14 November 2010

Rost befe of olde englande

Well, not entirely, to be honest - the accompaniments were rather more twenty-first century.

This evening we dined off a succulent piece of beef sirloin, reared by our friend Steve Rawlings before he gave up these entertainments in the face of too much aggro from the food police etc. It was cooked with lamb and rosemary chipolatas (I don't normally mix meats, but had exhumed these from the freezer a couple of days ago and they needed cooking) with some large mushrooms added towards the end. I also cooked cauliflower, garlic potatoes, and onion sauce, and we opened a bottle of red wine - the lovely Chorey-les-Beaune (2008) which takes no effort at all to drink. It was a sort of rehearsal for Christmas, it was that good...

Yes, this was a slightly extravagant meal, but it was demmed tasty, and made a morceau of space in the freezer. It was also better value than the meat I was looking at in M&S yesterday - a depressing selection of the expensive, quick to cook, and no effort required to deal with inconvenient flavour factors like bone or skin. It caused me to realise once and for all that I am not one of their core customers. That seems to be the suited and booted male and its female equivalent. Yes, I see plenty of grannies in there buying food, and Marks do well at providing things for the single person - but from observation the majority of their profit these days surely comes from dinner partyish food needing the minimum of preparation, with cost not really a factor to be considered. There are occasions when I'm grateful for it, but when I retire those are going to be fewer and further between...

3 comments:

Jilly said...

We're a bit short of M&Ss round here with a small one in Boston and a Simply Food in Spalding. But whenever I go into the Simply Food it seems to be full of people whose average age is at least 65! Not sure where they get the money from really . . .

Your meal sounds wonderful - I do love beef.

NAM said...

Even beef with polo mints, I seem to remember!

Like you, I'm not sure how some of the senior citizens afford this stuff, but I supoose if there's no waste, and sometimes little or no power used to cook it, perhaps it's justifiable. But then even as a newly-wed (shriek) I used to puzzle over the older customers buying lamb chops - of all the wasteful things...

Jilly said...

Well yes - definitely beef and polo mints - one has to experiment to find new tastes!

Lamb is expensive enough withour buying it as chops!! I gave up on pork chops when I realised pork loin steaks were much cheaper, no waste and could be cooked in the oven - roast pork with nothing to carve or throw out - yum!