23/1038 - Margaret's potted tongue

When I first took on this challenge (and before I decided to share my progress publicly) I could not decide if I would be prepared to cook every recipe in the book. There were at least five chapters that made me squirm at the thought of touching, cooking and eating the ingredients. I decided I would probably cook everything I liked the look of and then let the challenge peter out quietly. After all, nobody would know any different and my kids were hardly going to complain about missing out on the opportunity to experience tripe for the first time.

I was casually sharing this thought with my husband and he responded with, "Surely Stephanie would not include recipes in her book that did not taste good." I spent a good amount of time pondering this information, whilst at the same time wondering when the role of rational, wise advisor had passed from myself to my husband. I went back and told him I thought he was absolutely right and that I would be completing the challenge in it's entirety after all. He was of course over the moon. Not about the challenge of course, it is just such a rare occasion that I tell him he is absolutely right about anything. I think he may have even written the date down.

So this brings me to today's recipe, potted tongue. I started off by poaching the pickled tongue (reminds me of a tongue twister, pardon the pun), and then whizzed it up with the ingredients you would expect to be married with pickled meat - mustard, butter, ginger, nutmeg, worcestershire sauce, cloves and of course a dash of cayenne pepper. Very yummy indeed and great on toast.

In my wildest dreams I did not imagine I would ever make potted meat of any kind, except possibly when I was young and into anything written by Enid Blyton. I am fairly sure Dick, Fanny, Jo and Bessie packed potted meat into their picnic basket on a number of occasions.

I think these old fashioned characters were on to something.