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Tonight's repast: belly pork slices roasted with apple and olive oil, Greek-style potatoes roasted with lemon, oregano and olive oil, and boiled tenderstem broccoli. We like our flavours big up here in Fairview Heights, and this one has it in spades. I will say that as usual, the spuds take centre-stage and the meat itself rolls in third: the fat layers below the meat, however are something else. Growing up a working class lad in Birmingham in the fifties and sixties, rendered meat fat; particularly pork and beef, were a significant part of my diet. The best chip-shop in the part of the Green [blog posts passim] where I grew up was at the the bottom of Chiswell Road, where my mate Jeff lived: they were the last in the immediate area that still fried their fish and chips in beef dripping: if you've never tried it, you've never lived. Hake - yes hake - and chips fried in beef fat: glorious to the point of fainting on the spot from its unctuousness and all-round gorgeousness. Oh, and by the way, the best treat ever as kids was a slice of dripping toast: especially if it had the brown bits from the roasting. That's Proust through the lens of postwar Brummagem, and if any would stoop so low as to characterise the food as low [born], just visit Provence or Puglia, or just about any part of the Med or the Iberian peninsula for proof that these very same things are prized as jewels by those that know their food.