Thursday 7 July 2011

RED MEAT




AND FIRE




AND HOW THEY MADE THIS BLOG POSSIBLE








As you can see, today I'm going to tell you all about red meat and fire.

You will all probably know of my love of red meats, prepared any way, but grilled over fire is a good place to start.

Because did you know, that because of fire, my brain is bigger!

Not much I agree, but a little. Millions of years ago, some rather resourceful cave man, or woman, discovered, that by cooking food over fire, it made it easier to eat and digest.

This was a very important step, allowing for all us cavemen to start burning things over fire, faffing around and generally wasting time, whilst our good ladies prepared everything else.

And, luckily, not much has changed!

The reason that fire and red meat allows me to create this amazing factual piece of writing is because our bodies didn't have to spend as much time and energy on chewing and digesting raw food, it allowed our brains to get bigger.
And, our stomachs started to shrink as well, although I'm not sure this has happened to me, perhaps I'm one of the last real cavemen!


So what we our new bigger brains we could spend our time inventing things, like this computer, and gas barbecues!

So red meat and fire is all we need really, and perhaps of drop of red wine.

Of course, some of the Far Eastern tough guys didn't even bother cooking their red meat.

The Tartar's were a wild bunch, and didn't feel like wasting time from their destruction of vast parts of Asia, so pushing on, they placed their lunch under their horse's saddle. This was to tenderize it so they could enjoy a tasty snack later in the day.

However, had they have been trained properly with a knife, they could have finely chopped it, added some piquant seasonings and not have had to worry about horse sweat scented meat!

I served our steak tartare with a couple of deep fried quails eggs, celeriac remoulade and toast, as a starter, on my Sunday lunch menu at East Lodge a couple of weeks ago.

Then followed our amazing Sunday roasted loin of beef. As, always, supplied by the legendary David Prince, up at Highfield House Farm.

Roasted hard and fast, rested and sliced its no wonder we all developed so quickly all those years ago.

Just, imagine, there must have been loads of animals to hunt, roast and eat!
So, I'm not sure how we discovered fire, but I'm so glad we did, because it means we can all read my blog!

And, just one more picture, whilst on the subject of red meat.

Beef, fillet and cheek, bone marrow and a black olive caramel.

This was inspired by the classic French daube from South West France.

Right, thats it, a culinary trip around the world!

And the best bit?  Those new season lamb chops, grilled on the barbecue,  in Pilsley, drinking chilled rose, watching the swallows going mental in the garden last Sunday.

Perhaps they are reincarnated Tartar's looking for some action!


So, ta ta for now!

Sorry about that one, couldn't resist!