The virtues of shin
Sir: Your cookery expert, Jennifer Pater- son, displays her ignorance of meat cuts in her recipe for steak and kidney pudding (Food, 2 January).
Rump steak, unless perhaps as fresh as supplied by most supermarkets, is for frying or grilling. The correct beef to use for steak and kidney pudding is shin. This does need much longer cooking, but its texture and flavour are infinitely superior. The cheaper cuts of beef, now ignored by so many, all need considerably more cook- ing, but amply repay the extra effort and save money. Your readers should try brisket, particularly salted and pressed, and many of the forequarter cuts such as chuck steak or the almost forgotten gooseskirt. This small piece, from the flank, and rarely weighing more than a pound, was usually kept by the old-fashioned butcher himself and rarely reached the counter. Rib, prop- erly hung and not needing the additional fat, added by the butcher to topside, tastes infinitely better than topside, especially when cooked as a large piece. How do I know? Three generations, at least, of my family have been butchers and I myself had a butchery department in my wholesale food business. I still, to this day, buy my meat wholesale and prepare it myself for my freezer. I hang beef for three weeks and reckon to halve my costs com- pared with supermarket prices.
Even at Smithfield these days it is possi- ble for anyone to buy smaller cuts of meat. Our Asian community discovered this long ago and descend on the market in vast numbers each week.
K L.Webb
Charybdis, 52 Quarry Road, Winchester, Hampshire
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