Corona Stalks. Wants Raised Pork Pie

Whatever’s coming is still on its way. The mall is sci-fi abandoned. I commando into Dick’s like a stealth-zombie, foraging for running shoes. I don’t want running shoes. But the pool is closed and the Catskills without exercise is like a slow rusty knitting needle shimmied up the urethra. So running shoes it is. Blimey running shoes are ugly. What kind of assholes wear these things? People who have given up? Grey on grey on darker grey with flecks of oatmeal and teal. Just fucking hideous. And not even big hideous. Shitty little weaselface hideous.
“Why do you care?” says the audience I imagine watches everything I do, “they are for running.”
“But why would I not care?” I reply, “I’m still a sentient human being.”
Running’s wretched enough without shitty auntie fucking weaselslippers.

Jesus. It’s been two days, and all I do is eat. No worries about social distancing, if this carries on I won’t be able to get out the fucking door. Started with soup from two pounds of Tianna’s spinach; then before you can say ground chipotle and garam masala it’s slow chili with Jack’s beef, followed by pulled hen with Jennifer’s guinea fowl. And it takes the restraint of Hippo-Bottomed Hercules, Angela Gheorghiu’s Mimi streamed for free from the Met, and the sudden paralysis of rapid-onset fat fuck syndrome not to immediately start on fresh pasta with eggs from Joe Evans. It’s as if the specter of annihilation has initiated an uncontrollable chain reaction whereby anything set down for more than five minutes gets eaten. Car keys, dish sponges, the New King James Bible. Yesterday I heard my misplaced iPhone ringing inside of Winnie. We blubber from room to room, bewildered amoebas, off-gassing. To spare the furniture, we protoplasm down Main Street with offerings of Pappardelle for the People; but the faces at the windows are like mad moons, slit-eyed, tiny wet puffer-fish lips pursing helplessly in billowing fatbergs of blubber. ‘Help me …’ they whisper, their breath barely fogging the glass …

In a bid to stop stuffing my face, I go for a run. I’m not a runner. I can’t do the prim ‘look at me running except I’m too focused to wave’ thing. I’m waving like Ronald McDonald, like I’m having a stroke and need help. But with the community pool out-of-service until the end of time, I have no choice but to run or deliquesce into depression. Yet running is in itself depressing. So how to run; but not to run? That is the question, Horatio. If I could pull off the 1970’s cross-country Glaswegian ‘I’m off behind a bush for a fag and a can of McEwans’ look, I’d feel fine. But apparently that’s not running; it’s actually smoking and drinking. Instead I go with Japanese waffle taffeta bloomers (astonishingly comfy) and a Donegal tweed bobble hat. I want to be seen. But nobody sees. Only God sees, glancingly, out of the corner of his eye while striking down sinners with pestilence. Home, I make more fresh pasta and a limerick.
⠀⠀
Niccolo Machiavelli
Liked ladies to poop on his belly,
Whilst reciting Dante,
With Asti Spumante,
And a plate of fresh tagliatelle.

Day Two in runner’s world involves not running, which it turns out is the best part. The front muscles in my thighs bark like an angry seal every time I stand up or sit down. In the parking lot of Cooperstown Hospital I have to be pried from the car like an oyster and assisted to the lobby on twin grinding pillars of concrete and rebar. Was surprised to find breast ultrasounds are simulcast live onto overhead televisions in the waiting room, real time, between Fox News bulletins and reruns of The Bold and the Beautiful; the audience of grizzled men in turbulent sweatpants smaller today due to Coronavirus. After each patient, a rousing round of applause and the occasional ‘Brava!’  Home now, rendering lard from leaf fat, which resembles the ghostly tallywacker of a raddled unicorn. Also jelly from bones. It’s a pornographic cottage necropolis in here. Meanwhile a pair of hideous grey sneakers glare back at me from the rug like a bad mood. “Fuck you,” I growl, bathed in a heavenly nimbus of empowerment and well-being. There is a two-day raised pork pie slouching towards Bovina to be born. Why run when you can eat?

EARLY CORONA RAISED PORK PIE

THE BUSINESS
2.5 lbs pork shoulder, cubed really small
8 oz bacon, chopped fine
10 leaves fresh sage, chopped fine
4 sprigs of thyme, stripped
1 tsp. salt
freshly ground black pepper
½ tsp. ground mace
Lusty pinch of cayenne pepper
1 bay leaf
Pork stock jelly from cracked bones

THE CRUST
7 tbsp. lard
7 tbsp. butter, diced
1 cup water
4½ cups flour
1½ tsp. salt
2 eggs, beaten
1 egg, beaten (to glaze)

Okay, the crust. Put the lard, butter and water into a saucepan and heat gently till the fats are melted. Don’t boil. Put the flour in a bowl, make a crater like a volcano, drop in the beaten eggs, mix them round with a knife. Pour in the melted fat and water, mix it all up into a soft dough. Knead gently with a little flour, wrap it in plastic, put it in the fridge

Now the business. Mix the meats with the herbs and all the seasonings except the bay leaf.

Back to the crust. Cut off about a quarter of the pastry, roll out the remainder on a floured surface until you have a 12″ circle. Press this into an 8′ springform, using your fingers, pulling the edges about 3″ up the side. Fill with the pork mixture, pressing the bayleaf into the centre. Roll out the reserved quarter of dough into a lid, brush the edges of the pastry lining with a little beaten egg, lay the lid on top and crimp the edges so the whole thing is sealed. Cut a little circular hole in the top, just big enough for the tip of a funnel.

Put the pie into a warm 350˚ oven for 30 minutes. Reduce the heat to 325˚ and cook for another 75 minutes. Carefully release and remove the springform. Liberally brush the walls and lid of the pie with beaten egg, then back in the oven for 20 minutes.

Nearly done. Once the pie has cooled warm the pork stock jelly until it has just liquified. Place the tip of a funnel is the orifice you made in the pie lid, and slowly add the liquid stock in batches. It’ll fill, then settle, fill, settle. Tip the pie from time to time, making sure the stock is getting into every interior cranny. Keep adding as much as you can until it just overflows. Leave the pie to cool, then refrigerate. Your stock will re-jellify; the crowning glory of a raised pork pie.

Serve it a slice at a time with pickles. With anything really. With cheese and salad. With mustard. What an enterprise. Worth two days of plague, and all four corners of a pig.

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