An end to flavourless ‘Veganuary’: it’s Meat Month, and time to explore meat in all its wonderful variety. We say no to malnutrition.
This week we start with beef: there is far more to it than a slab of ox flesh. Beef is a doorway to many new experiences.
We have a lot to thank vegetarians for – without their efforts, vegetables would be overboiled and devoid of flavour, but with remarkable ingenuity they have made them with eating on their own. Vegetables are always better with gravy of course, but for making these vital elements of our diet possible to eat on their own, I thank the vegetarians.
However now it is our turn, to do the same for that other vital element of our diet – the meat. The two cannot be parted. To much meat means ill-health, indigestion, bowel disease, scurvy and personal hygiene issues best not described. Lack of meat loses vitality, muscles and tone. Working hard needs meat. That balance of diet is what Meat Month should be all about: the meat that is worthy of the vegetables given house-room on the side of the plate.
If you think meat is just a lump of undistinguished flesh torn from a plastic wrap and grilled or fried, you do not know meat. The subtleties are endless. If you think it is just beef, lamb, pork and chicken , you have not even grazed the surface, and no wonder you have been put off.
It can be fitted to any diet. Worried about your weight? Eat rabbit stew, or squirrel, or guinea fowl. It is all out there to be explored.
We’ve a string of sausages running through February, and an offaly big weekend coming up. Dive in and suggest your own best meat dishes.
In fact, it is so big a topic, it should be a whole year, every year.
Books
- Nose to Tail Eating by Fergus Henderson
- Beyond Nose to Tail: A Kind of British Cooking: Part II by Fergus Henderson and Justin Piers Gellatly
- Midnight Feasts: An Anthology of Late-night Munchies by Charmain Ponnuthurai
- The Meat Cookbook by Nicola Fletcher
- Game: A Cookery Book by Tom Norrington Davis and Trish Hilferty
