Dishes such as pink duck breast, lamb, liver, kidneys and rare and tartare steak could disappear from our menus due to over-zealous health inspectors, reports Times correspondent and cookery author Pru Leith.
I don't actually like much of what I eat served pink or rare but if it is what people want it is up to them. It appears that "rules" relating to cooking times and temperatures are being applied by inspectors. It is agreed that burger, made of minced meat, needs to be cooked through as infections could could be spread by the mincing process. However, a cut of meat, seared on the outside and pink in the middle shouldn't be too risky and eating it should be a matter of personal choice, I would hope
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>> Well done is dangerous too:
>>
>> news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8629358.stm
>>
Usually badly presented as "double the risk of bladder cancer" is meaningless. Is it 1% to 2% or 0.0000001% to 0.0000002%?. Makes a HUGE difference.
As the story eventually says:
"More than 10,000 new cases of bladder cancer are diagnosed each year in the UK.
Around 5,000 people die from it every year, and almost 90% of deaths are in people over 65.
So..
it's 5,000 in 60 million or 0.0083% ..
Words fail me.
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>>
almost 90% of deaths are in
>> people over 65.
>>
>> So..
>>
>> it's 5,000 in 60 million or 0.0083% ..
>>
>> Words fail me.
>>
But there are a lot less than 60 million people over 65, who are virtually the only people likely to be affected.
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>> I could only find the rare steak story here
>>
>> www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2396605/Prue-Leith-warns-rare-steak-rarer-restaurants-councils-demands.html
And when you read the story there is no current issue with steak.
There does however seem to be a move against rare offal or duck. Prefer duck pink and certainly wouldn't want lambs liver fried or grilled to texture of a boot sole.
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Bromptonaut - my long experience of eating liver is to go to an Italian restaurant and have calves liver, very thin cut and flash cooked about 10 seconds a side on a very hot griddle. Crispy outside, cooked thru but just pink in the middle. Glass of Bardolino, job done
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>> Bromptonaut - my long experience of eating liver is to go to an Italian restaurant
>> and have calves liver, very thin cut and flash cooked about 10 seconds a side
>> on a very hot griddle. Crispy outside, cooked thru but just pink in the middle.
>> Glass of Bardolino, job done
Doesent need to be an Italian restaurant, but yes liver needs to be sliced thinly - slightly thicker than rashers of bacon, and then flash fried in butter so the centre just stops being pink. 10 / 15 seconds per side as you say, and the liver is soft and creamy - delish!
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>> lambs liver fried or grilled to texture of a boot
>> sole.
Been to dinner at my mothers place have you?
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>>I don't actually like much of what I eat served pink or rare
THIS is rare: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wolf_with_Caribou_Hindquarter.jpg
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>> Dishes such as pink duck breast, lamb, liver, kidneys and rare and tartare steak could
>> disappear from our menus ...........
Being impoverished pensioners, we can't afford any of those anyway.
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>> >> Dishes such as pink duck breast, lamb, liver, kidneys and rare and tartare steak
>> could
>> >> disappear from our menus ...........
>>
>> Being impoverished pensioners, we can't afford any of those anyway.
>>
Cannibalism has some advantages.....
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>> >> Dishes such as pink duck breast, lamb, liver, kidneys and rare and tartare steak
>> could
>> >> disappear from our menus ...........
>>
>> Being impoverished pensioners, we can't afford any of those anyway.
Thats because you have blown all your cash on 400 quid shoes....
Last edited by: Zero on Mon 19 Aug 13 at 15:24
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Caught a glimpse of Saturday Kitchen on the telly this weekend, where they ask guests to say what would constitute their "food hell". I think mine would be liver (or any offal, frankly) in a cherry and orange flavoured sauce with dessicated coconut.
Strangely, I love liver pate.
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My joke menu when I cook for my grand children is sweet and sour liver!
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I am now a pescatarian but in carnivore days once ordered the Chef's Surprise in a Leipsig restaurant. It turned out to be steak tartare, with a raw egg in a depression on top. Honour demanded that I ate it. My stomach dictated that I got rid of it soon after.
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>>Honour demanded that I ate it. My stomach dictated that I
>> got rid of it soon after.
>>
This happened to me once with some mussel vol-au-vents in a French hotel. Never again will I put honour or face before potential illness. Shellfish are off my menu permanently.
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>> This happened to me once with some mussel vol-au-vents in a French hotel. Never again
>> will I put honour or face before potential illness. Shellfish are off my menu permanently.
Once went to a restaurant in France with friends, and the other bloke, a renowned trencherman, had the "gastronomique", a massive pile of various sewage eating organisms, mostly sporting one or more of aerials, eyes on stalks, or suckers.
He insisted I eat one of his delicious mussels. I was ill, and I mean ILL, for 3 days. He ate all the rest and was fine.
I swerve round shellfish as well.
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>> I swerve round shellfish as well.
You allergic types are unlucky... I don't eat much of anything these days but I like raw oysters and cooked mussels. I've seen herself eat raw mussels although she won't touch an oyster. Squid is nice too.
Beef is best a bit rare, but it's got to be good meat. I don't think I'd eat steak tartare unless very hungry.
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>>I am now a pescatarian but in carnivore days once ordered the Chef's Surprise
I'd never order anything random like that - it stands to reason, human nature being what it is, that they will palm off something past its best, or stitch you up with something they think is marvellous but nobody orders because it's actually horrible or made from some unmentionable animal parts.
You were probably lucky it was only raw. Do they still eat Kalbschirn in Germany post-BSE?
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>>Do they still eat Kalbschirn in Germany post-BSE?
Calves what? In any case, my last visit to Germany was in about 1985, pre-BSE.
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>> Kalbschirn
I ate fried sheep's brain once in the Soviet Union. It was appalling, but was the only food my hosts had in the house that day. It was disgusting, but I ate it. The alternative was hunger.
The next day I celebrated when we got a phone call in the evening, a visciously cold and wet October evening, a country relative had just arrived unexpectedly on a train from somewhere remote, with a massive bag full of dead chickens. Into the burnt orange Lada we jumped, and off to the Kazanski Vokzal to collect this precious cargo. Much plucking and chopping later, an all nighter, we had a freezer full which lasted the winter.
No place for vegetarian principles in those days, you ate what there was.
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>> Into the burnt orange Lada we jumped, and off to the Kazanski Vokzal to collect this precious cargo.
Memories! As a Lada dealer I had no choice in the colour of the cars we ordered - white was the most common, though. I once saw a shoot of the import centre with a thousand cars lined up and every one was white!
We only had one orange Riva 1200 in our six years of operation and managed to offload it onto a funny little old driving instructor as an instruction vehicle!
At least if you could drive a Riva 1200 you could pretty much handle anything!
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Calves what? Calf brain.
Which was still on sale (along with everything else except the moo or the oink) from the butcher's counter at the hypermarket on holidays in France a fortnight ago. Actually, the kids knocked good fun out of being able to see all manner of animal bits up close that they'd only see pictures of in "how your cow works" type books at home.
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Calves brain is all right - We used to have it deep fried in breadcrumbs back in the seventies although it became difficult to get and of course is now unobtainable following BSE.
I find it odd how a lot of people wont eat eat good quality offal but are happy to buy meat pies burgers and sausages of dubious origin.
Personally I prefer lambs' liver to steak - a lot more flavour. Lambs hearts are delicious too but also now difficult to find.
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Lambs liver makes an extraordinarily cheap and tasty meal, fried with onions and a bit of bacon and finished off with a decent in-the-pan gravy.
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>> Lambs liver makes an extraordinarily cheap and tasty meal, fried with onions and a bit
>> of bacon and finished off with a decent in-the-pan gravy.
throw a handful of chopped sage and a shot of port in that.
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Pigs liver is cheaper and tastier.
Pat
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I hear that it is rather bitter or strong Pat and that it is improved by soaking in milk for sometime, before it is cooked
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>> I hear that it is rather bitter or strong Pat and that it is improved
>> by soaking in milk for sometime, before it is cooked
>>
And cooked with a Pat of butter.
;-)
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>> I hear that it is rather bitter or strong Pat and that it is improved
>> by soaking in milk for sometime, before it is cooked
>>
Not so.
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I seal it gently on the outside in a frying pan with some onions and then make thick gravy and transfer it to a casserole and leave it in the oven simmering forever.
I never know when Ian will turn up for dinner, and it means I can go out into the garden and forget cooking!
It's delicious with mashed potato and young broad beans.
Pat
Last edited by: pda on Tue 20 Aug 13 at 07:18
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Please could you expand on that? Is it not so that it is bitter or ir is it not so that it IS bitter but soaking it in milk improves it
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Pigs liver is strong, and very much a "marmite" thing, but I don't soak it in milk, merely frying it in butter.
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Lambs' hearts from Waitrose.
Last edited by: Mapmaker on Tue 20 Aug 13 at 15:15
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>> Lambs' hearts from Waitrose.
Braised with root veg - Yum Yum
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>> Which was still on sale (along with everything else except the moo or the oink)
>> from the butcher's counter at the hypermarket on holidays in France a fortnight ago. Actually,
>> the kids knocked good fun out of being able to see all manner of animal
>> bits up close that they'd only see pictures of in "how your cow works" type
>> books at home.
French offal (Abats?) counters are an interesting subject for observation. Brains, tongues and testicles all common place but animal source is key.. To though me the best offal is lamb's liver, kidneys and heart. The latter stewed with root veg is a real winter warmer.
Ox heart is probably OK cooked for a month but pig's innards or ox kidney (unless in a pie) are just too strongly flavoured.
Never see Lamb offal in France.
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>> >> Being impoverished pensioners, we can't afford any of those anyway.
>>
>> Thats because you have blown all your cash on 400 quid shoes ....
........... and £195 slippers. www.church-footwear.com/en/UK/man/slippers/sovereign/velvet-black
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Raw herring with unions one of my favorites.Don't mind small smoked eels either. Tried jelly eels once,not for me.
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Pig's liver isn't strong, ox liver is.
You lot really are a bunch of wimps. If the sort of thing you believe were true half the population of France would be dead.
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Just noticed on Wikipedia that raw minced llama features in Chilean cuisine.
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OP:- H & S Nonsense?
Seems perfectly sensible to me.
Poorly prepared food can and does kill people.
Do what you want to yourself, but when other people are involved a much greater degree of safety is required.
Fowl and offal can be contaminated throughout the entirety of their substance with some pretty unpleasant bacteria/parasites and thus should be cooked through (to at least around 70c or so).
Cow muscle on the other hand should be pretty much sterile other than cut surfaces, so a rare steak should be a low risk affair.
Funtimes when I was a babydoc in the west of Scotland news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/154107.stm
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OK H&S priority failure. Think BSE, CJD, horse meat in Beef, they have better things to worry about than my local pub serving pink Gressingham duck breast to me tomorrow night when I eat there.
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>> OK H&S priority failure. Think BSE, CJD, horse meat in Beef, they have better things
>> to worry about than my local pub serving pink Gressingham duck breast to me tomorrow
>> night when I eat there.
The chance of the duck breast being insufficiently cooked to kill off salmonella is one that, like you, I'm prepared to take. I'm young(ish) and fit and a dose of the squitters won't kill me.
OTOH if I were older (or much younger) and a fatal dose of e-coli got me my heirs might take a different view. A couple of such cases and the press will be in full hue/cry mode and after the landlord the next for the pillory will be the EHO.
People have a strong sense of self preservation against being made to look like public enemy number one!!
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Don't get it.
Firstly, its not H&S, its Food Safety.
Secondly its not rules its non-compulsory guidelines.
Thirdly it is aimed at the lower level or non-expert chef/cook, rather than the expert who is cooking it rare on purpose.
Fourthly its not aimed at steaks, joints & similar, its aimed at minced stuff & offal.
Where is the outrage exactly?
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If a professional chef/cook can't use a meat thermometer they have no right cooking food for others.
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Don't like any kind of offal, but it's more psychological than physical distaste. I always think there are enough good parts of the animal to eat so why bother with the bits and pieces. I can just about cope with liver but it must be cooked through with plenty of gravy to disguise it. Regarding other meat, I quite like steak a bit pink in the middle as long as it's tender. I quite like lamb as well, but it mustn't be fatty and must be crispy on the outside. With new potatoes and mint sauce as well...
We don't have meat more than twice a week, Mum's a GP so has always been quite strict with myself and younger brother regarding diet, the look on her face would make grown men weep if we were caught eating junk. We might have chicken or fish probably more than meat. She likes her meat well cooked though, it's just the way she likes it rather than any medical reason. During the week I'm back home by 4:30pm whereas she's often not back until gone 7pm, sometimes later, but as I've been up since 5am I can't wait for her so I usually get my own and brother’s meal but leave hers in the bottom oven. The bottom oven keeps things warm to hot and cooks very slowly, it's usually just how she likes it by the time she gets in! Too over-cooked for me though. At the weekend when Dad comes back he likes to play with the gas barbecue, I think it's a sort of man toy but the great thing is we can just cook our own and by the time we’ve finished then Mum’s bit of leather will be just about ready for her to eat.
I had steak tartare once in France, I thought it was a steak with some kind of sauce. Then I thought maybe the cooker has broken down. No I didn't eat it, yuk. Just the thought of it makes my stomach growl. Enjoyed the horse though.
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I raise you on salmonella, with campylobacter, with listeria for seconds. All coliforms I believe (Lygonos will know better than I) which spread horribly, not just through the meat but also serving utensils and work surfaces. Having been on receiving end of campylobacter from a source who should know better, but has eccentric, cavalier ways of food hygiene, say no more, I am on the wary side of eating out. And do all the cooking at home pretty well. EHO turned up day after results to quiz - quite impressive!
Last edited by: NIL on Wed 21 Aug 13 at 18:24
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Everything in live is a gamble eating out is one of them.Some of the poshest eating places can have the worst hygene.
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More H & S Nonsense re Rare Meat - Manatee
