All beefy

I’ve mentioned before that I seem to have phases of particular food ingredients. This week I seem to have hit the beef phase.

It started yesterday, when I took the next thing off the freezer list. It just happened to be 2oz of minced beef. There’s not much you can do with so little to feed two hungry people. Nonetheless it became the contents of a couple of satisfying Cornish Pasties – I’ve inherited the pastry gene!

Having done the food shop yesterday, I’m now using things that are likely to go off first. So today it’s become a homemade beef burger, using some fresh tomatoes for garnish. When we go out to the library later today, we’ll buy a couple of burger buns for the meal.

Tomorrow the Fox is cooking. Coincidentally he’s chosen, quite independently, to do a Vietnamese dish, Thi bo kho, which is a sort of beef stew using some braising steak. Fresh beansprouts, which give a last minute crunch to the meal, never seem to keep well.

So we come to Saturday. Guess what. The roast I’m intending to do is beef, for the first time all year. It’s rare I do beef. I generally prefer a chicken or lamb. A good bit of pork with plenty of crisp crackling is also welcome. Or a gammon joint. But of course, at the moment, I’ve chosen to do beef. I’ve bought some anchovies to make a flavoured butter to keep the meat moist so they need to be used up soon too.

I don’t know how it is I seem to go through these phases. I’m not even aware I’m doing it when I’m planning what to get or when I’m buying the ingredients. Still, having bought the meat, I’m certainly going to cook it. I’m telling myself the various meals should bring out different textures, not to mention flavours from the meat. It will a change from the poultry phase of last week with chicken & turkey in a multiplicity of ways. I wonder what the next phase will be.