Today I pretended I was a chef… and for those of you who know me will understand what a huge leap of the imagination this is or as my 12 year old would say, more like dystopian fiction or perhaps horror…
Don’t panic Clive Dixon, Luke tipping, I didn’t pick up a cook book or frying pan. Instead I considered if I was a chef where would I get my day to day inspiration from in this ever busy world.
When time allows, of course, throw off the whites, meet friends or go with your team to inspiring restaurants to fuel the creative juices. However, when you can’t and the recipe book flick through hasn’t quite cut it where do you turn for menu ideas?
I googled, menu ideas… you don’t get much. We work hard as a butcher with our teams to develop them and help them to understand the job of a chef – there is so much more than the cooking.
We have a product development team of course, but we feel it’s the responsibility of all of our client care team to bring inspirational products to market and help chefs create a point of difference on menus.
Some of the new or re-invigorated new things that we have… English Earl Stonham Wagyu – pure bred English Wagyu, one hulking great 600 plus kilo whole carcass, per week allows the team to bring some creative differences to old favourites. At the risk of ripping off the M&S advert, this isn’t just bresola, this is pure bred English Wagyu bresola, a rich alternative. Or why not carpaccio of English Wagyu, an escalope or brochette with a difference?
Free Range Milk Fed English Suckling pigs. This is new for us. Why? Of course we can get Suckling pigs but we wanted the highest welfare and we were not satisfied with the general commercial practice of taking the piglets from mums as they suckled. To find out more about our higher welfare older suckling pigs with all the fantastic milky flavour click here or speak to our team.
And as for lamb – we go into over drive in lamb season helping chefs to balance menus, finding cost effective alternatives to racks of lamb, saddles and chumps. From our wonderful paves to a spring twist on confit lamb belly. All our lamb is from the South West and the area is so good, our lamb producers have PGI status.
Noticed a pattern in our inspiration? Its all about English produce so when Article 50 comes to an end there will be no changes for us or for you – No man is an island , but with our purchasing philosophy bound to British for the last 85 years , we can come close.
See here for our Brexit statement: Brexit Statement
To find out more about how we can help to inspire you and your menu ideas, come and see us and our butchers on April 29th. Click here to book
