Before & after

My mother has been visiting from Cornwall, which usually means I get a tasty delivery from Kingsley Village. This time round she brought me a delicious T-bone and a not so nice sirloin. Evidence as follows…

Depressing steaks

A Mountain of Meat

What should have been a very pleasant evening – munching through a mountain of meat with my brother – turned into a quite depressing experience when we began contemplating the future of our country. We were both in agreement that the future is quite bleak for (Great) Britain and hence our children.

Frederick Mair has my eyes. His mothers smile. And Gordon Browns debts. (Quality advertising that).

Sad steaks

Despite the doom and gloom, we did our best to eat our way through over 1.8 kilo of Cornish steak, comprising 2 rumps weighing about 300g each and a pair of T-bones.

Ross slow-cooked an onion & parsley sauce and I prepared some oven roasted potatoes with garlic and rosemary. We served it with a couple of lovely bottles of Pinot Noir.

Despite the deliciousness of our meal, the sadness took its toll and unfortunately neither of us could manage to clean our plates. Not something I like to admit to very often.

Sad steak & sauce

Verdict: Don’t mix politics with steak.

Xmas beef feast (part 1)

Almost steak

I spent five days last week visiting my mother in Cornwall. I had hoped to pay a visit to St.Ives beef but sadly they had run out of meat in the lead up to Christmas. I did a google search to find an alternative farm and stumbled across a website called Cornish Kobe. Mum and I ventured up to their farm in Fentonadle in North Cornwall but unfortunately the owner, Darren Pluess, was nowhere to be found. We left a note with one of his neighbours and received a message from him later apologizing and informing us they too had run out of beef, or rather they had run out of beer to feed the beef!

It was an interesting trip nevertheless and I had a nosey round the farm and met a few of the cows. If in the new year Darren manages to get his hands on some beer I’ll place an order and see how the Kobe fares.

Despite my unsuccessful attempt at buying some beef from source, I did however get my hands on some beef later that day. My mums boyfriend Bob picked up a 1.5 kilo cut of sirloin from Kingsley Village, a shopping centre with a fantastic food hall stuffed full of local Cornish produce and other fine products and ingredients from around the world. Definitely worth a visit if you are in the area.

Sirloins roasting on an open fire

My mum has an Aga cooker, which is great for many things but not so good for cooking steaks. Instead we fashioned our own flame grill using a grate from the barbecue and their wood burning heater. This was an awesome idea. Not only was it great fun cooking the the steaks but they tasted absolutely delicious as a result. I find cooking steaks over a naked flame gives them a flavour that you cannot replicate in a pan or under a conventional grill. It gives them a char-grilled taste and texture and releases more flavour from the fats.

I’ve got a fireplace in my home in London so I’m going to look into installing one myself!

It looked bigger in real life

We served the healthy sized steaks with a simple salad and some roasted new potatoes with a bottle of Rioja.

Delicious.