Autumn is well and truly here

Autumn is here and don’t we know it..... leaves all over, gusty winds, and a bag full of windfall apples from our neighbour..... (have a look at the last of the crumble.....cream coming up). 

As we fall into autumn, we start to look for more hearty food like stews and slow roasts, and what better than beef brisket plate (sometimes called short ribs Jacobs ladder). Brisket on the bone IS a bit fatter but at least the fat is honest, if the cattle are grass fed the fat will contain omega 3 oils - not those vegetable style oils used in lots of processed foods but the healthier fish style omega 3’s.

This economically viable joint costs a lot less than other joints. As with other economical cuts of meat it takes a little more effort to prepare, but compensates ewe with massive flavour and tender, succulent meat. It can give you roasts, then make a great mince for lasagne, or, boiled first then roasted to brown and crispy, will give you a stock which when cold (and after removing the fat) will make a hearty and very cheap base for vegetable soup, beef and tomato soup and loads more.

You will be amazed by the reaction of your butcher when asking him for this cut as it is rarely sold over the counter in a joint but is usually boned and used in sausage and burgers etc. In fact, this might be the start of an interesting regular exchange with the butcher, which could if nurtured, yield for you many more economical cuts and interesting recipes. 

Dougy Bowes

Sometimes a product is really special or just simply tremendous, and sometimes an occasion elevates a dining experience beyond description. 

Mr Dougy Bowes on the coast road near Ulverston is a producer of such a product. A Galloway is a pretty fantastic beef animal at the best of times but a Galloway grown on the land just down the coast road is without doubt a special thing. I had the pleasure to have a couple of pieces of brisket of a beast from Mr Bowes  - ‘twas a Galloway/Limousin cross but looked like it had taken more to the Galloway side.

The occasion was the passing away of a family friend, who to be fair had reached a good age, and the whole thing turned out to be more like a celebration of her life than a funeral. We all gathered in Arnside for the burial, then to a hotel in Grange for the funeral tea. Alan and Ann (the son and daughter, both lifetime friends of mine), along with an eclectic group of friends, all sat around telling loud and raucous funny tales of their life experiences with the deceased. Hopefully, this doesn't sound at all disrespectful, because believe me if you had known Jean for the strong funny eccentric character she was, it was all in order.

On the spur of the moment, I thought they should all come to our house for dinner.. Great but had nothing in big enough to feed ten, which when they got going would be sure to seem like the five thousand had descended.

So I went to the local farm shop Browns in Lindal-in-Furness and was so pleased to find out that he had some of Dougy Bowes’s Galloway  - it was a Tuesday so as with most butchers on a Tuesday, it's a a matter of what’s left. Also fortunately for me (point brisket not being the most popular of cuts), two bits of brisket browned off and roasted with only sea salt and cracked black pepper went well with the roasted potatoes and the veg left in the fridge.

The brisket was open roasted on a low heat, and the roasting dish deglazed with a liberal several glugs of good red wine brought by Alan who is also a wine merchant. I personally could have just had gravy, roast potatoes and red wine the gravy was so fantastic, but in fact, the brisket turned out to be indescribably good.

We had a great meal, which was a fitting tribute to the woman who always fed you and entertained you royally.

Pulled mutton shoulder - Recipe

Recently, seen that sometime cook Tom Kerridge on the TV with pulled shoulder of Lamb (only joking, he is good value, a lot of man for your money).

Here's my more traditional pulled mutton shoulder, which I think is a much better choice for the very slow cooking methodology required for pulled meat.

An essential requirement for this recipe is a renaissance quality mutton shoulder (only available from proper butcher farm shops or farmers markets). 

The great thing about this recipe is that ewe can do a full mutton shoulder and have it for a few days or use part of the shoulder and this will do just as well.

The classic accompaniment for sheep meat, lamb or mutton is anchovies. As the anchovies are salted that’s the first of the seasoning requirements, the second (and second only to the anchovies) is the garlic then, after those two in importance comes the rosemary.

So here’s the plan;-

1. Get the shoulder or part shoulder fat side down in a very hot cast iron frying pan and brown all of the shoulder that you can to the point of nearly burning, then make deep incisions to insert the anchovies,  garlic and rosemary. 
2. Rub plenty of proper sea salt if necessary brushing the outside lightly with water so the salt will stay put, and grind some fresh black pepper in as well and put it all in a pre-heated oven at about 150-160 Degrees Celsius for just under an hour per lb.
3. It is ok to either sit the shoulder on either a bed of nice veggies, like fennel or parsnips, or (as I like it) to have nothing underneath so you get a fantastic gravy to warm the leftovers in the following day.

Also as an aside, in my mind no sheep meat dish is finished without a little mint sauce.

Highgrove - The Mutton Renaissance Annual Dinner

Last month saw my return visit to the Orangery dining room at Highgrove, the country residence of Prince Charles, His Royal Highness. Prince Charles is the patron of the Mutton Renaissance Campaign.

As one of the founding members of the Mutton Renaissance Campaign (which this year celebrates its tenth anniversary), I feel as if we have only just begun the rehabilitation of mutton to the culinary lexicon of the general public. Although all the members of the committee are clear that we’ve made great strides forward, we’re also clear we have a long way to go yet. 

Before lunch, we were treated to a walk around the grounds and the gardens and although my wife is the gardener at home, I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was an eclectic mix of garden styles and the guide was funny and very knowledgeable. 

We then went into the Highgrove shop to peruse the goods.... needless to say I didn’t buy anything (probably could have bought a cap but I have six or more already). 

The starter was a simple goat curd, walnut and beetroot salad. The main course was a perfect simple treatment of the Lleyn - Highgrove home farm Mutton aged for five weeks. The cannon or loin fillet was cooked using the sous vide method then browned in the pan to finish it off, and served alongside a perfect mini pulled shoulder pie.

For desert we were treated to an apple and quince tart with Crème Anglaise. I do love a good dessert; in fact I could almost miss the main course and just go straight for it.

After our meal we went to Home Farm, where Prince Charles’s farm manager David Wilson gave us a tour of their organic farm - showcasing a field of mustard (which tasted like a very peppery rocket), the cull ewes on a reseeded clover field and lots more. 

As we were walking to the tractor, it started raining even harder than it had been when we were walking round the garden and grounds..... I said to David all we needed was for the rain to be blowing horizontal and then I would feel really at home. It was a great testament to my old houndstooth Harris Tweed jacket and flat cap that I remained perfectly dry, not to mention the borrowed wellies as I had forgotten mine.

We then went to the milking parlour where we watched the Ayrshire cows walk in to be milked. This was great on so many levels, as the cows were up to twelve years old which is very unusual in this day and age. I then got a lift to Kemble station with Alan Bird who now runs his own Restaurant, Bird of Smithfield (opposite Poultry Street), which was very cool.   

Cured and Smoked Herdwick Mutton

There has always been a rich tradition of curing and smoking sheep meat wherever flocks of sheep were kept. The same applies to flocks of goats.  Cured meats are the old fashioned version of a fridge - keeping protein wholesome and long lasting.

Mature Herdwick wether, are castrated male sheep which were kept to an older age. They have a deeper flavour, a dark, tight, grained texture to the meat and were sometimes used to cure. 

They give a bigger leg than a ewe (a mature lambing female) and one of the things about curing is that older animals have a more appropriate ph for curing. The older legs cure more successfully and have a much more complex flavour profile (which is one of the reasons why the best Prosciutto’s are made from older animals).

It’s normally assumed that this product was produced in times gone by in the “continental way” of producing air-dried fancy salami, but this is a wrong assumption.

Cumbrian cured mutton isn’t produced this way and one of the reasons for there not being an established tradition in the UK of Italian style salami curing is the good old British weather and there is nowhere better to understand this than in Cumbria - it never rains in Cumbria (honestly, if you ask the millions of visitors we get to the lakes you will get probably get different comments about the weather). ;-)

The high humidity does mean that there isn’t the possibility of making any air-dried product that would be safe to eat. However, in this day and age there is an ever growing group of artisan salami producers and wholesalers who do quite nicely with a little technological help.

The cured mutton is to be cooked as you would do your ham and eggs for breakfast or for dinner at night. To add additional shelf life to the cured leg (and I guess extra flavour), it is (was) smoked, not in a purpose-built smoke house but in a smoke box built in to the back of the chimney. These disused stone smoke boxes can be found in many old farmhouses all over the lake district.

These Herdwick hams are not the mild flavoured gammon ham we have become accustomed to today, and as with all the things that aren’t mild or insipid it is an acquired taste. In my opinion though, it’s an amazing one. In the past, there also wouldn’t have been the consistency of product expected by the modern consumer, but maybe, just maybe that is part of the hams’ charm.

Mutton

Read my most recent POST on Borough Market's blog

Pasta making

Pasta making is really fulfilling and easy.

The kids love helping in-between the Kindle and Lego, and even though it may not be not cheaper to do, homemade pasta has loads better flavour and texture and making it has to be much better than watching inane television.

I had been reading up on spelt wheat already and picked up some spelt flour from my friend Matt the baker from Bread Ahead at Borough Market.

The flour itself looks a little off white, not speckled like whole meal flour just off white, and otherwise it's pretty much like any other flour you see.

Place the flour on your work top and make it into a volcano crater so the lightly whisked eggs can be put into the middle and gently mixed in. Strange analogy ahead - it feels like when you were a kid helping your Dad mix up some cement while not letting the water escape.

Once the spelt flour, eggs and a pinch of salt were mixed well together then out came the pasta machine - well it’s just two adjustable metal rollers, but has to be said, is a lovely piece of Italian engineering style and functionality as only the Italians can do.

The kids turned the handle whilst I was working the pasta mix by progressively rolling and folding the dough thinner and thinner, then resting it under a tea towel.

After this, I used the cutting aspect of the pasta machine to give us tagliatelle. Last bit of the process is to blanch or to fully boil the pasta, after which you can either eat it, put it in the fridge, or even bag and freeze it.

There are lots of funky things that you can add to pasta like squid ink for black pasta, coco powder for brown, pesto for green, beetroot for red or natural food dyes for all the other colours. My overriding memory of spelt pasta is that it just tastes loads better, and this of course is the very best reason for making your own pasta.