Meat

[smokingboot]

I love a good horror story. Sometimes it helps to know it's a horror story in advance.

When larians bought 'The River Cottage Meat Book' by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, I was prepared for my usual sneers regarding the author, a man whose tv series about his smallholding, 'River Cottage' down in Dorset, resurrects every Famous Five cliche except the dirty stinking low class villains who always get caught in the end. His is a pure sweet Dorset populated by men with cider enhanced sideburns and their practical peahen wives, incubated in jam jars at the local women's institute. There are no children in Dorset; people are born at the fine age of 53, safe from new ideas, loving the old and playing skittles when they feel daring.

I watch the show with a kind of dreamy contempt that veers between wanting a smallholding of my own full of fine fat pigs and lambs, and obliterating the whole smug little fib with a death ray from Mongo. I am a fan.

So then, this book. I was expecting an homage to darling Dorset, far from the evils of the city. Well, now I know.

It's about meat, different types and cuts of meat and what they are good for...and with great passion as well as rationality, it talks about what we are getting in our supermarkets. Now of course, as a smallholder he is going to talk up the little guy against those massive corporate villains Tescos et al. But the truth is, I find myself convinced by his arguments. For a man who is arguing the case for real meat, he is very close to sending me back to vegetarianism.

Of course, that's not what he's trying to achieve. His argument is that good meat less often is surely preferable to bad meat every day. By good meat he means that which is organic, ethically maintained, and therefore more expensive and asks us to look towards our farmers markets etc, etc. By bad meat he means that which is intensively farmed, unethically maintained and therefore very cheap indeed. Of course, the former would cost a mint, but he argues that there are ways of making it more economical...

larians and I are taking it pretty seriously, and we're going to see what we can do about buying better meat. For me the big one is pork. I have issues with it anyway, because the pig is an intelligent creature and I just don't know if it's OK to eat sentients. Also, the most intelligent farm species (excluding us) is by far the most badly kept. The book is full of recipes and information I appreciate. But Hugh's tales of what intensive farming is really all about is the nastiest horror story I've ever read. So I guess it's time for change.

Comments

[smokingboot.livejournal.com]

Exactly. Hugh's argument is that the expensive nature of organic meat can be offset by the way it is used. It's more great-great-grandma's economy than ours - and it all comes down to what you're saying as well as understanding the cuts and recipes they're good for, which the book also has in good measure.

Of course, as I can barely cook, let alone cook well and without waste, I have a long way to go!

[yapman.livejournal.com]

A big joint is surprisingly easy to cook. Hugh's instructions work well, buy yourself a meat thermometer and give it a try. The shepherd's pie is easy and damn tasty for leftover use, I tend to buy a shoulder of lamb, on the bone, stud it with anchovy, rosemary and garlic and roast it, then make shepherd's pie for dinner and the freezer the following day. Freeze the bones for stock, once you've enough, the pie gets even nicer ...