"You mentioned a 'hand of pork' what is this? I didn't know pigs have hands."

Ah yes from the title enquiry I appreciate butchery terms do have some odd names outside of the business. A hand of pork is from the slightly leaner area just below the fatty shoulder where the hock (chunky bit before the actual trotter) is. A lot of English butchers sell it at around £3-5 a kilo so it is a really good buy. Although pork is generally one of the cheaper types of meat to buy I would still contest that this particular cut is an utter winner in the taste stakes. The minor downside is that you may possibly be required to purchase the whole joint but is only going to cost you around £9 max minus the hock. Much cheaper than the leg joint and in my opinion much tastier and less dry at the final part of the cooking. Stew up some cooking apples and add a small amount of cinnamon or nutmeg to taste. Brown sugar also helps accentuate the sweetness of the apples too.

Any road up, buying the pork on the bone is generally cheaper and with a bit of skill and a sharp knife it isn't that difficult to take the bone out. Even if you make a real bad job of it (without cutting yourself) you will be proud of your inner butcher. Stringing it up requires slightly more patience.

A hand of pork fresh from the local butcher.

Hand of pork boned and rolled and accompanied by voyeur cooking apples.

Some whole spices added. Half a dozen cloves, star anise and a piece of Cinnamon bark.

After three hours in the oven gas mark 7. 210 degrees C. Smells fab.

Roast hand of pork. Gratin Dauphinois and home made Bramley apples sauce.

If you love French recipes the best book on the market is definitely this one. It is the best selling French cookbook in the word and now in English. This is where I got my inspiration for my accompanying Gratin Dauphinois.

Best British Banger competition. East Midlands final.

The East Midlands final in the Best British Sausage competition was held yesterday (November 5th) - a day famous for the more explosive bangers - at the Orange Tree pub on Shakespeare Street in Nottingham. Out of over 300 entrants their were twelve finalists chosen to be at the event. Chef Simon Rimmer was one of the three judges.

I went along to the event and got the chance to talk sausage with Steve and Johnny from Nottingham's own JT Beedham's on Mansfield Road, Sherwod. This year they had entered a spring roll sausage inspired by the popularity of the food influences of Chinese takeaways. The recipe is a secret but includes ginger and soy sauce. As I spoke to Johnny my mouth was watering! I also took some time to speak to the butcher Steve and he told me about the practicalities of running the shop, the hard work put in to be an entrant for this nationwide competition and of their new and enthusiastic apprentice Sam. They really seem to look after and encourage their apprentices.

some of the finalists in the sausage competition



The judges were situated in a side room and had the task of sampling the cooked up sausages from all of the East Midlands finalists. The three judges were Simon Rimmer (Ambassador for British Sausage Week), Del Frith for The Orange Tree and Claire Holland of the BSW team.

 

 

 

Waiting with me for the result were butchers from across the region . I met Jim Sutcliffe from Meridian Meats of Louth - a very foodie town with no fewer than four butchers in the town centre, Sarah and Andy of Ringrose butchers of Broughton Astley in Leicestershire and Trevor Fairburn of Fairburn's in Louth.

 

The judging took a while and I managed to say a quick 'hello' to journalist Erik Petersen of  the Nottingham Post. I hadn't met Eric before but he did a telephone interview with me when I was the face of Tesco's 'Love Every Mouthful' campaign and featured as the butcher in the tv adverts.

 

I had a busy day on with all of my food and theatre blogging and had to leave around four to go over to Derby to review the Balletboyz at Derby Theatre and I was keen to find out who the region final winner was. By the magic of Twitter the winner was shown to be Trevor Fairburn of Fairburn's butchers on Mercer Row in Louth. Well done Trevor and to all the other finalists for getting to the final with exemplary sausages and their passions for quality butchery. Trevor's sausage was a traditional Lincolnshire sausage mix.

 





It's British Sausage Week. What is your favourite sausage?

The Aussies may have their Kanga Bangers, Germany may be the home to over 1500 varieties of sausages and a sausage academy at Neumarkt, but the statistics show that 90% of British households buy British sausages and enjoy them for breakfast, lunch, supper and for snacks. Whose can resist a sausage sarnie, a delicious warming sausage casserole, sausage and mash with onion gravy? Sausages are just so flexible and we Brits have been enjoying them since the Romans first developed the art of stuffing coarsely minced pork or pork mixed with other meats, fat and seasonings into skins or casings. Emperor Constantine the Great attempted to ban them because he thought that the eating of them at the wild feast of Lupercalia was ruining public morals! Thankfully he failed.

Traditionally, country pork sausages are the favourite closely followed by beef. For those shoppers who shopped in traditional butchers and the chain butcher shops like JH Dewhurst throughout the UK in the 1970s and even the 1980s they may well have a fond memory of the very popular tomato sausages.

Sausage facts:

• Sausages should be cooked slowly over a medium heat and definitely NOT pricked with a fork. If you prick them they are more likely to burst and you will lose those flavoursome juices.
• The nickname 'bangers' was first given to sausages during the first world war when the sausages exploded in the pan while being cooked. This period was a time of meat rationing, so the manufactures bulked up the sausages with cereal and water. The sausages exploded during cooking because the water turned to steam.

Check out this great website that is celebrating British Sausage Week and all things pork.

What is your favourite sausage? Do you prefer plain or seasoned/spicy sausages?

Juicy beef steaks and properly done pork chops.

As I write up this blogpost today it will form the last entry to finish off my just about to be published book 'Tales from the Block'. I have spent the morning editing and proof reading the text and making a few image changes. And so to my subject today – beef steaks and pork chops.

My butchery opinion is often sought on my recommendation for a juicy beef steak and I believe that properly aged beef tastes so much better than that under twenty one days in the hanging. In an ideal world the beef should be hung for at least twenty eight days and some butchers like The Ginger Pig Company hang theirs for thirty five to forty days. Simply put, beef cannot be eaten straight from the slaughtering process. Hanging it in a temperature controlled refrigerated walk in cold room environment allows the meat to mature and develop flavour and become more tender.

Which then are the tastiest beef steak types?

Well in chef's listings the rump steak comes out at number one, sirloin at number two, rib eye practically joint second and fillet steak the last. There are other types of beef steak that can mostly be purchased from a traditional butcher. These are feather blade, T-bone/Porterhouse, onglet steaks and point steaks. Goose skirt or bavette style steaks can be purchased if you want to experience a more continental way of cooking steak. Naturally on all of the steaks the cooking method and skill employed will also affect the end result.

Rump steak joint and cut steaks

Rump steak: Full of flavour this steak comes from the hind quarter of the beef carcass and should be well hung. The steak joint is quite a wide joint and usually cut across three muscle groups for a long kidney shaped steak. Should the butcher slice the rump the wrong way the steak will be very chewy or in butcher's parlance “Tough as ode boots”. Although modern eating trends tend to shy away from eating the fat that surrounds some steaks if you can find rump with the fat on and no gristle buy it and you won't go wrong.

 

Sirloin steaks

Sirloin steak: A middle back cut, this can be boned and rolled by the butcher as a prime beef roasting joint or cooked as steaks. I would suggest that because the muscle is smaller than say rump this steak can benefit the customer by being sliced that bit thicker. A sirloin cut about an inch and a half thick would make the perfect juicy steak because cut too thin (less than a finger thick) the meat can dry out quickly in the cooking.

 

Fillet steak

Fillet steak: The steak comes from a long muscle that does no work at all and is very tender and with extremely little fat. When the fillet muscle is cut in half each piece gets named and the names are in French. The long single muscle part is the Filet Mignon and the wider muscle (actually two muscles) is the Châteaubriand. All of the fillet can be cooked quickly as steaks or chopped finely for steak tartare and cooked as a joint as a Beef Wellington (filet de boeuf en croûte) for example. Fillet is said to be least flavoursome steak however.

 

Rib eye steaks with joint

Rib eye steaks: This is a very popular steak with those who enjoy a bit of fat with their beef steak and it works particularly well through cooking on the barbecue or on a hot griddle. The meat itself comes from the fore rib and marbled with an off centre piece of white fat. The rib muscle is trimmed of sinew and surplus fat and makes a compact and delicious beef roasting joint too. The inner fat element really adds to the flavour.

Pork chops come from the pig's loin and in the old days people would fight to get one or two of the pork chops that came with the pigs kidney attached. The average pig kidney is about six inches long so in reality only about six decent thickness loin chops from the whole pig would have the kidney attached still in its little protective round of fat. Alas, an EU ruling banned the sale of pork chops with the intact kidney and the meat inspectors in abattoirs slice through the kidney and surrounding fat in checking for any sign of disease in the animal.

I digress. Pork loin chops ( like all pork and chicken) need to be cooked thoroughly and if you are frying or especially grilling the pork loin chops a tip is to snip the outside edge of the loin chop a few times before cooking with some sharp kitchen scissors. This action will prevent the chop curling up in the heat and you will achieve a more even cooking result.

I do love a nice pepper seasoned loin pork chop but I would also highly recommend trying the sweeter tasting (nearer the shoulder of pork and marbled with fat) spare rib pork chops that also have very little bone. These should not be confused with the spare ribs that come from the belly. They are rectangular in shape and often have a little wad of fat on the side.

In choosing your pork recognise that the flesh should be pink and the fat always white and soft. When pork is intensely farmed it is pale and lean and outdoor reared pork will be a darker firmer meat with tastier fat.

A game of two halves. What do all these meat terms mean?

From time to time a customer will ask which is the best cut of a joint that has been split in half and for this blogpost I will concentrate on the major beef and lamb roasting joints with perhaps a little foray into the world of pork. These joints all have peculiar butchery names and once you know the terms it becomes easier to make your choice and just think how knowledgeable you will sound at the butcher's counter! On the whole they are all as tasty as each other if cooked properly. Some just have more bone and gristle in than the other and a fattier joint can often be more delectable. As the expression goes “It's just the nature of the beast.”

Lamb shoulder:

The shoulder is a delicious joint from the slightly fattier end of the lamb that needs a longer cooking time than the leg, for example. The whole shoulder can be boned and rolled but mainly folk tend to have a half shoulder, especially if it is just to feed two people. When the butcher cuts the shoulder in half on the bone, it creates two joints. The more regular looking one is called the blade (it has the animal's shoulder blade in it) and the other little legged side is called the knuckle. The knuckle end has more bones in it and slightly less meat on the joint. The marrow in the knuckle end can impart a great deal of flavour though to the cooked meat. Both pieces are easy enough to carve when cooked.

 

Knuckle and blade side of shoulder of lamb

 

Full shoulder and rolled shoulder cut through

Lamb leg:

The leg of lamb is a very lean joint and often more expensive than the shoulder. Most butchers cut the leg at a slight diagonal with a steak knife for neat cut showing less bone and then deftly saw through the leg bone to create two joints. If the leg is left whole the butcher can partially cut through the bone at the end of the leg to allow the joint to sit neatly in the average roasting tin or tray. The rounder looking piece is called - the fillet end - and the more obvious leg shaped bit – the shank. Lamb shanks for slow cooking are also cut from the leg shank although they can be surprisingly unpredictable in the length of time needed to cook them. In most supermarket butchers, the hip bone, known as the aitch bone will have been removed for easy carving and so that the protective packing it is transported in doesn't get punctured by a sharp edged bone.

 

Shank end of leg of lamb and fillet end

 

 

Lamb shanks for slow cooking

Despite the myth, lamb carcasses do NOT have four joints of leg of lamb on them!

Topside and Silverside and Top Rump.

Where does topside come from and which is the best joint for roasting? This is a regular question I get asked as the meat authority at Tesco. Well, they all come from the chunky back leg of the cow. This very large piece of meat is called a top of beef looks like a giant shank end of leg of lamb. Traditionally the skilled butcher will bone out and divide this 'top' into four parts -  deftly trimming away all the excess fat and gristle and creating joints by working his knife with the seams separating each muscle. At the foot end is the shin of beef for a rich stewing experience and then the aitch bone is taken out. The remaining piece now has one big leg bone left and the butcher removes this dividing the meat into three sections, topside, silverside and top rump. To save confusion top rump is not rump steak it just has a similar name and can be a good medium beef roasting joint. The silverside is generally considered a slower roasting joint and the topside the best part of the top for a good lean beef roast.

 

Topside joint

Brisket and chine of beef or blade end.

These two joints are from the fore quarter of the side of beef (half a cow) and make splendid slow roasting joints and are renowned for their flavour. The chine comes from a piece of meat that sits on the top of the cow's shoulder blade and chuck steak (braising steak). Both joints have an element of fat to them which helps the flavour develop through cooking. The best cooking method I find is through sitting the joint in about half an inch of water and letting the meat steam cook rather than cook with oil or fat. Just a personal choice. The image below was taken when I made a wonderful spiced brisket dish with cloves, bay leaves and cinnamon sticks with star anise to flavour.

Pork

Our intelligent friend the pig provides the cheapest cuts out of all the three animals. My personal preference in a pork joint is the shoulder of pork or a hand of pork ( below the shoulder and pork hock). I like the pork joint with a bit of extra fat and delight in its sweet tasting meat. I also like belly pork for the same reason and a joint of belly is now becoming very fashionable to eat in bistros and restaurants up and down the country. Apparently, many hungry diners crave the luscious pork fat and crackling.

 

A hand of pork

I'm including this next piece of information not to be patronising or too basic in my sharing of information but because I get asked about crackling on pork so much. To get the very popular pork crackling on the piece of pig meat it needs to have its skin still intact. You cannot get crackling from the exterior fat of a pork joint sans skin. The Ginger Pig Meat Book by Tim Wilson and Fran Warde say that “The trick to getting crunchy pork crackling is that it is only produced when the skin has been scored and the pork subjected to prolonged, gentle heat.” Do not deeply score into the meat itself as this will let moisture into the flesh and dampen the crispy crackling effect.

 

Cooked leg of pork with crackling

 

 

Loin of pork with no skin on the exterior of the meat

In fact I highly recommend the Ginger Pig Meat book to anyone who wants to learn about meat farming and experience a very accessible insight into caring animal husbandry. A very warm hearted book about a profitable farm throughout the changing seasons of the British year and full of great hearty recipes.

Tentatively exploring the kitchen Narnia.

Times are financially hard and it has become cripplingly necessary to cautiously open the door of frozen delights and investigate exactly what lurks in the freezer compartment of my fridge freezer. Why spend money on more food when I probably have plenty to eat in the freezer? That's the idea anyway. I know that there is a block of ice at the back but that is hardly edible or cash saving. Like most people I squirrel things away in the freezer with the nutty intention of consuming the silver packaged and plastic bagged goodies, one day. Bless my bushy tail as I realise some of the goodies saved for a rainy day are circa 2009 and so therefore unadvisable to eat as being marginally older than the recommended three months habitation in kitchen Narnia. So, discarding the more geriatric foodstuffs I pulled out the packages and wrote down exactly what lay within and was advisable to eat and  therefore save money.

The list:

3 x home made spag bols
6 x sardines
2 x Yorkshire puds.
Bag of lambs liver
3 trout.
2 home made chicken curries
2 x home made chilli meals
1 chicken breast
3 x home made courgette tians
2 ciabatta breads
Bag of peas
Bag of green beans
Bag of sweet corn

At the time of writing the list I also realised that I had (around the kitchen) eggs, bead, brioche, a chicken, rice and pasta and a host of tinned items in the store cupboard plus herbs and spices and cooking oils. Enough, I figured for about 18 meals - 21 if frugal.

Since these initial investigations I have also started a small noting exercise which I have kept positive by noting food and drink things that I have not spent money on (thereby saving money) by making my own sarnies for lunch (save money on buying staff canteen meals) and by drastically cutting back on the booze I tend to buy out of habit to relax of an evening. I have found a cuppa just as relaxing and I spend less time trotting up to the loo for another pee!!

My old financial hero Alvin Hall's expression "Do you REALLY need that?" has once again become part of my life and though it may be slow work I am determined to sort out where it is I waste money. I predict that there may be more blog posts from me on this subject. Today I walked three miles to a butcher's shop in Clifton because I knew that he does a pork hand - shoulder and hock joint - for under a fiver and it will last me all week! Perfect. I got him to take the hock off and I did the major boning and rolling job back at home. Decent purchase plus exercise and money saved. I was in luck he had just one left from the weekend. As I type it is cooking in the oven spiked with cloves and star anise. Yum!

 

 

Story of the smelly chicken

You remember how I went to M&S to check out their chickens and was alarmed by the ones priced at £13 plus? Well yesterday I decided to go the local Co-Op store and get one for about £5 and once cooked, make it last a few days. I have purchased a few chickens from there in the past and sometimes have been disapointed that the chicken was off and I've gone back and got my money back plus be given another, fresher bird. On that score I am always a bit reluctant to buy chicken from the local Co-Op. I should have known better.

The chicken looked fine as I chose it from the display and, along with my other bits of shopping, I took it home and unwrapped it. Urgh! The underside smelt sweaty, the wings looked bluey red and I felt that the meat was too risky to eat/cook. Back I went to the store with the chicken. They apologised profusely and gave me a double refund plus a promise that the store would look into their fridges and see why a bird that was deemed OK until 28th Sept should be off. Now armed with this re-assurance and £10 to play with I got a bus to a large housing estate called Clifton and headed for one of the few butchers left in Nottingham, the shop owned by Paul Walker - a real proper butcher's shop with a great display. What to spend my free £10 on? There was so much choice and all of it looked fresh.

Chicken from Paul Walkers' butchery shop

I got a chicken for £5 and went for a heavy piece of pork called 'a hand of pork'. It is part shoulder meat and a knuckle of pork. That too was a very good value £5. On returning to my house I jointed the chicken and bagged it up for the freezer and I removed the knuckle joint of the pork and boned the rest, scoring the flesh and then put a metal skewer through the centre to keep the joint from flopping all over the place. I studded the scored skin with cloves and put the joint in the pre-heated oven for four hours at a medium heat (gas mark 5) to slowly roast. I used sunflower oil to roast the pork. Every hour I basted the pork with the hot oil. In the last half hour I dowsed the well-cooked pork with cider to add taste.

Later on I prepared some simple veg and make some fresh apple sauce from two large cooking apples and sugar with a cinnamon stick to add flavour. After the apple had reduced down I popped the sauce in a seive and pressed out the excess water.

The finished meal was delicious and I have enough cold pork left for another two days plus.