Hanging about
Vegetarians may want to skip this blog and move on.
One of the benefits of working in agriculture is that you have access to the sort of food that you just can't get in the shops these days. An obsession with Health and Safety, coupled with the gradual erosion of any kind of common sense from the general populace, means that most of the food we eat nowadays is sterile, bland and nutritionally wanting.
A case in point is beef. Buy it in a supermarket* and chances are (if it's being sold as fresh) that it's less than a week since the animal entered the abattoir. However good your chef, this meat is going to be pretty tasteless, probably chewy and certainly tough. If you're very lucky you might spot a tiny bit of fat in the muscle, but chances are it's all long since been bred out. Any flavour in your chosen piece of meat will most likely come from the sauce or gravy you serve with it; and since there's nothing in the meat to make into gravy, that will probably come from a packet.
Last night we had a rib roast for our supper. It tasted delicious, with the meat meltingly soft and juicy - cooked of course to perfection. I made a rich gravy from the scrapings in the bottom of the roasting tray, but I could happily have eaten the beef on its own. It was that good.
This piece of pedigree Welsh Black beef came from a local farm. I know the farmer and have seen for myself how he runs the place. The cow my rib roast came from was raised extensively on grass, matured slowly and then killed at the local abattoir. Then the carcass was hung for thirty days - one for each month of the animal's life. Before cooking, the meat had a dark red colour and a good marbling of fat running right through it. All in all it was perfection.
And half the price I'd have to pay for it anywhere else, which just about makes up for living in the middle of nowhere.
Cold roast beef sandwiches for lunch all this week. Yum.
*don't ever buy meat from a supermarket. You'd be better off pouring bisto over some cardboard.
One of the benefits of working in agriculture is that you have access to the sort of food that you just can't get in the shops these days. An obsession with Health and Safety, coupled with the gradual erosion of any kind of common sense from the general populace, means that most of the food we eat nowadays is sterile, bland and nutritionally wanting.
A case in point is beef. Buy it in a supermarket* and chances are (if it's being sold as fresh) that it's less than a week since the animal entered the abattoir. However good your chef, this meat is going to be pretty tasteless, probably chewy and certainly tough. If you're very lucky you might spot a tiny bit of fat in the muscle, but chances are it's all long since been bred out. Any flavour in your chosen piece of meat will most likely come from the sauce or gravy you serve with it; and since there's nothing in the meat to make into gravy, that will probably come from a packet.
Last night we had a rib roast for our supper. It tasted delicious, with the meat meltingly soft and juicy - cooked of course to perfection. I made a rich gravy from the scrapings in the bottom of the roasting tray, but I could happily have eaten the beef on its own. It was that good.
This piece of pedigree Welsh Black beef came from a local farm. I know the farmer and have seen for myself how he runs the place. The cow my rib roast came from was raised extensively on grass, matured slowly and then killed at the local abattoir. Then the carcass was hung for thirty days - one for each month of the animal's life. Before cooking, the meat had a dark red colour and a good marbling of fat running right through it. All in all it was perfection.
And half the price I'd have to pay for it anywhere else, which just about makes up for living in the middle of nowhere.
Cold roast beef sandwiches for lunch all this week. Yum.
*don't ever buy meat from a supermarket. You'd be better off pouring bisto over some cardboard.
Comments
Bastard. Bastard. Bastard. Bastard. Bastard...
I had tuna casserole last night.