Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

[viper37]

Edit: Really want a pie now

Meat pie, I can forgive.  Warm beer is hard to swallow.  But boiled chicken ruined my childhood.  Disgusting british cooking habit of boiling all meat.  Why, oh why?  What have these poor animals done to you that you need to boil them and top it with minth sauce?  Damn, that's cruel.  Obelix was right to flee that island in terror.

[Richard Hakluyt]

Edit: Really want a pie now

Meat pie, I can forgive.  Warm beer is hard to swallow.  But boiled chicken ruined my childhood.  Disgusting british cooking habit of boiling all meat.  Why, oh why?  What have these poor animals done to you that you need to boil them and top it with minth sauce?  Damn, that's cruel.  Obelix was right to flee that island in terror.

I don't get this at all; my people roasted or fried everything, with casseroles putting in an appearance sometime in the 1970s as a posh French way of cooking. Perhaps there was regional variation? And who was the evil person giving you boiled chicken in Quebec? Was there a rogue outpost of the British Council trying to subvert Quebecois culture  ?

[garbon]

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2010/jun/21/consider-boiled-meat

Consider boiled meat

Do you cleave to the old wisdom that says boiling meat is a thoroughly good thing, or does the very thought make you seethe?

Of all the many reasons this country's food continues to suffer such a dismal reputation abroad, our supposed taste for boiled meat is among the first, "the paradigmatic emblem of loathed English blandness" according to one American writer. Mrs Beeton recommended plunging mutton legs into fast-boiling water so that the "surface ... coagulates, forming an envelope, which prevents the escape of the internal juice". Balderdash, and a sure path to tough, inedible meat. (Ruinously, Beeton also warns against resting meat because "boiled meat, as well as roasted, cannot be eaten too hot".) The grisly, gristly spectre of an ashen Victorian joint – a lump of cracked cement flanked by dismal sprigs – remains for many countries a typical English dinner, as dry and politely tasteless as our sense of humour.

Boiled meat will never win any marketing awards. It speaks of cabbagey kitchens and bones poking out of stockpots, of puritan blandness and the unfashionably old-fashioned. I'd never tasted boiled lamb or mutton before, though it's meant to be one of the great national dishes, so I'm making some while writing this. It's cooking gently as we speak: just the odd glop-glop across the kitchen. It smells of turnip, Tom Brown's Schooldays and pious frugality.

The first thing to point out about boiling meat – and here I include poaching, simmering and stewing – is that it works better on tough, cartilaginous cuts than leaner ones. You'd be mad, I think, to boil a fillet of beef: it lacks the twisting sinews of, say, heart, and you lose those savoury Maillard caramel browns that only oil and high heat bring. But slow, steady cooking in water, wine, beer or stock unfolds the bashful glories of shin and shank, and tripe and trotter, the chewy muscled tasty bits of working beasts of the farm. There's science to all this: arid treatises on collagen and gelatine and muscle fibre, the temperatures of leaching cells – but all it really says is that you should keep the temperature low and regular.

"It's a humanistic approach towards cooking," Fergus Henderson told me. "My mum, who is a wise soul, always said never to boil meat, but just to give it the gentlest simmer. The heat should simply stroke it. Boiled beef or ham is a million miles from roasting."

And the most familiar boiled meats follow Ma Henderson's advice. A big round ham is a Christmas Eve ritual in our family, thickly sliced and dribbled in parsley sauce. My Irish stepfather makes a delicious spiced beef, and I love the nursery calm of poached chicken, the savoury soul of cawl, pot-au-feu, Lancashire hotpot, and the other great stews of peasant Europe.

Boiling meat, after all, is cheap and easy, so it's closer to the diet of villeins and serfs than the rich and pampered. Salting is one of the oldest ways to preserve meat: boiling salted meat helps keep it tender. The nutritious broth that a joint leaves behind is an excellent base for a hearty soup. That's why the shockingly catchy music hall ditty Boiled Beef and Carrots suits a cockney accent so well, and why boiled meats feature so highly in the itinerant cuisine of Judaism.

The British flirtation with every other cuisine except its own is now endemic, but we would lose something precious and important if we forgot about boiled English meat. It has a succulence, an integrity and a heritage that are entirely, viscerally ours. Boiled lamb with a sharp caper sauce is hearty and exquisite, and I know this because I'm eating it right now.

So what do you think? Have you ever boiled a leg of mutton? Does a ritualistic ham feature on your Christmas table? Would you ever poach a chicken breast instead of grilling or frying it, or does the idea of boiling meat make you seethe?

[Syt]

[Sheilbh]

I don't get this at all; my people roasted or fried everything, with casseroles putting in an appearance sometime in the 1970s as a posh French way of cooking. Perhaps there was regional variation? And who was the evil person giving you boiled chicken in Quebec? Was there a rogue outpost of the British Council trying to subvert Quebecois culture  ?

Right? It's strange.

I don't think I've ever seen or eaten boiled meat - maybe a boiled gammon. Plenty of stews like scouse but they are braised

[Eddie Teach]

My dad used to make boiled chicken. Thing I remember most about them is how strong the lemon was.

[Syt]

Actually, one of Austria's signature dishes is boiled beef.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tafelspitz

[celedhring]

No issues with boiled meat. My mom makes killer carn d'olla.

[Maladict]

The Hague court tears up the nationwide 9PM curfew because there is no actual emergency to justify it.  The Covid deniers are having a field day.

[Sheilbh]

No issues with boiled meat. My mom makes killer carn d'olla.

I don't think I've ever cooked a stew without browning the meat first. Maybe you don't need to

The only British boiled meat I can think of is a boiled gammon or ham, and the offal dishes like haggis which are different.

Thinking about it the only time I've boiled meat is cooking Chinese recipes. If you're cooking, say, pork belly even though it'll basically be braised in a wok the first step (in recipes I have) is to boil the meat first very quickly so it's not bloody - then brown it with spices etc, then braise.

[The Larch]

The Hague court tears up the nationwide 9PM curfew because there is no actual emergency to justify it.  The Covid deniers are having a field day.

No actual emergency? Really? 

Over here courts have only overturned restrictions linked to forced closures of bars & restaurants in a region (thanks to a controversial judge), but other professional associations were ready to bring similar suits in other parts of the country which might also be successful, but not something nationwide.

[Sheilbh]

The Hague court tears up the nationwide 9PM curfew because there is no actual emergency to justify it.  The Covid deniers are having a field day.

No actual emergency? Really? 

I'm not convinced by curfews. But no emergency is a really weird reasonining

At the start of the first wave (when it was only Lombardy in Italy) I was working with other European privacy lawyers on the apparoaches different countries were taking about using data. The Benelux regulators came out with very strict, legalist guidance/analysis. They more or less had to reverse course a few weeks later when it was clear we were in a pandemic across Europe. But I remember their approach being really unrealistic (from memory the UK and Spain were most pragmatic/flexible, with Italy and France somewhere in the middle).

[The Brain]

Flexible when it comes to the law?

I don't know Dutch law, but FWIW it sounds perfectly within the realm of the possible that the current emergency doesn't meet the legal requirement for a nationwidw 9PM curfew.

[Zanza]

For whatever reason, Germany unilaterally introduced border checks to Austria and Czechia due to high Covid incidence. Apparently not aligned with the EU commission or our neighbour governments, against common EU policy. Also federal police is overwhelmed and does not have the right equipment for outdoor checks. The result is heavy traffic congestion, interrupted supply chains, pissed off EU and neighbours.

Another chapter in the long list of Covid policy failures by German government. 

[Sheilbh]

Flexible when it comes to the law?

Yeah - European law can be quite vague. It's largely based on principles and general statements rather than specifics, so the regulators have a big role in interpreting what that means (at least until it gets to court).

So, for example, you can use health data if it is "necessary" because of public interest in public health. The Benelux regulators, from memory, basically said it wasn't necessary because public authorities had alternatives; the UK and Spanish regulators said it would be necessary if the party collecting the data didn't have alternatives.

From speaking to Dutch lawyers there was quite a lot of pressure on the regulators because they'd taken a position that was perceived as divorced from reality - they eventually shifted position. From memory they didn't change their interpretation they just said actually lots of this data isn't "personal data" (which is tendentious) so our guidance doesn't apply and we're not causing issues Not sure about Belgium and Luxembourg.