Meat

Ox heart stuffed with kale, bacon and mushrooms

14th February 2016 by Regula 14 Comments

The meat of the heart is eaten quite commonly in Peru, but it might surprise some of you that for centuries is was also eaten in England. Beef heart is so unpopular I get mine from a local farm for as little as £3. That is great value for a huge piece of meat. I asked a couple of butchers, some in Belgium and also Borough Market. Beef heart is the kind of cut that doesn’t get sold and that is such a shame.

The flavour and texture of beef heart is like that of a good beefy steak because beef heart is a muscle just like steak is. I find beef heart great in any way it is cooked because it has so much flavour and it is very tender. In Peru they make kebab style roasted beef heart, in England beef heart was usually stuffed with a forcemeat.

A couple of years ago I found a recipe for a stuffed beef heart in Elizabeth Raffald’s book The Experienced English Housekeeper (1769):

Wash a large beast’s heart clean and cut off the deaf ears, and stuff it with forcemeat as you do a hare, lay a caul of veal, or a paper over the top, to keep in the stuffing, roast it either in a cradle spit or hanging one, it will take an hour and a half before a good fire; baste it with red wine; when roasted take the wine out of the dripping pan and skim off the fat, and add a glass more of wine; when it is hot put in some lumps of red currant-jelly and pour it in the dish; serve it up and send in red currant-jelly cut in slices on a saucer.

The recipe was copied later by M. Radcliffe in her A Modern System of Domestic Cookery: Or, The Housekeeper’s Guide (1823) and it was also published in a later edition of Hannah Glasse’s The Art of Cookery made Plain and Easy – A new Edition (1803). The recipe dit not appear in the first edition of 1747. Copying recipes from other cooks was common practice in those days and they were often copied word for word, making it easy to determine their source.

To make this dish slightly lighter I opted to stuff the heart with a duxelles, which is a mixture made with mushrooms, bacon and in this case kale or cavolo nero. If I had caul – a thin lace-like membrane which surrounds the stomach internal organs of some animals – like Raffald suggested, I would have used it as it keeps in the stuffing in nicely and tidy. But if you can not obtain it, some creative string-work will do the trick just fine.
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18th century Sweet Lamb Pie

19th May 2015 by Regula 10 Comments

When I tell people about my passion for historical dishes, there are always those who look at me with disbelief and some amusement. They claim those ancient dishes were made of rotting meat masked with an abundant use of spices, or stodgy pottage, all eaten with the hands like barbaric creatures. It can’t be good, it can’t be imaginative, it just can’t be …

The theory that food in the Middle Ages was highly spiced to mask the flavour of rotting meat has been discarded as pure nonsense in the last ten years. Those who were served spiced dishes were privileged, those cooking with it were the master cooks to kings and queens. People of status that not only could afford this immense luxury, but also had a good supply of fresh meat and fish from their estates and beyond.

Our ancestors – of the elite – had a good understanding about spices, and how to combine them. Those flavour combinations would often taste peculiar to us. Not at all in a wrong way, but in a way that you realise it is a flavour sensation you have never tasted before.

This brings me to how tastes have changed.
Today everything is usually either sweet, salty or spicy. Bitter is making a modest comeback and sour too, but these flavours are seldom combined in our ‘modern’ European cuisine. It is even so that a lot of our foods are processed in factories which add flavour essences to make the food taste the same every time you prepare it. Of course this doesn’t happen when you cook from scratch, but it is an unfortunate fact that people in the UK buy a lot of ready meals. It is a trend that has luckily not taken off in Belgium, but it is very possible we’re not far behind. Joanna Blytham recently published a book about these practices in food processing factories, and she rings an alarm bell and employs you to smell your food, to taste, and realise the smells and tastes are not from natural ingredients. This is an evolution, when more people eat processed food, they get an idea about how tomato tastes, and how a beef stew should taste. It goes so far that when those people taste the real thing, they can’t take the sourness of a real tomato, the texture of the skin, and they find their own beef stew too bland and wonder where the flavour of the ready meal comes from. It’s not tomato, and it’s not beef. Butter in buttery pastry is not butter but other fats, with added butter flavour. It might taste like butter, but it might not completely and it might even change your taste and idea of how it should taste all together. I will go into Joanna’s eye-opening book in another posting but you get the idea for now. Today many of the people taste food, but don’t really taste the produce. Their tastes change. A very simple example is when I give someone a glass of raw milk to drink, I am used to it and drink it all the time, but my guests often can’t finish another sip because they find the flavour too ‘animal-like’. Most milk you buy in the supermarket to me tastes like white water, but this is how the people think milk tastes like these days.

Eliza Smith’s Sweet Lamb pie from 1727 is one of those dishes that really show off the old way of spicing food. The flavours come through in layers if you get what I mean. It is not really sweet, but the spices that are used, nutmeg, mace and cloves were considered sweet spices and used as a sweetener. Sugar is added too, but used rather like a spice. In addition to these spices, currants and candied peel are added to bring extra sweetness. Then also sweet potato is added, and artichoke hearts. The 1727 book also mentions that when artichokes aren’t in season, one can use grapes too.

The pie is built with pieces of diced lamb, dusted in the spices, and meatballs made with lamb meat, suet, currants and the same sweet spices with the addition of fresh parsley.
Layers are constructed of lamb, lamb meat balls, sweet potato and artichoke.
When your pot or pie is full, a blade of mace is added and the pie is placed in the oven for just over an hour. Just when you’re ready to serve, a ‘Caudle’ is made, this is a sauce which is added to the pie by pouring it in when you are ready to serve. It is usually there to lift the flavours of the dish. In this case the caudle is made with white wine, lemon juice, a little sugar and a couple of egg yolks.
This sauce gives the dish a little acidic kick and will guaranty you to want to empty the saucepan until the very last drop.

The pie can either be made in a free-standing pie crust like you see in the pictures I took when I was at Food Historian Ivan Day’s house, for a weekend of Georgian cooking last year. A hotpot is however another way of making this pie, this is a closed casserole dish used in the North of England, or you can use a deep oven dish and add a pastry lid, which is what I did the last time I made the pie, and what you can see in the first pictures here.

I made this Sweet Lamb pie not too long ago when we had two chefs coming for dinner, I did not know how they were going to react to the flavours of this dish.
Fortunately my friends are all about good, honest and natural food so they were eager to try. And they enjoyed it, one of the duo even asked me if it was okay to lick his plate and clean out the saucepan of caudle.

I say that’s mission accomplished, don’t you think?

The pie is incredibly flavoursome and eats just wonderful with the different vegetables and meat; the addition of a piece of salty pie pastry is a bonus but not a must if you aren’t up to making your pastry, but please don’t use shop bought pastry… that is just plain evil and doesn’t even contain butter!

I made the pie you see in the pictures above with pastry I had leftover from my recent pastry project… You might have spotted it on instagram.

18th century Sweet Lamb Pie

Serves 4

250 g lamb meat from the leg
250 g lamb mince (if you buy a leg, you can use the leftover leg to mince)
2 large sweet potatoes, parboiled, cut in dice
4 small or 2 large artichoke hearts, parboiled, cut in dice
or when you don’t have artichokes, use a handful of grapes, blanched.
1 tsp of ground mace
1 tsp of ground nutmeg
4 cloves, beaten
2 blades of mace
a generous pinch of good black pepper – or 3 pieces of long pepper, beaten
1 tsp each of candied lemon and orange peel, in small cubes
50 g of shredded suet
fresh parsley cut finely, about 1 tbsp
currants 50 g

For the Caudle

The juice of 1 lemon
The same quantity of white wine
1 tsp of sugar
1 egg yolk
a little knob of butter

Preheat your oven to 160° C

Beat your spices, but leave the two blades of mace whole.
Dust the meat with half the spices, add the other half to the minced meat.
Make your minced meat balls with the spices, suet, parsley and 2 tbsp of currants.
Have all your components of the dish ready so you can start making the layers.
Place some meat, meatballs, sweet potato and artichoke into your dish or pastry and strew over some currants and candied peel, continue until the pie is full.
Close the pie with pastry, making a hole for steam, or put the lid on and pop in the middle of your oven for 1 hour to 1hr and 15 minutes. This could be longer, it depends on the quality of your meat, decent meat needs less cooking. So try and taste, when you have a pastry cover, user a skewer to prick to see if the meat is tender.

When ready, take out of the oven and make your Caudle.
Bring your wine and lemon juice to a simmer with the sugar, in a separate bowl, have the yolk ready and add the warm caudle like you would for a custard. Finish with a little knob of butter and warm again over the fire.

Pour the caudle into the pie, and serve. The caudle will mix with your pie juices and create a sauce.

If you’re making pastry, this is an easy recipe to try

For the pastry

300g plain white flour
100g unsalted butter
100g shredded suet
a generous pinch of salt
125 ml ice cold water
1 egg, beaten

Combine the flour, butter, suet and salt in a large mixing bowl and use your fingers to rub the butter into the flour. Keep on doing this until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.
Pour in the water and start pressing the liquid into the breadcrumb-like mixture. Be gentle as you must be careful not to overwork the dough.
When you have created a rough dough, wrap it in cling film and let it rest in the fridge for an hour or more. You can prepare the pastry the day before if you’re feeling organised.
Use the beaten egg to eggwash the edges of the piedish.
Take your pastry out of the fridge and place it on a floured work surface. Now roll out the pastry about 1 cm thick and make sure it’s larger than your pie dish.
Now carefully pick up the pastry and place it over the pie dish. Trim off the edges of the pastry so you get a nice lid. Now crimp the edges by using your thumb or a fork so the pastry lid is closed tightly. Make a hole in the middle so steam can escape.
Decorate the pie lid if you like and eggwash generously before putting into the oven on one of the lower parts.

Serve with green asparagus if you have them, or green beans, or just as it is.

The pictures below were taken at Ivan Day’s Georgian cooking weekend in the Lake District

Alexis Soyer’s Oxtail Soup with simple suet dumplings

9th March 2015 by Regula 6 Comments

19th century Victorian England saw a rapid growth of population and urbanisation stimulated by the Industrial Revolution. The elite became more wealthy and the poor became poorer. Eliza Acton noted in her book published in 1845, that soups or pottage was hardly eaten by the English. The poor didn’t have means to heat up the dish that had sustained them for centuries, and often they didn’t even have access to the ingredients to make a soup. This was an era of slum housing, starvation and disease.

Alexis Soyer, who was chef at the prestigious Reform Club and regarded by many as Britain’s first celebrity chef, saw the horrendous poverty of the lower class and took it upon him to do something about it. He invented a soup kitchen and went to Ireland to give out his ‘famine soup’ during the Great Irish Famine in 1847. During his time in Ireland he wrote ‘Soyer’s Charitable Cookery’ and gave the proceeds of the book to various charities.

His book, ‘A Shilling Cookery for the People’ was a recipe book for ordinary people who could not afford the modern kitchen utensils or large amounts of ingredients.

In it he writes about how he goes around London and sees the poor attempt to cook but can’t quite manage because of a lack of knowledge. He takes it upon him to teach an old lady to cook an ox cheek in her one precious pot, over a coal fire. The old lady learns and is surprised to find out that the ox cheek is tender and that there is even enough liquid to make a soup from it. After tasting it and approving it, she said she would teach her neighbours how to do it. Soyer, possibly very pleased about this, said to her that if she would do that, he would sent more recipes for her to learn and teach to her neighbours.

Of course the old lady was illiterate and Soyer realising that he might have sent a useless bit of paper to her, went to see her and found ‘six elderly matrons and an old man holding council together’, trying to make out Soyer’s writings. He then read the recipes to them.

Of soup he says that he finds it is no wonder that people have abandoned this dish as the recipes in most cookery books are complicated and expensive. Many contemporary cookery writers like Mrs Beeton made notes on how to cook economically but showed their ignorance by not grasping the fact that most lower class families were lucky to have some kind of roof over their heads, so a kitchen or fire would most probably been a luxury they could only dream of.

Soyer saw that knowledge was the next big in the poor being able to feed themselves and had the dream of opening a school to teach the poor how to cook. On this notion he remarked “Some of the money spent on our new palace prisons would be much better employed for this purpose.”

As my local farm doesn’t offer ox cheek – although they probably would if I asked – I made Soyer’s oxtail soup instead. I had been saving these oxtails – which are always sold out at the farm so quite precious – for a special occasion. Since I finished the first part of my book, I thought, let’s get out the Oxtail! That’s how it is with meat you buy straight from the farm, you treat it with the utmost respect and it becomes so much more valuable.

I had Soyer on my mind, because this week there is a fabulous lecture about him at the Guildhall Library in London. Sadly because of the book deadline I couldn’t spear a day to head over to London to attend this lecture, but at least I have now eaten his oxtail soup.

To make this into a main dish for your supper, you can add dumplings, I give you here the recipes as adapted from Soyer’s book The Modern Housewife or Menagerie.

Oxtail soup with dumplings

Some might find this soup bland, this might be so for our modern palate, this dish is not laden with salt – sweet – spicy like we are so used to today. Give it a go, and try to taste. It really is lovely to have these pure flavours. And then after you’ve tasted it, make it again and use white wine instead of water.

1 oxtail
1 carrot
1 turnip
3 medium sized onions
1 stalk of celery
2 bay leaf
a few sprigs of thyme
a few sprigs of parsley
600ml water
1tsp of peppercorns, or about 15 corns
1tsp salt

Preheat your oven to 140°C

Cut up your vegetables in dice of around the same size; no smaller than 0,5 cm.

Add a generous know of butter to a cast iron pan and melt.

Add the vegetables, and glaze for flavour, then take them out

Add another knob of butter, wait until it is melted and gently brown the two sides of the oxtail, when the juices are starting to stick to the pan, add the vegetables and then add about 600 ml water to deglaze the pan and drown the oxtail. Make sure the meat is completely covered in water.

Now add the pepper, salt and herbs and bring to a boil, uncovered.

When the water boils, put on the lid and place in the oven for 3-4 hours, or until the meat falls from the bone and the fat is nearly all melted away.

When ready to eat, strain the soup, pull the meat off the bone and keep aside.

Now make your garnish for the soup, or use the soup as it is, without straining it – I prefer this as I like to just use the soup as it is with flavoursome mushy veg. I don’t like to throw this away.

Garnish (optional)

1 carrot
1 stalk of celery
1 leek
1 turnip

Cut all these vegetables in small dice of about 0,5 cm.

Put them in a pot and pour over the strained soup, simmer for as long as it takes to cook the vegetables but make sure you don’t reduce them to a mush.

Just before serving:

Place your pulled oxtail meat in a saucepan, add some of the soup and heat up.

Serve your soup with some of the pulled oxtail in each plate.

To make this a main meal

Plain Suet Dumplings (makes 8-10)

220 g plain white flour
110 g shredded suet
0,5 tsp salt, the same of pepper
150-180 ml water
optional: a tsp of thyme leaves or parsley cut finely

Combine the flour, the suet and the salt and pepper – and herbs if you are using them – in a bowl.

Make a well and start adding the water in small portions to make sure you don’t use too much and the dough gets sticky. You might need all the water, you might need less than the 18ml

Use a blunt knife to do this so your hands don’t get covered in sticky dough.

When the dough comes together you can use your hands to knead it into a stiff paste.

Roll into ping-pong ball sized dumplings and place on a tray.

When your meat is at its last 45 minutes of stewing, add the dumplings and allow them to stew together with the meat.

Serve together.

Enjoy

Medieval Chicken Compost

15th December 2014 by Regula 9 Comments

Many people ask me if I come across weird and unappetising dishes in those old British cookery books I collect and devour.

Of course there are always recipes in historical cookery books which might seem odd to us today, but I am quite sure if someone from the 18th century would come and visit us today, he would go home with as much stories about strange foods to tell his contemporaries.
It’s all a difference in how we look at food, and how we approach it. For example, most of us only ever see meat, packed in plastic, neatly arranged in the supermarket shelves. Small independent butchers are disappearing on our streets and so is our connection to the animal that provides us with our much savoured sausage. Only last year a butcher shop in Suffolk was asked to remove his elaborate game displays from the window so children wouldn’t be upset by the sight of dead animals. Man has become disconnected and doesn’t think past the plastic surrounding the factory farmed meat.

I don’t find eating the head of a pig weird at all, people in the past would have been happy to have it. But today it is seen as ‘medieval’ and not very appetising. I must confess I do not have a desire to eat a pigs head any time soon, but many have told me it is exquisite.

I am talking about a Medieval dish with a name that might sound strange to us today, but only because we have given a different explanation to the word, or the word as evolved. Medieval dishes have always delighted me in their inventiveness, and elegance. A pure kind of cooking, with herbs and spices that give your tastebuds a whole other experience.

In the 14th and 15th century the dish with the name ‘compost’ has been the term for any stewed mixture. A ‘composition’ of ingredients. This could have been meat, vegetables or fruit. The French term ‘compote’ very likely derives from the English ‘compost’ which later only meant stewed fruits. The name ‘Compost’ for a recipe can also be found in Flemish Medieval cookery books.
To anyone, this dish must sound intriguing, especially as one would immediately think this was a recipe for creating the best compost to fertilise your veggie patch with.

But no, the etymology of the word might be obscure, we are not making any kind of compost for the garden today.
This recipe for ‘compost’ I am bringing to you today is made with chicken and green herbs, and spices. Another contemporary recipe is made with chickens and some of its offal. Herbs vary in recipes and another ‘compost’ is made exclusively from root vegetables, dried fruits and spices. They are all very clean and pure dishes.

Chicken was always a noble type of meat on a banquet. It was considered more economical if a chicken was kept for her eggs. Killing off a chicken meant killing of your egg factory so chicken would be on the tables of those who could miss a bird, the elite.
This dish is fantastic, it is so pure and simple, it is the kind of dish that just makes my heart skip a beat when I first have a little taste. The dish eats like a soup, and I like to add a nice slice of stale sourdough bread as a ‘sup’ – which was in the past frequently added to thicken the soup and give more substance. This ‘sup’ is also what gave us the term ‘supper’ later on in history. A ‘sup’ could also have been a piece of cake soaked in booze or sauce, the Italian word for trifle ‘Zuppa Inglese’ still gives shows us the link with the ‘sup’.
To make it into an evening meal I added some new potatoes. This of course not ver Medieval as the potato was not known in the Middle Ages, but it is a lovely addition to this dish.

New potatoes are a lovely addition to make it into a main dish, but not very Medieval.

Original recipe from A Noble Boke off Cookry (England, 1468)

To mak composte tak chekins and halve them then tak saige parsly lekes and other good erbes and chop them small then tak a pint of hony and som of the erbes and lay in the botom of the pot and som of the chekyn then tak lard of pork smale mynced and lay it on and cast ther to pouder of guingere and canelle and boille it and serue it.

I brown my chicken before stewing, this isn’t done in the original Medieval recipe, but I find it improves the flavour and the look of the dish, I leave my chicken whole, but you can cut it in half if you prefer.
It might be so that the Medieval cook also browned the chicken, but recipes of that period weren’t complete as they were more often just aide-memoirs rather than clear instructions.

What do you need – serves 4 or 2 very hungry people with leftovers, it is very good the next day.

1 large hen, free range (please, if you can)
1 stalk of leek, chopped
a bunch of parsley
a bunch of sage
a teaspoon of cinnamon, and one of ginger
two large tablespoons of honey
optional, some pieces of bacon fat, for flavour
optional, stale bread, only decent sourdough or other artisan bread

Method

Preheat your oven to 160°C, you can do this just on the hob too, I just prefer to use the oven.

Have a big pot ready, large enough so you can cover the whole chicken with water, but small enough so it fits snugly.

In a frying pan, melt a generous knob of butter and brown your chicken slightly on each side. You just want some color, no crust or full browning. A medium flame on the hob is fine for this.

Place half the herbs and leek on the base of your pot, place your chicken on top and add the rest of the herbs.

Smear your chicken with the honey, doesn’t have to be neat.
Fill the pot with water so the chicken is completely covered, add the spices and give it a stir.

Bring to the boil and let it boil for 5-10 minutes without the lid.

Close the lid and transfer to the oven (or leave on the hob on a small flame) for 45 minutes – 1 hour. Cooking time depends on the size of your chicken, and the quality, a free range slowly grown bird cooks faster than a factory farmed chick. The meat should just not be falling of the bone, so keep an eye on it on those last 15 minutes.

Strain your broth using a colander or something similar, and take out your herbs and veg.
Then, take the meat of the bones and place in the broth. Place some or all of the herbs and veg back into the broth if you like, I do, as I like to eat the whole thing.

Have warmed soup plates ready and place a piece of bread in each of them, pour over the broth and give everyone some meat from the breast and some from the legs.

Serving tip: some nice cooked new potatoes work well to make this a main dish. It is very strengthening and ideal for winter, or on chilly summer evenings. It is also very nurturing when you are unwell.

You might also enjoy
Medieval mulled wine – Ypocras >
The poor man’s bread >
Sussex stewed Steak >

Bonfire, bangers and riots

4th November 2014 by Regula 19 Comments

Two ways with sausages for Bonfire night: Jacket potato bangers and Toad in the hole

Last year on this day I wrote about Guy Fawkes and his connection to the Gunpowder Plot (see Gunpowder, treason and Bonfire Parkin here) and how it came to be that such plot was, well… plotted. I went back to nearly a hundred years before the plot, to see where that seed was sown.
Today I look at the customs that resulted from this failed plot and how it influenced the way we riot and react today to show our dismay, disappointment and disgust for politics and religion.

The trial of the eight surviving conspirators of the Gunpowder Plot was held on januari 27 1606 in Westminster Hall which would have destroyed had their plot been successful. A statute was passed, declaring that deliverance from Gunpowder treason should be remembered every year. From then on each 5th of november there would be a church service at which attendance was compulsory if you were loyal to the King, or at least wanted to pretend to be loyal. It became an annual ceremony to keep the memory of the failed Gunpowder Plot alive. It continued until it was taken out of the prayerbook two centuries later in 1859. But although it was erased from the prayerbook, it was by now rooted into the culture.

In a way the customs of the 5th of november provided a replacement to the pre-reformation holy days of All Saints and All Souls on the 1st and 2nd of November. On these days the churches would be lit with candles, and torches marking the start of winter and darkness. This catholic tradition in its own right had replaced the old pagan rites of Samhain, which celebrated the end of harvest and the beginning of winter. It literally means ‘summer’s end’ and is the primary festival marking the end and the beginning of the year.

When the christians needed to convert the pagans, they gave them the 1st of November, a day on which they could light candles and make lanterns in hollowed turnips, just as they had been doing for generations before christianity spread. The reformation to Protestantism left the people with an empty gap where their 1st of November celebrations used to be, so naturally they embraced the new bonfire tradition after the Gunpowder Plot failed in the first years of the 1600’s.

Conveniently to the Protestants, the 5th of november could be used as a celebration of the conservation of Protestantism, a date to mark in the calendar alongside the early death of Queen Mary (a Catholic), the long reign of Queen Elizabeth I (Protestant) and the defeat of the Spanish Armada (to warn off the Spanish Catholics).

When Charles I married the Catholic princes of France, people showed their disapproval of the Catholic queen by burning effigies of the Pope and the devil on the 5th of November. We are now situated 20 years after the Gunpowder Plot and the only effigies that were burnt were that of the pope and the devil, not of Guy Fawkes.
In 1647 was described how bonfires went from simply great fires to spectacles with fireworks and explosives including fireballs. And in 1657 Samuel Clarke’s ‘England Remembrancer invoked the happenings of the plot.

After Charles II Restoration in 1660, Samuel Pepys wrote in his diary “This 5th of November is observed exceeding well in the City; and at night great bonfires and fireworks.” The next years up until the year of the Great Fire in 1666 (which was for a short time also blamed on the catholics) he also mentioned Bonfires and festivities which shows us the normality of these celebrations by this time. On one occasion he is driving home with his wife after going to see Macbeth “forced to go round by London-Wall home because of the bonefires.”

Celebrations of the 5th became larger and intense rather than festive after the brother of Charles II Duke of York publicly declared to be a Catholic. This was followed by the Exclusion Crisis to exclude the him from the throne because he was Roman Catholic. When the Tory’s started to declare being agains the Exclusion, this created probably one of the first bonfire night riots. In 1682 the 5th fell on a sunday so celebrations started on monday the 6th. Reputedly crowds of people took to the streets attacking Tories and shouting their support for the King’s bastard son, the Duke of Monmouth, who was Protestant. This Bonfire night, it was not a celebration of the failed Gunpowder Plot, it was a warning and objection against the possibility of being ruled by a Catholic king.

The next year on the 5th, bonfires and fireworks were banned to keep the calm. But you know what, two years later James did succeed Charles and England had a Catholic King… Needless to say that the Bonfire night celebrations were forbidden although the ‘Gunpowder Treason-Day’ church service remained.

Under the rule of James’ daughter Mary Stuart and her Protestant husband William of Orange, the celebrations of the 5th commenced and got entwined with the restoration of the Protestant religion in England by William of Orange. That double meaning didn’t stick though and years after this, it was forgotten and the 5th was yet again a celebration of the failing of the Gunpowder Plot.
Gunpowder Treason-Day’ church sermons changed each year, always highlighting another political event. Leaving the people a reason to take to the streets each year.

By the 18th century the festivities on the ‘fifth’ became less and less fuelled by hatred against Catholics and more about other political issues. The Catholic Relief Acts of 1778 and 1791 made life easier for Catholics, granting them the same rights as Protestants. Of course this sparked resistance leading to a week of rioting in 1780. But eventually the Catholics emancipated, helped by the Irish situation, with Catholic Irish members of Parliament. Of course in Ireland the troubles between the Irish Catholics and English Protestants remained.

Another change happened to the Bonfire night celebrations when anti-catholicism became less acceptable. By the early 19th century effigies of the pope were no longer burnt and the crowds needed another figure to ‘blame’. Strangely enough that figure became Guy Fawkes, the person who was least named in contemporary writings about the Treason and Plot. Although Guy Fawkes is mostly remembered on Bonfire night today, it was Robert Catesby who was chief instigator of the Gunpowder Plot (read my previous post to learn more of the plot).

So why did our Guy Fawkes become the figure of Bonfire Night? We can of course not say for certain why, but in 1793 just before the turn of the century, a play was performed at the Royal Haymarket Theatre. The prelude in one act was entitled: Guy Fawkes or The Fifth of November. In 1835 a comic pantomime called Harlequin and Guy Fawkes: or the 5th of November was performed in London’s Covent Garden. Many different stories about the Gunpowder Plot were told in plays after that, maybe the truth drifted away and the name Guy Fawkes just sounded best in playwright, maybe it was because he was discovered with the gunpowder…

But now Guy Fawkes has become the Gunpowder Plot, and the night of the fifth got often referred to as ‘Guy Fawkes night‘. He became the new face of the tradition, the scapegoat of the Plot, the symbol of opposition and disapproval.

Our story takes more turns in the 19th century with Bonfire night celebrations turning violent and dark. Victorian times saw the coming of a different sort of celebration, a night of rioting and criminal behaviour. A night when the honest should stay indoors and the dangerous ruled the streets.
The processions of ‘the night of the fifth’ would be fired with local social issues of politics and religion. They became manifestations, uprise agains local authorities and they became so dangerous and organised that they needed another organised organisation to contain them. So the police force grew to counter the protesters.

Today we live in a time with organised demonstrations, approved by the local authorities and contained for the safety of the protesters as well as the opponents and those who have nothing to do with it. But when the demonstrations do get ugly today, we see Guy Fawkes appear in the crowds…

Much like in the early 19th century plays about the Gunpowder Plot, a movie was made from a 1980’s graphic novel in 2005. ‘V for Vendetta’ is set in a near-future dystopian society in England, with the main character being ‘V’ a man wearing a Guy Fawkes mask, who wants to destroy the corrupt fascist regime and its leaders. One of the authors of the graphic novel commented that “The Guy Fawkes mask has now become a common brand and a convenient placard to use in protest against tyranny – and I’m happy with people using it, it seems quite unique, an icon of popular culture being used this way.” By many political groups the film was seen as an allegory of oppression by government. Anarchists, libertarians and activists of any kind have used the Guy Fawkes mask in their demonstrations after the movie came out. It has been seen in demonstrations agains the G8 summit and in other economical and political protest. It has become the emblem of anonymity and dissent.

The ‘Guy’ has gained another face, 400 years after he was just one pawn of the Gunpowder Plot. He has now become the face of disappointed people, the face disapproval in modern times. The face saying, we have had enough… For now at least.

On to the food part of this post. Bonfire
societies organise the Bonfire parades now in a safe and family
friendly manner. The streets of Lewes particularly are the place to be
for elaborate bonfire displays. People watch the parade and the fireworks and look forward to warming their hands on hot food and drink.
For this years bonfire night I give you two ways with bangers which are perfect for bonfire night celebrations at home. Toad in the hole is a traditional meat & batter pudding dish that evolved from the Yorkshire pudding-type puddings and other types of fired pudding.
It is bound to be a success with the little ones as who doesn’t love a good old proper sausage. The other dish is a banger jacket potato, an easy dish that even the most inexperienced cook could make. The potato just needs time to cook in the oven so do that in advance. It’s a perfect little bomb of warmth when you are planning to do some bonfiring of your own in the garden!

Toad in the hole

good quality sausages, 3 or 4
a few sprigs of rosemary (optional)

For the batter

280 ml milk
110 g plain flour
a pinch of salt
3 medium eggs

preheat your oven to max 250° C
Fry your sausages in sunflower oil in a pan until nearly done
Pour 1 cm of sunflower oil into a baking stray or cake tin and place in the middle of the hot oven.
Place a larger tray underneath in case the oil drips over, you don’t want extra cleaning afterwards
Make your batter in the manner of making pancake batter
When your oil is hot, you will see as it will be spitting, arrange your sausages into place along with the oil you still have in your pan from frying your bangers
Carefully but swiftly pour the batter into the hot oil, stick in the rosemary sprigs and close the oven door. Bake for 20-25 minutes until puffed up and nicely colored.

Serve with mustard, braised red cabbage, jacked potato or mashed potato and caramelised onions if you like

To braise red cabbage

red Cabbage
a cooking apple, cubed ( for a football size cabbage you need 1 large cooking apple)
a teaspoon of cinnamon

Cut your cabbage very finely, and heat some butter in a pan.
Add your cabbage and apple and braise, adding a little water when needed.
When soft, spice with a little honey and cinnamon
Serve warm, o so good with sausages

—————————————————————————————————-
Jacket potato bangers

For the potato

1 potato per person You need a floury kind like a Maris Piper, King Edward, or for Belgians ‘Bintje frietaardappel’
+- 20g coarse sea salt
good quality sausages
3 onions, braised and caramelised

Wash the potatoes and let them dry
Preheat your oven to 220° C
Put your salt in a tray and roll each potato in the salt and rub it in
Prick your potato with a toothpick a few times to prevent them bursting
Place the potatoes straight on the rack in the middle of the oven
Bake for 1 hour, then squeeze the potato slightly to see if it appears soft inside, if that doesn’t appear so, place back in the oven for another 15-30 minutes.
When the potatoes are nearly ready or when you are about to have dinner caramelise some onions, add one teaspoon of pomegranate molasse of balsamic vinegar, whatever you prefer and let it become nice and sticky. You could do this in advance too and just cook the sausages when you need them.
Finally fry your sausages in oil or butter, I prefer butter and oil in this case. Finish them off with 10 min in the oven along with your potatoes to heat them up again or on their final bake.
Then cut into the potato, add some of that caramelised onion, add a banger and serve!
Also very good with braised red cabbage.

Pudding!
Last years Bonfire parkin might take your fancy, find the recipe here >

Bonfire Parkin

What are you doing for bonfire night?

George, the Dragon and the Cottage pie

23rd April 2014 by Regula 5 Comments

Wishing you all a happy Saint George’s Day with these humble cottage pies. I’ve been mostly working on my book, stuck with my nose in research and absolutely loving it but in the evening I long for great simple food with pure flavours. This pie is just that, with the best spuds you can find for your mash, decent flavoursome beef and a layer of moist spinach, this is a treat for me. I just wrap it in a towel and relax with a beer and a movie.

Today will be marked by celebrations with a lot of beer in most parts of Britain, often started by a good old pub meal that very likely will consist of a hearty pie.

Saint George’s day is the National Day for England although it is not an national holiday in Britain. As you will know, he is the patron saint of England and he is nearly always depicted slaying a dragon.

The origins of George and the dragon are quite obscure, like so many legends are. The earliest written source of Saint George in Britain can be found in the works of Bede, a monk from Northumbria who lived around the end of the 7th century.

It is not a saints day unique to Britain however, the feast of Saint George is celebrated throughout Christian and Protestant countries and all around the 23th of april, the date on which he would have been martyred.

Of George nothing is certainly known, it is most widely accepted that he was a Roman soldier from Palestine who lived in the late 3rd century AD.

Born as Georgios, Greek for ‘worker of the land’ he became an imperial guard to the emperor Diocletian, but when Diocletian issued a decree that every Christian soldier should be arrested, George renounced his emperors ruling. He declared himself openly to be Christian and refused to convert to the old Roman gods. Diocletian tortured and later decapitated George for his refusal.

No doubt you will all have been waiting for the dragon slaying moment in this story but unfortunately I will have to disappoint you as there are no dragons in this tale.

The tale of Saint George and the dragon dates from a much later legend during Medieval times. Here the story of George would have been Eastern in origin and brought back from the Crusades. Before the Middle ages George was depicted as a soldier but around the 11th century that changed to the now more popular dragon scene. The first written source is believed to be a 11th century Georgian text that can be found quoted in the book The Warrior Saints in Byzantine Art and Tradition.

Then the tale of George and the dragon appears in the Legenda sanctorum or Golden legend, a collection of hagiographies (stories of the Saints) by Jacobus de Voragine. This book of which there were over a thousand of manuscripts in the 13th century was very popular and was one of the first books that were printed in the English language when printing was invented around 1450.

Jacobus de Voragine tells the tale of the place Silene in Lybya where a dragon lived that terrorised the countryside. To appease the dragon, the people would bring it sacrifices in the form of sheep and also children who were chosen by lottery. One day the daughter of the king was chosen in the lottery and he offered all his wealth to save her. The people refused and the maiden was sent to the dragon dressed in a wedding gown. Then a man named George passed the lake where the dragon lived and saw the princess in distress. He charged towards the dragon with his lance and wounded the beast, he then bound him and took him to the village with the princess he had saved from it. The villagers all in fear of the approach of the dragon were then given the choice. Become a Christian and George promised to slay the dragon there before them. They all converted and George slew the dragon.

There are other similar versions of this tale, as there are with so many legends and from the 15th century on we find a large amount of illustrations, paintings and stained glass windows illustrating Saint George slaying the dragon to save the maiden throughout the world.

Legends are usually there to tell the oldest tale in the book, good and evil, right and wrong.

What really happened and if it happened at all is not important anymore, it is what you do with it and how you interpret it.

My days of being religious have long been gone, but I still like to hear the stories, and I like to try and trace their origins.

What better way to celebrate than having a meal together, these cottage pies are easy and can be made well in advance and popped in the freezer until you need them.

Cottage pie has a long history, it has always been about using up leftover meat to create a new and filling meal.
So what are you up to today?

Cottage pie

What do you need (serves 2 with leftovers for 1 portion)

400 g beef mince, from chuck steak
1 large chestnut mushroom or a white one
1 stalk of celery
1 small carrot
1 clove of garlic
a knob of butter to fry the meat and veg
1 small tin of tomato puree 50-70 gr (concentrate of tomato)
1 glass of red wine or stout beer like guinness – 250 ml
2 teaspoons of Worcester sauce
300 ml of beef or vegetable stock (I use an organic vegetable stock cube)
Salt and pepper to taste
A few handfuls of fresh spinach (you can use from your freezer too)
Potato mash, you need 4 large spuds or use leftover if you have some
Add 4 teaspoons of grated cheddar cheese
2 individual trays, or one larger one. Small pie pans work well. (14×19)

Method

Cook your spuds and make your mash with milk, butter, nutmeg and salt. If you like to make it richer, add an egg yolk too. You need a silky smooth mash which is slightly wetter than you’d eat it normally as it dries a bit in the oven.

Chop all the vegetables and add to a heavy based casserole, glaze a little over a medium flame and then add the meat. Brown the meat and add the tomato puree, stir well to combine evenly
When the tomato starts to caramelise – which means stick to the bottom of the pan, pour in the wine or beer. Stir to loosen up the meat and veg.
Let the booze evaporate, it takes about a minute, and it will be reduced a lot. If you don’t want to use alcohol, use water or stock

Now pour in the garlic, stock, and the Worcester sauce and put on the lid, leave for 30 minutes but check on it frequently so it doesn’t burn to the base. You may leave it longer too, it is merely for the flavours to develop.

Use boiling water from the kettle and blanch your spinach, drain and add a cube of butter, you may omit this but butter does taste so very well.

Preheat your oven to 180°C

Place your spinach in your chosen baking tray or trays, season with pepper.
When the meat is ready, transfer it to you tray or trays.

Now make the mash layer by scooping blobs of potato on the meat, then spread out.
You can pipe this mash, but who has the time to pipe mash on a weekday??

Place into the oven under the gril for about 10-15 minutes or until your mash has some color. It depends really on what you like, lightly coloured or not.

Serve with a beer, or wine if you like.
Put the rest in the freezer, we usually have some leftovers. These pies freeze very well, just defrost in your fridge overnight when planning to use.

Enjoy

You might also enjoy
Beef and Oyster pie
Watercress and trout pie
Sussex Stewed steak

Thank you for leaving a comment!

Poverty and oysters … Beef, stout and oyster pie

4th March 2013 by Regula 10 Comments

As Dickens’ Sam Weller remarks in the Pickwick papers:

‘Poverty and oysters always seem to go together’.

Oysters have been savoured in Britain since Roman times. Shells have been found at many archaeological sites, with the Roman fort and Amphitheatre in Richborough as the most symbolically important one, and stretching as far north as Hadrian’s and the Antonine walls. Before the Romans came, the Britons regarded shellfish as something to eat when there was no fish or meat to be had. The little molluscs weren’t sought after until the Romans started to farm them and even export them live to Rome, where they were considered a delicacy.

When the Romans withdrew and the Saxons invaded in the 5th century, so a rich culinary culture disappeared, which included the oyster farming. It would take centuries for the oyster to become popular again and the first recorded appearance is to be found in a 14th century cookery manuscript by the Master Chef of King Richard II.

Throughout
the Medieval period the church imposed a number of days where one
should eat fish rather than meat. In fact, for a third of the year,
eating meat was forbidden. Therefore the mixing of fish and meat in
dishes only became popular later in the 16th century and an early 17th
century cookbook gives the recipe for roasting mutton with oysters.

By the end of the 18th century the industry had become highly regulated and although oysters had been the delight of the rich for a very long time, industrialisation cheapened them, making oysters one of the staples of the diet of the poor.

Beef
and oyster pie is a classic Victorian dish; it was the food of the
poor, and the poorer you were the more oysters you would put in your
pie. Oysters were plenty, the smaller ones sold as fast food on the
streets of London or pickled to keep, while the bigger ones were put in
stews and pies to make up for the deficiency of meat. It was a cheap
source of protein.

Oysters were also a typical food to be found
in public houses, where they were most commonly served with a pint of
stout. Stout beers were popular because of their strong flavour, higher
alcohol content, longer shelf life and because they were cheaper than
other beers. The claims of Stout being a nutritious drink made the
pairing with oysters the perfect cheap meal for the working class on
their way home with their wages.

Demand for oysters was high,
with as many as 80 million oysters a year being transported from
Whitstable’s nutrient-rich waters to London’s Billingsgate Market alone.
In the middle of the 19th century the natural oyster beds became
exhausted in England. As the oyster beds further declined, what had
previously been the food of the poor became a delicacy for the upper
classes once again.

This pie is wonderfully succulent; once a poor man’s dinner, it now graces our tables with elegance. The beef, oyster and stout or porter beer are a perfect pairing together with a rich suet crust – just like your nan used to make but let’s kick it up a notch and put some effort into the decoration of the pie! It’s fun to let your children have a go with the leftover pastry; you will have leftover with this recipe. Keep in the freezer until needed, defrost the evening before in your fridge.
This recipe works just as good as a stew, feeding 4 hungry mouths.

What do you need
For the stew

1 large carrot, quartered and cut into 2 cm long pieces
3 medium onions
500 g chuck of beef, diced
flour to dust the meat
1 pint of stout, Guinness or porter beer
1 teaspoon of mushroom ketchup (if you don’t have it, leave it out or use 1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar)
2 bay leaf
thyme
pepper and salt to season
water
6 oysters, cleaned.

For the pastry

300g plain white flour
100g unsalted butter
100g Atora shredded suet
a generous pinch of salt
125 ml icecold water
1 egg, beaten

Method
for the stew – filling

Preheat your oven to 160C
Add the carrots and onion to a cast iron casserole and color them over a medium fire.
Dust the meat with the flour and add it to the vegetables.
Immediately pour in the stout, mushroom vinegar and herbs.
If the meat isn’t completely covered in liquid, add some water or extra stout until it’s just covered.
Bring to the boil without putting on the lid.
When boiling, put on the lid and place in a lower part of the oven for 3-3,5 hours.
It depends on the animal used, the quality of the meat and how lean it is to know when the meat will be done. Check on it regularly so you don’t end up with dry meat. The meat is done when it is about to fall apart.

for the pastry lid
Combine the flour, butter, suet and salt in a large mixing bowl and use your fingers to rub the butter into the flour. Keep on doing this until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.
Pour in the water and start pressing the liquid into the breadcrumb-like mixture. Be gentle as you must be careful not to overwork the dough.
When you have created a rough dough, wrap it in cling film and let it rest in the fridge for an hour or more. You can prepare the pastry the day before if you’re feeling organized.
Preheat your oven to 180C
Ladle the stew into your shallow pie dish and place the oysters neatly so everyone will find some in his plate.
Use the beaten egg to eggwash the edges of the piedish.
Take your pastry out of the fridge and place it on a floured work surface. Now roll out the pastry about 1 cm thick and make sure it’s larger than your pie dish.
Now carefully pick up the pastry and place it over the pie dish. Trim off the edges of the pastry so you get a nice lid. Now crimp the edges by using your thumb or a fork so the pastry lid is closed tightly.
Decorate the pie lid if you like and eggwash generously before putting into the oven on one of the lower parts.
The pie should be nice and golden after 40-45 minutes.Serve with peas and carrots because you got to have peas and carrots with pie …

You might also like
Sussex stewed steak >
Jo’s Hotpot >
Chicken & taragon pie >

Sussex Stewed Steak on a wet winters day

13th January 2013 by Regula 24 Comments

Eight in the morning, a wet winters day in the Sussex countryside. The sun is rising over the marshes and fields but the pink glow is quickly washed away by grey clouds of rain …
I walk trough a typical crooked path where the tops of the ancient trees lean towards each other creating an archway over the road, nature’s chapel.
Blissfully relaxed I listen to the bustling sound of busy birds in the hedges. Holding my breath, counting robins, coal tits and wrens. They don’t even seem to notice or care that I’m standing there.
Then it quiets down, the moment has passed and I walk on.

When I am at home but I have lots and lots to do during the day and not enough time to prepare a lovely meal, a Sussex Stewed steak is my dish of choice.
It really is the easiest dish you can imagine and it comes out of the oven as a warming meal with elegant flavors to enjoy with guests or just for your own family with plenty of leftovers for the next day. The Stout, port and mushroom sauce used, create a mahogany sauce with a deep flavour sometimes – depending on which Stout you use- you find some chocolate notes, and however a humble dish it turns out to be a feast for the palate every time.

For this dish you should use the chuck of beef, an economical cut of meat that has a deep flavour after slowly cooking it for a few hours. It is one of my favourite cuts of meat, it doesn’t cost the earth so I go for the best quality meat I can find. I buy grass fed Black Angus but I would love to try it with Sussex Longhorn beef one day. I suspect the Sussex Longhorn or the Sussex Red, will have been the kind of breed used for this dish decades ago.

I couldn’t find when the recipe first came to be but it is has been cooked in Sussex and beyond by generations of women. The most famous of women connected to this dish must be Elizabeth David who featured her recipe for the Sussex Stewed steak in her book Spices, Salt and Aromatics in the English Kitchen.
All the recipes I found were all very similar, did they all originate from David’s recipe or is this a far older recipe. Why is it called Sussex Stewed Steak? Is it because David gave the dish its name while she was living is Sussex? Or is it named after the breed used to cook this dish, the Sussex Longhorn or Red … Jane Grigson features her version of the dish in her book ‘English food‘, although similar it explains more how to prepare this recipe.
I cooked four different -although all very similar- recipes over the months, and this is the one I feel is the best, adapted from David’s and Grigson’s recipe.

David as well as Grigson suggests to serve the Sussex stewed steak with mashed potatoes and large field mushrooms. After trying a few other vegetable sides and potatoes, I agree the ladies are of course right.
The Sussex Stewed steak indeed pairs wonderfully with creamy mashed potatoes and sauteed mushrooms.

Sussex stewed steak

What do you need

1 kg of chuck steak in one piece
Flour to dust the meat with
1 large onion, sliced in rings
half a cup of stout
half a cup of port
2 tablespoons of mushroom ketchup*
freshly ground black pepper

To serve
Mashed potatoes, nice and creamy
sauteed mushrooms, a large variety.

* You can buy Mushroom Ketchup from Budgens, if you can’t find it you can substitute it with red wine vinegar.

Method

Preheat your oven to 160° celsius
Dust the meat with the flour and place in a baking dish that is just a little larger than the meat. If your meat has some fat, place in the dish with the fatty side down.
Place the onion rings around the meat and a few on top.
Pour in the Stout, port and mushroom ketchup, you might think it is not enough liquid but don’t add any more than instructed. Trust me.
Season with freshly ground pepper
Cover the dish with tin foil
Put in the lower part of the oven for 3 hours then take off the tin foil leaving just a bit behind to only cover the top part of the meat. If your meat had a fatty side, turn it around now with the fat facing up this keeps the meat from drying out.
Let simmer in the oven for another hour, this gives the sauce a chance of thickening slightly as you will see it is very runny, it will also color the onions.

Enjoy with a good pint of Stout, Porter or Ale!

You might also like:
Jo’s Lamb Hotpot >

‘Osso Bucco’ and why we should eat Rosé veal

24th June 2012 by Regula 16 Comments

We should all eat veal

If we don’t, a lot of bull calves in the intensive dairy industry will be shot at birth.

Veal is a byproduct of the dairy industry, so if you eat a lot of cheese and dairy… eat veal. Even to the vegetarians out there who do eat dairy, please eat veal.

Bull
calves are of no use to the dairy industry if there is no demand for
veal and therefore the little animals need to go. Numbers reached 260
000 male dairy calves in 2007.To feed our milk and cheese habit, dairy cows are kept constantly pregnant but while female cows can grow up to become dairy cows like their mothers, there is no room for their brothers. Male dairy calves are not always suitable for producing beef therefore (Rose) veal can offer a good alternative.

TV farmer Jimmy Doherty, is trying to persuade people to try veal.
“Dairy calves are being shot at 24 to 48 hours old and if we drink milk
we all have to share in this instead of leaving the burden of it to the
farmers. Eating rose veal is utilising those calves and solving a
problem,” said Jimmy Doherty, who is raising veal calves on his own farm.

When
you buy veal, try and find ‘rosé veal‘ this high-welfare veal comes
from calves that are not fed the restricted diet mainly consisting of
‘milk replacer’ that is needed to produce the ‘white veal’ meat, it keeps the meat light colored.

Rose veal is high in protein and has a pink color, hence the name ‘rose veal’.

The calves are raised alongside their mothers in open fields, and have access to their mother’s milk. After a few weeks they will get a diet of cerial and grass. This is why Rose veal has more flavour than the ‘white veal’.

The UK is the best country if you want to buy veal, the RSPCA’s Freedom Food programme label is very strict. Sadly the veal being produced in the rest of Europe is not of the high welfare standard like the British and Irish.

I have been wanting to buy veal for months, I can’t get it at the butcher or at the farm where I buy my beef and pork. So I don’t eat it. I refuse to buy white veal.

Last saturday I found a butcher who is selling free range ‘rose veal’ in Brussels. Happy days. I came out of the shop holding my veal shanks as if it were a bunch of flowers.

If you are a vegetarian/vegan and you are still reading, thank you.

I hope you see my point.

Especially if you are a vegetarian and still consume dairy.

this little one couldn’t get enough of mommies milk…

If there is one type of meat we should be eating, it’s veal. Meat is more costly to produce in terms of energy and resources then vegetables. In times where we have to mind our ecological footprint and eat less meat, veal is the most responsible choice.

To help the Rosé veal and dairy beef farming industry I wanted to feature a few farms or shops that sell Rosé veal. Thank you for your tweets and emails with details, answering my question on Twitter.

Update:

Rosewood farm raises their dairy bulls for beef, they deliver England, Wales and Scotland
Calf at foot dairy produces raw milk and grass fed ruby veal from her gorgeous Jersey cows

*I’m not claiming the calves shown in my picture are rosé veal calves, I took this pictures before I thought about doing this post but I think it shows well that we should not reduce animals to waste.

Where to buy Rosé veal:

London

Allens of Mayfair (Heaves farm veal)

Barbecoa Butchery (Heaves farm veal)

O Shea’s of Knightsbridge (selling Irish rosé veal)

Union Market (Heaves farm veal)
Provenance butcher (Midshires Rose Veal)
bashford and co – Croyden

Cumbria

Heaves farm veal (selling their own veal, watch the video on the website)

Steadmans Butchers (Heaves farm veal)

Cotswolds

Pancake farm

Scotland

Overton farm shop (Clyde valley veal)

Drumachloy Farm (selling their own veal)

West Midlands

Midshires Farm shop (selling their own veal)

Alternative meats (Heaves farm veal)

Devon

Devon Rose

Suffolk
Calf at foot dairy

Somerset

Blade farm

Kent

Cuckoos Pit Farm. Susans Hill Woodchurch TN26 3TF

Sussex

Cowdray farm shop Cowdray Park, Easebourne, West Sussex

Farmers choice

Yorkshire

J Brindon Addy (Heaves farm veal)
Rosewood Farm

Wales

Marcross Farm

Online UK

Alternative meats (Heaves farm veal)

Farmers choice

USA

Chapel hill farm Virginia (selling their own veal)

Belgium

O Shea’s Brussels (selling Irish Rosé veal)

Please do contact me if you like to be included in this list.

Finally, I have my favourite veal recipe for you. It’s a classic: Osso Bucco, braised veal shanks. The meat is wonderfully soft and full of flavour.

Serve this dish with mashed potatoes, pappardelle or another wide pasta. Also delicious with a slice of humble home baked bread!

What do you need

2 veal shanks

1 carrot

2 stalks of celery

1 medium onion

1 clove of garlic

30 ml of dry white wine

2 bay leaf

a few sprigs of fresh thyme

a tin of skinned tomatoes

30 ml of beef or vegetable stock

salt and pepper to season

flour to dust

olive oil

knob of butter

*optional: some bread for the marrow…

Method

– preheat your oven to 180° C

– get your butcher cord out and bind the shanks so they stay in one piece

– season the veal shanks with salt and pepper anddust them with flour.

– chop you vegetables finely.

– heat 1 teaspoon of butter and 1 teaspoon of olive oil in a heavy based or cast iron casserole.

– add the vegetables and glaze them

– put them to one side and add the veal shanks

– brown them slightly on each side

– add the white wine and let it simmer for a while

– add the stock and finally the tomatoes

– let it simmer for a while and finally lay some of the tomatoes on top of the veal and press down so they stay there.

– add the herbs

– press some baking paper down in the casserole until it almost touches the food

– Put the casserole into the oven and let it simmer for 2 hours or until the meat is nice and tender

– When the meat is cooked, transfer it from the casserole to a serving dish and cover with tin foil.

– Transfer the juices into a saucepan and boil for about 10 minutes or until reduced

– add the veal to the juices again and start covering it with the sauce until completely glazed.

Enjoy!

Leftovers?

Why not pull the meat into strings and add to a nice tomato sauce for a pasta dish!

You might also like:

Mussels for Food Revolution day

Smoked chicken and a little compassion

Please leave a comment, I love reading them!

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