Evening All, I just thought i'd mention a book ive just bought called "Nose to tail eating" by Fergus Henderson. Its a recipe book with a difference in as much its as the title says, its about all the parts of the animal that these days are not used, ie trotters, pigs ears, marrow from the bone,and indeed the value of the bones for use in cooking. It's not just meat but fish/salad : veg/ bread/ cakes ect. And puddings. The thing about this book is the ways of days gone by are all there for all to see and try. Included in this book are jams and chutneys,/soups and stocks. Now we've been making are own jams and chutney's for years "but" again in this book ive found one or two ive never tried the way they're made in this book, Even the bread making gives a lot of different ways to bake your own bread for that extra flavour using just a mixture of flours and yeast. In all there are 192 recipe's and to read some of the old ways and why these ways we're used really brings home why the foods of times gone by tasted so good. Just to give a taster to those of you who like to try a different recipe how about crispy pig's tail? The writer say's that he's never tasted such lip-sticking quality of the fat and flesh merging as in the pigs tail, Ive not tried this recipe yet and with all the added veg to make this meal im sure it will taste a lot better than it sounds, ie this is served with onion/ carrot/ celery/ a bundle of "fresh herbs"/bay leaves/ head of garlic/ zest of lemon/ 1/2 bottle of red wine/ chicken stock/ mustard/ eggs/ flour/bread crumbs/ & butter. So as im sure you can see this sounds like a tasty experience and one thats well tried and tested over the years. But I was told about this book a while ago by a french friend who makes really good meals and so i thought i'd give it a go. The whole idea is that a lot of the people who do the cooking chuck so much of the un-used meat & bone away not knowing that this is the best parts of the animal if you know how to use it. Well here is a book that will tell you what to do with these parts and they can be bought for a good price.
You make a good point Moonraker. We are (generally) a wasteful bunch these days. Just a thought though, isn't it odd that among the problems of the world today we have a growing (pardon the pun) problem of obesity, poverty, and yet food shortage and waste. It makes no sense. But on a selfish note, part of me is glad that people have become choosy and wasteful. Liver is insanely cheap because it's no longer popular. Yet it has to be the most delicious part of the animal, and so quick and simple to prepare. Just fry it off with some onions, add a dash of cheap red wine and simmer with chunks of potatoes and carrots, and you've got a delicious stew for next to nowt. The trouble with the idea of making more use of the less popular parts is that some of it has fallen so far out of favour that butchers don't even offer it any more. Presumably it either goes straight in the bin or off to the dog food factory (or the hot dog factory if its not considered good enough for dog food).
I couldnt agree more , your correct about beastly people and the waste but again a lot of the problems are lazy and the chuck away life style we have today, People tend to follow each other like sheep and dont want to be different, As a young lad because of mum & dad devorcing i ended up living with my gran & grandad, Because they we're elderly they recieved free school dinners for me and a plastic bus token so i didnt have to pay on the bus to go to school, I didnt want to be seen as different so i walked 3 miles to school so i didnt have to use the token, (following like sheep idea) I hated monday's when we had to give the teacher our weekly school dinner money "because my dinners we're paid for via the council but class mates wanted to know why i didnt pay like them! When it came to seconds at the school dinners i never asked for or excepted any because i felt i had'nt paid for my dinners. I ate food's my class mates wouldnt eat ie "liver" after all it was the soles of shoes really But again i was told eat what your given as some people in the world have no food to eat! As life went on this way of life did me more good than harm as ive never run with the crowd "followed like sheep" and ive always tried to help when i saw a need. This chuck away life style i dont agree with, but some of the very best cooks in france have been using parts that a lot of people would'nt want to know about, I was reading a bit about a french cook who'd won all kinds of awards but he was so hard to work with because of his using everything and just wouldnt except waste, one part of the book he said "why people chuck the cabbage storks away he just couldnt understand, he went on to say its the stork that feeds the head of the cabbage and is the food storage area of the cabbage, He used the stork "after beating it limp" to use as a stock for soups ect, He also said that every one who is keen to cook should be as keen to grow food, because you must understand whats in the garden thats going into the food, ie whens the best time to harvest ect. And he finshed off by saying dont be scared of trying your own ideas of what you feel should make a tasty dish.(Again dont follow like sheep, do your own thing)
Anyone tried,? Evening all, Anyone tried mince & onion wrapped in cabbage leaves, served with mash potatoe and gravy?? And home made bread to mop up the gravy? Its a simple enough meal to make and not full of rubbish, taste smashing and really fill s you up, Finished off with home made red wine soaked pears & cremfresh.:yess:
I used to work with lad who loved broccoli, but hated the stalks. I told him teh stalks were my favourite bit. He was surprised and asked if I was joking. I assured him I wasn't. Next thing, he's bringing the broccoli stalks into the office for me. It was great. He'd reduced his waste and I was getting free fresh veg. On a separate but related note, last year I tried to grow turnips for the first time. It was a disaster to be honest, the roots just didn't happen. But there was plenty of foliage, and a bit of research told me the often overlooked turnip tops are very nutritious. I tried them and they were delicious. Might grow them again this year just for the tops
As an older person, and born and lived in the North East, I am very partial to OFFAL ALL OFFAL Unfortunatley it is no longer available I used to love Ibbitsons dairy fed Pork chops with kidney in, Nope you can get the chop but you have to get the kidney imported from Argentina Cow Heel, Udder, chicklings , lambs testicles, pigs and bulls whatsits, no longer available TRIPE No wait TRIPE has now been brought back, due to Jamie Oliver :yess: Due to Jamie though it is now £11 a Kg used to be pennies not only that but it is only the basic BLANKET TRIPE not the Best HONEYCOMB Tripe Tripe is very difficult to source up in FIFE so when I visit home, I buy and freeze again only Blanket tripe though This topic brings me to COD ROE rare as hens teeth in Scotland What is happening to all this food, where is it going, as Clueless says dog food I expect, but if that is the case why release poor Blanket tripe to the masses and ditch the quality Honeycomb tripe ? Jack McHammocklashing
Hi Jack, Many years ago i had a St.Bernard Dog, and every saturday i would go to the abbatoir (i think the spellings correct) and buy the tripe, i would be given this bin bag half filled "because of the weight they couldnt fill the bag" and it cost me around £2-00, A few times they'd say it'e free this week. But like you say whats happening to all the inners ect? It's no wonder we're following the americans ref really gross over weight people. I feel the way we eat has a lot to do with this problem plus little or no excerise. When i was at school we didnt have any fat people in our class, Ive really given this thought and honestly we didnt, but there again as kids we did run a lot and i can remember after school me Granny sending me to the corner shop, Most of the lads in our street had horses (invisible ones) and to gat this horse to go we had to whip its ars, if on the way to the shop i met one of my street mates "chances we're he'd be on his (invisible horse) and as we talked these horses would be turning around with us on them, (we'd tie these horses up outside the shop with an invisible knot "only we'd know how to untie them" they never got stolen) No indoor sitting around day in day out, And when we did go to bed i didnt have any trouble sleeping thanks to all the running about.
The local butcher's shop. Evening All, Just reading what jack was saying about getting hold of these verious inners from the likes of Tesco ect ect, One good thing about france is the way life here in the countryside never changes, "Lives very slow" and some of the cars i see are classic but used daily, Well the way the older french shop is the old way of shopping as ive said before, Now the village has two butchers and both have a bourd in their windows showing all the details of the cow's history of that cows meat they are selling at the moment, Now im going tobe honest and say we like a lot of folk tend to shop in the local supermarket, But my wifes said she's going to use the local butcher from now on so im hoping we can get some of the cuts from him we cant get in the supermarket.
There was loads of that in West Bay Fish Shop at the weekend, think it was about £3 a kilo. I was trying to work out if you could eat it or if it was just put in the window to gross out vegetarians as they passed by. I bought an extremely large whole Cephalopod instead.
Just checked their online store, Retail Shop • Samways Fish Merchants and International Transporters Ltd. Supplying Quality Fresh Fish Around Europe. They don't do the Cod Roe by post Jack Probably upsets the Postman too much.
When I was a kid, my dad used to send me to the local butchers shop with some strong carrier bags and a pound note. The pound note was just in case. I would ask the butcher for some 'lights' for the dogs. Whereupon the butcher would take my empty carrier bags and fill them half full, then pass them back to me and ask if I could manage that. On seeing that I could he would then laugh to himself, take the bags back off me, and top them up. I would then offer to pay with the pound note I'd been sent with, and the butcher would once again laugh, and tell me it was reward enough to see our dogs walking past with their bright eyes and shiny coats. I'd then struggle home with my arms getting ripped out of their sockets by this bags full of what I believe was cows lungs. My dad would then cook these up mixed with some cereal, and that was the dog food for the week.
went to a small shop today, as I wanted to buy more curry spices ... they have a small section selling fresh meat aswell and supply many Indian restaurants in our area and this shop was highly recommended by one of my clients Mutton, goat, oxtail all £5.50/kg .... bargain! bought some mutton and will make a curry .... (our local butchers do not stock mutton, and is much tastier than lamb, but needs to be cooked slowly for long) bought some oxtail (my favourite) and bought some goat (but told the wife it's lamb) and will try a North African stew recipe with that also bought springchickens (baby chickens) .... 3 for a fiver and superb on a BBQ, slowly roasted so, yes, it pays to shop at some of the smaller butchers, but saying that, we have some family butchers in Cambridge who have been in existance since the 1800's (or so their sign says) that are nearly 3 times the price of Tesco? .... and that is not worth shopping there unless you are 'well heeled' and can taste the difference or are after the odd free range turkey at Christmas time there are cuts of meat that are not freely available in the larger stores, such as T-Bone steaks, pork neck, oxtail, etc and I don't mind paying a premium price for these when I need them so will shop at these family butchers we also have a south african shop in our city which I frequent very often and buy the boerewors (south african sausage) plus loads of foods, sweets and alcohol not available in local stores .... but prices are steep I will however be frequenting the small shop I visited today on a more regular basis .... nice friendly guys and had a good laugh with them when I told them that I will tell my wife the goat meat is lamb
We don't eat meat other than fish, and when we buy (or I catch) that the heads get frozen for prawn fishing bait, and I can never understand why people get their whole salmon filleted instore and let them keep the 'waste' because there's always loads of flesh adhering to the bones that can be cooked in the microwave and then whizzed up in a food processor and used for pate, etc. From a load one of a load of salmon bought late December last year when it was 'half price', but then reduced by 50% again whilst we were instore, so 75% off but we still used every last scrap: Potato peelings can be roasted as 'crisps' when the oven's on, pea pods can be used to make soup, peelings are for making stock, potato water used for bread making, and if anything should be left the chickens have first dibs before it's composted.
Excellent Scrunge I'm still using the Veg stock left over from boiling up stuff for pickles etc. I froze it in ice cube trays and add it to stews.
I've come a bit late to this, but it's interesting to read that some of us still cook in the 'old fashioned' way. Like many, I have two 'wheelie' bins provided by my local Council, one of which is specifically for recyclable material - garden and food waste etc. Almost every time it gets put out, I get a sticker on my 'green' bin exhorting me to recycle more since it's unusual for even the bottom of my bin to be covered. What they don't see of course, are the 8 compost bins dotted around my garden and that part of my fridge or freezer where I store the stalks, 'good' parts of otherwise 'iffy' veggies and general bits of this and that which, when I've got sufficient, are turned into soup, stock or added to other dishes. As others have said, because they are no longer in vogue - or quite possibly because people can't be bothered - a lot of the foods that I was given as a child and would still cook, are either no longer available or are silly cheap. I remember giving the 'recipe' for a neck of lamb stew to a friend many years ago, she said it was OK but wouldn't be making it again because of all the faffing about - only later did I learn she'd attempted to remove all the meat from the bones before cooking!! Trying to buy proper neck of lamb these days is like looking to buy hen's teeth - I can have neck fillet and easy carve this or that, but proper neck of lamb? Forget it. Beef these days is labelled 'stewing beef' or 'casserole beef', and your average shopper wouldn't know shin from skirt from cheek let alone what to do with it, unless of course it comes in a bit of plastic with 'serving suggestions' plastered all over it. And if I hear one more person in the meat aisle go 'Eeeh, yeuk, liver' when I guess they've never even tried it, I may have to kick their legs! My Gran was a great maker of brawn, these days getting the ingredients even from your local butcher, would be quite a feat and, when I've asked my local butchers for some bones, one said his meat came ready jointed whilst the other told me it was against '... health 'n safety and food regulations' to sell or give me bones . But then I forgot - not only were both my Grandfathers butchers, but one did his own slaughtering too and without the 'delicacies' that even then customers wouldn't (and still probably wouldn't) buy, we'd most likely, never have had meat of any sort.
