GIANT beef 'chop'

This is called Cote de Boeuf in French, not sure what it is in English. Half  a T bone?
I fried it to get it brown and then cooked in the oven for about 20 mins on a reasonably low temperature (about 160C - it is a bit hard to tell with our oven as it doesn't have meaningful temperature settings - that was about 5 and a half)

Very tender and juicy.

Lismore from the abattoir

A cow can be fitted in to a surprisingly small number of boxes - though they seem bigger when trying to cram then into a freezer.

This is a whole cow!

Sorting through all the bits so they are organised and we can find what we want.

First sample

Yummy in a sandwich - just as tasty as Bif we decided.

Photos of Lismore carrcas

The abattoir are always really helpful and they pulled it out so I could get some photos. The butcher says it looks perfect, with a good amount of fat on it.

Lismore has gone to the abattoir

We will get the meat back in 10 days.

She was a cute cow, but we have too many, so one of them had to DIE and it seemed better to keep the Jerseys and the Highlands as the calves will be easier to sell. We are hoping for as delicious as Bif, no reason why she shouldn't be, she was half highand and half jersey which should be YUMMY. We have kept the skin and have hopefully found someone to tan it for us as doing it ourselves didn't work out very well on Bif's skin.

Bye Lismore, thank you for being a sweet cow and hope you had a happy life!

Aidan visited

Aidan said he hadn't come to visit us, he had come for the beef (and other meat) so we ate a LOT while he was here.

So we started off with some Bavette de Boeuf

We helped Doug clear some of the trees from behind the house.
Then Aidan helped me put out some sheep fencing so we could move the sheep out the top field and in the next few weeks get the cows up there for the first time. This electric mesh is a godsend as it keeps the sheep in, but a bit of a kerfuffle to deal with too, so help appreciated.

Doug and I rarely make it to the market so it was nice to have Aidan around to motivate me to get going (leaving Doug in bed!)

There is a local breed of pig called the Noir de Bigorre it is black so these little black pigs are a very funny joke :)

We went for a horse ride on Doug's birthday. Aidan walked round the lake and met us near the end.

Roast beef with veg (we had it with yorkshire puddings)

Giant bird in the middle of the picture (honest!)

We went for a walk up in the ski area. There was snow here the day before.

It was quite cold and windy at the top.

The statue at the top of the col de tourmalet. It gets taken up there each spring and down in the autumn. I have rendered it in artistic black and white

The village

A change from beef - hogget chops (sheep between 1 year and 2 years old)

Bavette de Boeuf

It is not quite clear to me what this would be called in English. It comes from the flank/top of the rear leg. There is quite a lot of it and it seems to be a middle price steak.
We cooked it on the Ozpig and had it with homemade oven chips.

Home grown dinner (Entrecôte steak)

Got the Ozpig out. We need to spend some time chopping some tiny logs for it. But I managed to find enough.

I think Entrecôte is sirloin. A nice tender cut anyway.

With home grown courgette (heading closer to a marrow really but the skin and seeds hadn't gone tough)

You can see the beta-carotene in the yellowness of the fat here. Makes it extra tasty I think. Perhaps healthy too!

Homegrown lettuce and tomatoes with home made cheese, and thyme I found in the orchard.

We bought rather than made the bread though :(

This weekend's beef

We had chilli made with bif mince and home grown tarbais beans
Tornedos (tenderloin) fried and served with an orange birch boletus mushroom Doug found.

I cooked the beef until it was 60C in the middle (as measured with high tech new thermometer - usp is how quickly it registers the temperature).

It was more medium than medium rare (which was what I was aiming for). Super super tender and tasty whatever.

Slices of jaret (ankle) with the bone in slow cooked in thai red curry.

Doug says he needs to eat something but beef this week. Eggs maybe...

Beef Wellington

The roast. Weighed a bit under a kilo. Roti Noix is the name of the cut in French.

First I seared it in a frying pan

Then I bought the wine to go with it

On the right here before the grey little marker is how many foreign wines the supermarket has. Aaaaalllll the rest in this whole aisle are French.

Then I put some (home grown) ham on to clingfilm

Then some pate and then some mushrooms chopped fine and mixed with breadcrumbs

I put the beef in the middle and rolled it all up. Then refrigerated for a while

Removed the clingfilm and wrapped (shop bought!) puff pastry round it.

Served with roast potatoes

Wow look! It is beautiful!

and salad (all from the garden)

Mmmmmmmmmmm YUM!