Demon Cook

A week ago, I got one of those phone calls that parents dread. My son rang early evening, just I was sitting down to dinner to the usual accompaniment of The Archers, to tell me he'd had a terrible headache for three days, had awful aches and pains, an upset stomach and a raised temperature. " Have you got a rash? " was my first question to which he replied "No, but I can't get rid of this headache. I'm going to A&E". The last communication with him was a few hours later to tell me he'd had a chest X-ray and a blood test. I couldn't reach him by phone the next morning and so drove up to Kingston where he lives, hoping to find him recovering in bed at home. But there was no sign of him, nor his motorcyle, at his flat and his cat came dashing in when we arrived, clearly very hungry. Eventually, I located my son in the labyrinth of Kingston Hospital. He'd been admitted to the Acute Assessment Unit and when I arrived he told me he was b

Some years ago ox (beef) and pork cheeks were marketed by a certain supermarket favoured by middle class people as "forgotten cuts", along with pork shin and other less fashionable cuts of meat - and quickly became fashionable again. It reminded me of the time when Delia Smith first introduced us to lamb shanks and suddenly this humble cut from the leg suddenly became very trendy and therefore much more expensive. Ox cheeks lend themselves to slow cooking. This is muscle with very little fat - think of all that chewing that goes on day after day! - and it needs long, slow cooking to soften it. Cooked well, it is melt-in-the-mouth tender, comforting and perfect for an autumn or winter evening. It needs only a dollop of fluffy mashed potato to soak up the aromatic sauce. I don't have a set recipe for slow-cooked ox cheeks, but tend to use the following basic ingredients to create a richly-flavoured sauce, reduced down from the cooking broth. To enhance the meaty flavour