Men’s Shed put peppered steak on Burns lunch menu
Around this time last year, St Luke’s Men’s Shed did a session in the centre’s cookery school making haggis, neeps and tatties.
This was the 2019 Burns celebration. The haggis was blessed by a Scot, whisky was taken and Burns poetry essayed, badly.
This year, haggis got the heave-ho in favour of peppered steak.
It came with roasted broccoli (garlic + salt), but the only real nod to Scotland in this lunchtime cookery class was neeps and tatties.
Unless you count whisky gravy as authentically Burnsy.
We prepped and we cooked. Some spent too long chatting about football.
I’d been put in charge of peeling parsnips and turnips, which I believe I did exceptionally well.
Then I trimmed the broccoli, at which point we discovered that discarded raw broccoli stalks are a secret snack for Clapton FC Graham.
Arsenal Emerson screwed up and started mashing boiled potatoes that were meant to be roasted.
Chef Mikhail went bonkers about that, then tried to make out that roasted crushed potatoes were just as tasty.
And Derek made a right song and dance of peppering the steaks.
Chef didn’t seem to give a toss about that.
Then, all done, we sat down at our table in the centre’s dining room and tucked in.
Someone found some Men’s Shed Home Brew left over from Christmas, so that went into the mix.
Then we played that stupid game in which everyone tries to guess Ponytail Alan’s age (he must be nearing 80 by now).
Walnut treacle tart was our dessert, plus a second glass of home brew.
Richard said the treacle tart was better even than his mother’s.
Derek piled his leftovers into a plastic takeaway carton he’d brought in anticipation.
Richard also told us that his first job in a Merchant Navy ship was peeling potatoes.
The crew called him the “Spud Barber”.
Then he told us that last week he witnessed some fellas in Morrison’s trying to rob a trolley full of booze.
They failed.
BillyScraps 