The Underscore Archives

On Fri, Jul 18, 2008 at 10:00 AM, James Fidell <james at cloud9.co.uk> wrote:
> I have it, but if you want to cook some of the food yourself it can be
> tough to source the meat.  As far as I'm aware slaughterhouses don't
> normally supply the offal to butchers, for instance, other than the
> kidneys which are left on the carcass and probably three days old before
> they even arrive at the shop (and they're often sliced open by the
> inspector at the abbatoir even then).  Pigs livers used to be considered
> unfit for human consumption as they contained siginificant amounts of
> copper from the growth promoters in their feed.  Fortunately they're now
> banned.
>
> I specifically have to ask to keep the trotters, head, tongue and other
> offal from our pigs when they go to slaughter.  Oddly, food hygiene law
> doesn't allow the head to be supplied with the tongue in place, though
> it can be removed and supplied separately.

Did you see "A cook's tour of Spain" [1] where they visited this
remote Spanish village at pig-slaughtering time, and this old (about
90-yo) _grande dame_ (I know, that's French) of the village was
testing the sausage meat's seasoning (which contained pig's blood) by
dipping her hand in the raw mixture and tasting it?

Didn't do *her* any harm, but you suspect that wouldn't happen in the
UK for various reasons (including over-zealous hygiene laws).

[1] http://www.channel4.com/food/on-tv/a-cooks-tour-of-spain/episode-1-andalucia-08-03-20_p_1.html

Tim
-- 
Tim Beadle

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