The ham was advertised as 6.5kg, though I didn't weigh it, and cost £40. Those remains must total a good 750g, and even the main bone isn't going to waste, simmering with stock vegetables and herbs various in a pot with the capacity of a cricket club tea urn. When the stock is right - as soon as I finish this - I'll pour it through a sieve into a cold metal bowl to cool before skimming, which given there is a load of fat and skin in the makings may well account for 10 per cent of the volume. Some will go in the fridge for imminent use, some freeze for future value.
As I do whenever I see those annoying TV adverts for stupid piddly stock pots I'm tempted now to say balls to Marco Pierre White. That idea that a magic bought ingredient will make your cooking cheffily brilliant is just so wrong. Good ingredients can help, but a miniscule plastic pot of jellied goo probably doesn't qualify, and is not going to turn a thin ragout into a rich and fragrant feast. A properly - lovingly - made stock just may. Thus tomorrow's turkey risotto made with some of the ham stock has a decent chance of being really flavoursome, the meat and bones backed up by carrots, onions, garlic, bay, pepper, cassia bark, celery and thyme.
On Friday I asked the Booth's butcher for some beef bones for another stock, and was surprised that he fished out two short bones from what may have been flat-rib, very meaty indeed. No charge - I heard someone say the other day that butchers pay to have the bones taken away, so welcome such requests. That price definitely fits the austerity remit. Again simmered (and carefully skimmed of gunk), but this time with lots of star anise and chillis along with the stock vegetables, they made the basis of a fine noodle soup (per SC damp noodles, though I notice that he had no problem downing plenty). Naturally both of these exercises took a lot longer than peeling the lid off a Knorr potlet, but it's worth it. One more chorus of balls to Mr W.
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