I'm very lucky, in life and in general, that I get to work with amazing people doing the things I love. And part of this is that I have the opportunity to learn, and I embrace this, everyday, whenever possible. This is why veal is such an important topic for me as it is still so miss understood in this country (as is MSG but thats a different story!) 20 years we go banned the cages that calves were kept in (still are on the continent, again, whole new can of worms, think pig farmers and protecting our own) If you partake in any dairy then ethically you should eat veal, which at least provides some life to what is seen as a waste product of the diary industry. Approximately 120,000 male calves are killed shortly after birth in this country as they cant produce milk and there is little/no demand for veal. A friend of mine has recently started her company called Cotswold Veal, providing ethical reared organic veal, so we decided to hold a night celebrating veal and hoping to illuminate and educate as we went!
The menu went something like this:
Mini veal Milanese with veal ragu, confit lemon, served as a tortellini
Calves liver parfait with red onion
Veal tartare with shallots, capers, lemon, on sourdough with hay smoked duck yolk
Liver n Onions- onion puree, fried onions, raw onions and herbs
Braised n BBQ'd jacobs ladder (short rib), celeriac purée, Hackney Wick herbs & toasted hazelnuts
Raw milk granita with mint oil, served off the bone
Roasted hay pannacotta, chocolate coated veal jerky, brown butter ice cream
Marshmallows
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| the produce arrived, we were pretty excited!! |
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| the liver! |
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| We roasted hay from the actual farm and infused it into cream and milk for our pannacotta- tasted amazing! |
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| smoking the yolks, simple and effective |
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| sourdough breads, we tried baking some in the hay, interesting smells!! |
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| Veal ragu tortellinis, rolled by hand, perhaps a little too thick but by gosh they tasted good! |
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| the veal tartare with smoked yolk |
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| Liver and onions |
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| 40 people, 5 lots of 8, easy, no heat lamp though!! |
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| the herbs we foraged from along the river lea, which is on our door step |
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| Hugo Jeffreys (BlackHandFoods) was awesome in the kitchen with me and in the lead up to the event, so here's some of this charcuterie!! |
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| Raw milk granita, served on the veal rib bone, with mint oil! |
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| I loved this dessert; we made veal jerky from part of the fillet, marinating and dehydrating it, then coated it in spices and then in chocolate, it was definitely a marmite!! |
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why not? Had all the egg whites left after smoking the yolks so marshmallows it is then!!
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Hopefully not the last of these style of events that we do, thoroughly enjoyed it, had Chantal the Farmer, come down to speak about her calves which I think is amazing.
Here's some links to press n bits
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