| Kitchen note | |
| Omit the tomatoes and use lovage for this recipe if you grow it. Lovage has a floral celery scent and is a rare treat. |
Plain cooked beans, either drained straight from the can or from a store you have prepared yourself, can be mixed with herbs, olive oil and lemon juice then seasoned to make a salad that can be eaten with almost anything. I tend to choose either white haricot beans or cannellini beans for this job because they have the tenderest skins. You can make an exotic and piquant version, however, with black Mexican beans (unavailable canned but will cook in about an hour), chopped grilled peppers, garlic, red chilli and coriander. It is very important not to overcook the beans. Their skins should remain intact and the ‘kernels’ inside must not be floury but should have a little bite to them.
I can buy tins of butterbeans from the late-night grocer’s across the road. Drained, then flung into a pan with a couple of tablespoons of olive oil, a chopped garlic clove and spring onion, a teaspoon of organic Marigold stock powder and a little water, they make a bean stew in no time. I throw over a chopped hot red chilli, shake on some extra virgin olive oil, then eat them from a bowl.
The cheap cuts
Grilled Goose Skirt with Salad Leaves and Berkswell Cheese
Top of the Rump with Lemon and Parsley Butter
Flank with Tarragon Butter Sauce
Cold Salt Beef and Green Sauce
The valuable cuts
Roast Rare Aged Beef Sirloin with a Mustard and Watercress Sauce
Raw Beef with Horseradish, Sorrel and Rye Bread
Leftovers
Beef with Horseradish Sauce on Crisp Bread
Beef with Pumpkin Seeds and Carrot
My attitude to beef has recently moved into a new phase. It is easy to pinpoint when my original decision to eat less but better beef was made, because it was at the same time that I had the urge to write about food. My first piece 15 years ago was about a butcher. At the time I was motivated by the plight of the closing high-street butcher’s shops. They were – on the whole – the best place to source delicious beef, but they were closing down due to the arrival of the larger ‘superstores’. I was equally motivated by the matter of welfare: free-ranging animals, travelling only a short distance to the slaughterhouse, produce beef with a low PH and so more tenderness. When livestock are stressed, the acidity in their muscles is raised, affecting the finished result when cooked. But then, a year later, the BSE scandal exploded, when the link was made between the cattle disease bovine spongiform encephalitis and the human form, vCJD, and the whole subject of beef once more needed some examination. Two significant events had come to light. The first was that, revoltingly, beef animals had been fed the remains of their own species. This had been done purely in the name of profit – give an animal high-protein feed and it will grow at an alarming rate, becoming ready for slaughter, with lots of meat on its bones, nice and quick. The full, disgraceful disclosure of the participation of the livestock feed industry and the attitude of the Ministry of Agriculture (now Defra) and many (but not all) farmers was mind-blowing. The second significant event was the remedy introduced by the authorities to wipe out the disease in the British herd.
Meat changed by a scandal
The remedy dreamt up by the Ministry and its scientific advisers became known as the Over-Thirty-Month Scheme (OTMS), and simply meant that no cow – dairy or beef – was allowed to live longer than 30 months, because scientists said that the disease only developed in animals over this age. This had the peculiar effect of shortening the time farmers had to fatten up their beef steers, putting them under pressure in a way that has damaged the quality of beef and the national herd itself. Every farmer had to comply with it, including the substantial number who had never fed their beef animals meat and bone meal. It is not known whether the OTMS was actually responsible for reducing the number of cases; it was rumoured to be the idea of the supermarket chains, which wanted a clear-cut strategy that would boost consumer confidence.
It is nearly impossible for farmers to get their beef animals up to a saleable weight in just two and a half years. So what can they do? They can’t feed meat and bone meal protein, because that is now banned – so in comes the cereal diet: soya, maize and other grains that are high in proteins and speed up growth. They then cross breeds with large, fast-growing Continental-type cattle and take the animals off that windy hill where they burn up far too many calories, instead making sure they spend more time in the shelter of a barn, getting pig-fat. Out of this the consumer gets flavourless, loose-grained meat, unsuitable for British butchers’ cuts (the only exception is when butchers take the trouble to hang the meat on the bone for as long as possible). Consumers are further compromised because such beef, even though cross bred with non-native cattle, is still called by its British breed name – Aberdeen Angus, for example.
This news has altered my view of beef again. I now choose beef guided by three principles:
Slow grown means that, where possible, I buy ‘aged’ beef that is over 30 months old – the OTMS was lifted in November 2005. The farmers who rear such beef must jump through hoops to do this: completing extra paperwork, moving livestock in separate transportation from others, and using abattoirs specially dedicated to the slaughter of older animals. Farmers who produce ‘aged’ beef complain that it is hard to profit from the extra effort, but the resulting meat is well worth it in terms of flavour. What really matters now, however, is the third principle: grass fed. Feeding beef animals grass ticks all the boxes in terms of healthy environment and healthy consumers.
Grass-fed