It was just an ordinary beef stew; nothing to write home about. I used oyster blade, the cut in which the layer of gelatinous membrane spliced between two layers of muscle, like a gold vein in quartz, melts under long slow cooking and bastes - or more accurately lubricates - the cut until the fibres break down. I sliced the meat into large cubes the size of matchboxes, dusted it in flour and salt and pepper, and sealed it in olive oil before tossing it into a casserole with a cup of chopped onions, half a cup of diced bacon, some whole button mushrooms, rounds of carrot, chopped parsley, a cup of red wine and stock to cover.
These days I do all this mechanically; that autopilot function that allows humans to think about something entirely different to what they are doing. Like having two brains. Maybe that's the secret to evolution. I was thinking along those lines and also listening to 'Into the Mystic' and 'And It Stoned Me' among other tracks, and suddenly it hit me: I had not included a Van Morrison song in my Top 100, a musical faux pas of the first order. I mentally made a note to do the list again and ditch half the songs. But which half?
The stew was in the oven. I went out for a few hours, paid some bills, had a coffee in the mall while reading another chapter of Martin Boyd's A Difficult Young Man, and went to the greengrocer where they sell tree-marked apples for $1.99 instead of $4.99 for perfect ones at the supermarket.
Later I cooked some potatoes, the yellow-fleshed ones that are particularly delicious when mashed with lashings of butter and salt and pepper; and an alternative side dish of polenta, one of my favourites, this time melting through it a cube of well-matured Roquefort for a cheesy charge over which the gravy of the beef stew made un mariage au paradis, if you'll pardon the pretentiousness of the phrase.
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