On not making a fool of yourself in butchers' shops

People my age don't go into butchers' shops very much. Some of us are vegetarians, of course, and others don't cook anything more complex than pasta and pesto. But most of us get our meat from the supermarket, and the reason is this.

We're scared.

Yes, scared. It's not the red-faced men wielding cleavers, or the unidentified red slug-like things lurking in trays in the window. We just don't know what to ask for. And we're scared stiff of embarrassing ourselves.

In a supermarket, everything has a label with price, quantity, how to cook it and how many it serves, not to mention what it actually is. In butchers' shops, meat sits around in unmarked trays, only occasionally labelled. And lots of things aren't visible at all - they live in the mysterious other world called Out The Back.

First of all you have to queue up. If it is a good butcher there will, generally, be a queue. Then you have to make your request, specifying what you want and how much, in front of everyone in the queue. Public humiliation is only moments away. And you have no idea how much it will cost - Nigella will gaily tell you to order a 3kg joint of beef, not bothering to mention that it is over £10 a kilo. You are not married to a Saatchi. If you are lucky you clocked the price list just before ordering and made a rapid adjustment just in time. If not the butcher will spend what seems like ages cutting you a hunk of beef and you will have to get him to go away and cut a bit off. He will roll his eyes and eight ladies with shopping trolleys on wheels will tut in the queue behind you.

He will also ask you an incomprehensible question, like 'Do you want that Spanish trimmed?' or 'Fore-rump or topsiderib?' You say 'Spanish trimmed' because he made it sound like a good thing, and he disappears Out The Back for a full ten minutes to do something complicated involving a lot of banging. The eight ladies tut some more.

I made a fool of myself once in Scott's of York, over some scrag end of neck. It was the first time I had ever bought scrag end, but Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall recommended it for Tunisian lamb with aubergines in his Meat Book. I ordered a kilo. The trainee butcher fetched it and weighed it out for me. 'Eight pounds,' he said. 'Is that all right?'

I was a bit startled. I'd thought it was a cheap cut. Still, lamb shanks used to be cheap once but they aren't now, and Scott's is a top quality, Rick Stein Food hero sort of butcher. I was just handing over my ten pound note when one of the senior butchers noticed that the butcher apprentice had made a mistake. He apologised and sorted it out, but, obviously it was me that looked stupid. I could see the other customers thinking 'Well, that one's got more money than sense!' Scrag end is usually about between one and two pounds a pound. Butchers' shops are full of traps for the unwary.

Anyway, I've been into butchers' shops a lot now, and I've learnt a few things, so I'm going to share my wisdom with you:

1. Butchers are lovely. They don't actually mind at all if you ply them with questions and ask their advice. You can say 'Will that be enough for three people?' and they will say 'Three greedy people or three people with small appetites?' and you'll end up with just the right amount. If you say 'Oh dear, I'm not sure I can afford that much,' they'll suggest a cheaper alternative. They are as useful a source of cooking advice as Nigella or Hugh, and much more attuned to what is available to you and your budget.

2. They particularly love selling you cheap, manky-looking things like scrag end and offal. This is because a good butcher will be aiming to do something called 'balance the carcass'. Rather than ordering in a hundred chicken breasts and three dozen pork chops, a butcher will want to buy whole animals and manage to sell all the parts of them. He needs people who know how to cook in order to do this. So asking for the giblets does not make you a nuisance, it gives you credibility. The ladies in the queue will be impressed, too.

3. There are several good books around explaining about the different cuts of meat and how to cook them. I rate the River Cottage Meat Book very highly, but there is a cheaper one by Anthony Worral-Thompson and you should find a section on this in any good book on cooking techniques.

4. Scrag end of neck (which is lamb, for the uninitiated) is fabulous. If you slow cook it it ends up delicious and melting and falls off the bone.

I also want to say a few things to the butchers of the world:

1. Don't assume everyone speaks butcher language. Those charts with different bits of the animal are good, and they're something to look at while we're waiting in your long, long queue.

2. Label things as much as you can. Apart from anything else, it gives us ideas of what else to buy and promotes impulse buying.

3. Put your price lists where we can see them, in big easy-to-read letters. It's amazing how many butchers don't do this. You might even want to put them online, so we can work out how much our recipe is going to cost before we come.

I am not scared of butchers now. I no longer bicker with my husband as to who is going to get to wait outside with the buggy in the rain, and who has to go in and face the scary red slugs and the men with cleavers.

The best Yorkshire curd tart

This is the first time I've ever posted a recipe directly on this blog, because it is the first time I've ever cooked something that made me want to go 'Go on! Try it!' knowing most people won't already have done.

I have been looking for a good recipe for Yorkshire curd tart for some time. They're a regional food that is still very much in evidence. Betty's do a sublime one. The cheesy, spicy flavour of these tarts is quite distinct. If made with a good crisp pastry to contrast with the light, rubbly texture of the filling, they can be fantastic.

The first problem was what sort of curd cheese to use. Traditionally they were made from 'beastling' milk - cows' colostrum - as Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall shows us on River Cottage Road Trip. But you can't get colostrum easily these days, except powdered, in tins, for bodybuilders.

Traditionally, these tarts also contain rosewater, but I had never seen that in a recipe, and these days they always have dried fruit in.

It all came together when I found this recipe, which I have adapted below. It includes the rosewater (Click on the link to find out how you can make your own!) You make the curds yourself by curdling hot milk with lemon. I left out the raisins and made the pastry a touch richer.

Making the curd is easier than you can possibly imagine. It is also magic - seeing the curds slowly appear from a pan of milk! Children would like this bit.

When baking, make sure you open the oven a crack to breathe in the scent of warm rosewater as the tart cooks. It is really the rosewater that is the secret of this tart. It blends with the spices to evoke summer gardens, pot pourri, Tudor farmhouses with roses round the door and dark oak furniture.... Give it a go!

THE BEST YORKSHIRE CURD TART

INGREDIENTS

For the pastry:

4oz plain flour

1 oz icing sugar

2 oz butter

2 egg yolks

For the filling:

3 pints whole milk

juice 1 lemon

4 oz butter

2 tablespoons rosewater

1 whole egg

2 egg whites

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon grated nutmeg

handful of currants (optional)

The day before you want to eat it, make the curd. To do this you simply heat the milk almost to boiling point, then take off the heat, add the lemon juice and stir until it curdles. It will look like baby sick! Allow to cool.

Put a sieve over a large jug or pan and line it with muslin. Pour in your curdled milk and allow it to strain overnight.

Here I will give you a very important tip. Make sure the edges of the muslin are over the pan (or, if you are using a jug, stand the whole thing inside a bowl) because the whey will drip from the corners and could end up in a puddle on your kitchen worktop!

These are the curds draining:

And after they have drained overnight:

The next day, make the pastry by sifting together the flour and icing sugar, then rubbing in the butter by hand or in a food processor. When the mixture resembles breadcrumbs add the egg yolks to bring it together into a ball. Wrap in cling film and allow to rest in the fridge for an hour.

Before making the filling, turn on the oven to 190 c and put in a baking sheet to preheat.

To make the filling, simply beat together the softened butter and rosewater, then stir in the curds. Finally, beat in the eggs, the cinnamon and the dried fruit if you are using it.

Line a greased 8" tart tin with your pastry. Fill with the filling and sprinkle with nutmeg. Bake on the preheated baking sheet for 25-30 minutes, until the pastry is crisp and shrinking away from the sides of the tin and the top is golden brown.

Pigs' trotters are good for your skin

...according to this article in the Telegraph.

Apparently there is a new restaurant in New York, Hakata Tonton, specialising in 'collagen cuisine'. Pigs' trotters are high in collagen, the protein responsible for skin strength and elasticity. As you get older its degradation leads to wrinkles. So if you eat pigs' trotters, so the argument goes, you'll replace the broken-down collagen and have lovely younger-looking skin.

I'm no nutritionist, but surely the problem with this is that when we eat food we digest it and turn it into something else?

If anyone wants to test it, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's brilliant River Cottage Meat Book includes at least four recipes for pigs' trotters. I will be looking carefully at his skin next time he comes on tv to see if he has any wrinkles.