Asbestos again

Following the report of 26th August 2010 in the other place, we now have another asbestos problem.

It seems that when FIL was a young man, just after the war, he acquired an asbestos lined metal box, once used to hold the tea making equipment for a neurosurgery unit near Oxford, a unit to which he was attached for a while after returning from India after the end of the second war. This box then did service for more than 60 years as a deed box, a service for which, given the asbestos lining, it might originally have been destined. Tea making equipment being an aberration. I don't know how much protection the asbestos gives the contents in the event of fire, but presumably some and maybe if we were to carry on using it as a deed box, the reduced risk of fire damage would be worth the increased risk of  asbestosis. Clearly a family conference about the matter is indicated.

In the meantime, three culinary events to record.

First, a novel way to dispose of leftovers. Take a small bowl of left over corned beef hash and a larger bowl of left over macaroni. This last plain boiled with celery, no tomato or other flavourings. Stir together and add a tablespoon of green label milk. Warm very gently in a thick bottomed saucepan for an hour or so, stirring occasionally. The idea being that the finished product is savoury but not damp. On this occasion, a vary satisfactory supper dish.

Second, a novel way to buy tiramisu, a desert of which I am rather fond, despite the wide variation, with everyone having their own way of doing it. This way of doing it came from an Italian outfit called Balconi, an outfit which does not have a web presence of its own, at least not one that I can find and with http://www.balconi.it having been hijacked by a bunch of engineers, but which does have http://www.balconishop.com, described as a service provided by Amazon, whatever that might mean. The people that used to just sell books that is.

Balconi produce a very cheap version of tiramisu, with ten chocolate sponge snacks, wrapped up rather after the fashion of choc ices, 10 for £1.59 in a distinctive yellow wrapper from Costcutter. Intrigued, we gave the things a go yesterday and they turned out to taste very like out own miniature swiss rolls, chocolate variety. Plus a touch of mascarpone - which according to Wikipedia is a prodotto agroalimentare tradizionale. Presumably a wheeze to stop the brand going the way of our own cheddar.

Ingredients listed in 18 languages, including Italian. Despite the clue of things like 'E' for Spain, we were still unable to work out what 3 of the 18 languages were. 'SK' for example, a language of which we could only say that it looked a bit central European. Slovakian? One supposes that this wealth of languages reflects a wide distribution for the product, so plenty of people out there must like it. But I am not sure that we will by buying any more.

Third, having bothered to buy some plain (none of this apple or leek nonsense thank you) sausages from Manor Green Road (check out the shiny new web site at http://www.masterbutchersepsom.co.uk), we decided that it was also worth the bother of frying them (in lard, naturally. Some advice from some celebrity chef about frying in butter notwithstanding). Which as it turned out it was. OK, so you have to stand and watch the things for the 45 minutes or so during which they are cooking, but a much better result than baking, covered or not. Proper control over the amount of cooking. Mottled brown rather than a uniform and often rather dried out dark brown.

PS: FIL did tell us something of the work of the neurosurgery unit. Some of it was some particular operation done on otherwise healthy looking young men, an operation which only worked around half (or some proportion of that sort) the time - with the outcome being fatal when it did not. One can understand that he found that part of the work rather hard.