is better on hares shot well into winter). Discarded ladies' soft leather boots make a good palm and you will need a velvet lining. I still have a pair of hare gloves Mrs Anderson made for me while she was 'resting' ten years ago. It was a moving sight coming home to find her sitting by the fire, her nimble fingers scampering over the skins. Note: you can learn to do this on your own without going on weekends with awful craft people. Finally the tail and feet will make excel- lent toys for your cat — the feet last two years, depending on the cat, the tails six months.
There you are, two meals for a family of four, and soup (made from head, bones and heart), gloves for everyone (and many happy evenings making them) and toys for the cat, all for the price of a frosty pizza. And me — I'm positively aglow with charity.
Digby Anderson
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