Blossom: VICTORY CUISINE part 2: corned beef fritters

In the VICTORY CUISINE (CUISINE! Cuisine! cuisine!) series I will explore a range of Extraordinary New (and old) Foods that nowadays, we would think of as weird and wonderful - or incredibly dated - but that played their role in nutrition during the forties.

I do hope you will enjoy VICTORY CUISINE (CUISINE! Cuisine! cuisine!) however, and perhaps you will even hop into the comments and suggest a few things yourself.

If you do want to see me try out something a bit special - won't you consider sponsoring me to do so? If your donation is generous enough, I might be persuaded to try many things. Once.


Today I have decided to person-up and try a foodstuff that I have not tried since, ooh, the Olden Days (back in the cough-coughies) when we were only willing to consume things pressure-cooked in aluminium, frozen then boiled for hours, or Freddo Frogs.


Corned beef. And not the lovely, lean pieces of pickled beef that you can get at the supermarket and then have to lovingly boil in bay-scented water for ages until it is perfectly tender.


No. Corned beef that comes in tins. Mushy corned beef.


It looks like this.

The sound effect I would like you to imagine you can hear right now
is an ominous, horror-movie DAH-DAH-DAAAAAAH.

I used to love this stuff back in the Olden Days.

Very excited.

It was also amazingly popular back in the forties, especially in the UK, for three reasons.

1. It was available.
2. It was protein.
3. It was available protein.
   

I understand that when you've eaten nothing but carrots and National Loaf for five days, a tin of this starts to look pretty good. My forties cookbooks are chock-full of recipes for tinned corned beef. Most of them seem to be recipes that involve eating the beef without necessarily tasting it, but still ...


Let's take a closer look.


The first thing to know about these tins is that no tin opener is necessary. Just as well, if Mum gave your tin opener to the scrap metal person in a surge of philanthropic zeal, so it could be beaten into useful things for the war effort, like tin helmets and bomb casings.


In fact, even today, the tins come with their own very special form of opener.

Voila! The key.

I actually adore opening these tins. It's a two-step process, lots of fun. First, detach the key from the base of the tin. There is a little slot in the key (b), and a little tab on the side of the tin (a). Insert tab (a) into slot (b). (I always wanted to type that.)


Second step: twist the key. Slot, twist and roll. Say it with me: Slot! Twist! And Roll!

And we get our first look at What Lies Within. DAH-DAH-DAAAAAAAH.

Upend the opened tin on a plate. Then watch, listen and enjoy the squelchy moment when the lump of jelly-like meat slithers out and lands, quivering slightly, on your plate.

Wibble-wobble, wibble-wobble.

At this stage, it is appropriate to stop and appreciate the fact that it smells exactly like tinned dogfood.

Darling Dog is suddenly quite interested in this recipe, and willing to give me a hand.

This recipe only required half the tin. So I put the other half into the fridge for later. Oh dear ...


Apparently you need to 'finely flake' the corned beef. I tried to do so with a fork, and this is what I got.

That? Is mush. Beef mush. Which smells like dogfood. Dogfood and despair.

You also need 2 oz. flour, half a finely-chopped onion, some milk, some salt, one egg and dried herbs to taste - I am using dried thyme.


First make a batter using your flour, a pinch of salt, a beaten egg (or reconstitited dried egg) and a bit of milk.

Batter. So far, so good.

Then you mix in your corned beef, herbs and onion, and combine the lot.

Oh, dear god ...

Stop to find out if your dog would like to lick the corned beef bowl.

Would she?

Take that as a yes, then. Well, somebody is happy.

Now heat up a small amount of fat in a frypan, and drop in spoonfuls of your mixture.

Like meat pikelets. MEAT PIKELETS.
I'll leave you to enjoy that thought for a while ...

You're welcome.

Brown your meat pikelets lovingly on both sides.

Behold the magnificence that is the corned beef fritter. Can I remind you again at this stage that it smells like dogfood?

Serve hot or cold. With mustard. And chutney. And pickles. Aaaand ... pretty much anything else you can find.


I am having mine for dinner tonight with salad. Will let you know how that goes in my next blog ...


Frock you later.
Blossom