Travel Blog – Mr & Mrs Smith Boutique & Luxury Hotels

Ever since our trip to Hawksmoor restaurant, I’ve been thinking about meat. Not constantly (that would be weird and worrying), but every time I’ve sat down for a sirloin or test-chewed a T-bone, my mind has wondered back to Will Beckett’s East London steakhouse and the astonishing beef he serves. Hawksmoor’s meat comes from The Ginger Pig, the boutique butchers that began its London life in Borough Market and has since sprouted outlets all over the capital. Since they opened a branch in Victoria Park, there’s rarely a weekend that goes by without me popping in to stock up on steak, Tamworth pig bacon, and assorted obscure cuts that I’ll ‘figure out what to do with when I get home’. (Smoked pig’s cheek, I discovered, lends itself to wonderfully to lentil soup. Trotters, however, are indigestible, no matter what Hugh F-W says).

My own Mrs Smith, having noticed my preoccupation with the many ways in which cows can be turned into tastiness, was kind enough to treat me to a rather unusual Christmas present last year – an evening class in beef butchery at the Ginger Pig.

I wasn’t sure what to expect. Until I turned up at the Marylebone branch, I’d have suggested that anyone who vocalised an interest in hacking up animals was worth putting under surveillance. My 10 fellow apprentice butchers were all men, businessy thirtysomethings looking for a diversion from briefcases and BlackBerrys, rotund fortysomethings who already resembled butchers – all of us united in having had that weird moment in a restaurant or supermarket when you think ‘hang on, is rump steak really made of buttocks?’

Our hosts for the evening – seasoned London butcher Perry, and a genial Slovenian named Borut – started with a run-down of the origins of their beef (Longhorn cattle on the Yorkshire Moors), the Ginger Pig’s dry-ageing process, and what makes beef taste so, well, beefy. I garnered the following dinner-party factoids:

• Dry-aged beef is more expensive because more weight is lost as water and blood leave the carcass, and there’s more wastage as the bits that are exposed to the air have to be removed before you can sell it (as opposed to supermarket-style wet-aged meat, whereby cuts are left in air-tight bags and retain their water).

• You can’t buy cow’s heads in Britain. Sorry to disappoint.

• Butchers are very, very strong.

• It’s daft to waste expensive meat on making slow-cooked dishes such as Bolognese. Go with the cheap cuts (silverside or skirt).

• Rump steak really is made of buttocks.

Then the fun begins: 12 men, two hours, half a cow and a saw. That’s an evening to remember. Most of us struggled to lift the thing; Perry effortlessly flung the side of beef around like a bloodstained marionette, before taking us through the process of preparing fillet, sirloin, wing rib, fore rib, skirt, honkflap, rump, ribeye*, and a zillion more. After we’ve all had a go sawing and slicing, we’re each given a chunk of forerib and told to use our newfound skills turning it into a French-trimmed cote du bouef, which – joy of joys – we get to take home. The end result of my efforts may not have looked too appetising on the counter top – resembling a rather shapeless purple blob haphazardly skewered with bones and tied by an amateur bondage enthusiast – but it was meltily delicious when I served it, gratefully, to Mrs Smith the following weekend.

The evening ends with a Blue Peter-ish ‘here’s one we made earlier’, when a rare-roasted fore rib comes steaming from the oven and is served with crunchy dripping-roasted potatoes and a token metrosexual showing of salad. Over dinner, I learned about the shop’s latest invention – marrowbone burgers, which have just made their way onto the menu at Hawksmoor. A return visit may be in order.

After my Ginger Pig experience I may not be a master butcher, but at least I’ve had the opportunity to learn a bit more about what makes great meat, picked up a few tidbits of meaty knowledge with which to bore friends and revolt vegetarians, and – best of all – prised a cow’s buttock off its pelvis with my bare hands. I am man. Here me moo.

The Ginger Pig runs classes in beef, lamb and pork butchery and sausage-making at least twice a week, costing between £95 and £120 for a three-hour session. Book a place on 07505 023470, or visit www.learnbutchery.co.uk.

*One of these may not be real. I forget which.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 14th, 2009 at 8:00 am and is filed under Activities, Destinations, Eating & drinking, London, Uncategorized, Worth getting out of bed for. You can follow any comments on this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.