Glorious blue skies on Friday, this was the view towards the Sierra Nevada as we drove along towards Orgiva....
Almond trees in the sunshine....
Looking across the valley towards Almegijar,
The ITV centre is smaller than the one in Motril, it only has one testing lane and so is always quiet, when we arrived a car was leaving, a van was waiting and then there was us.
Orgiva is just a few minutes away,
All done by midday, with our sticker for 2014 in the windscreen, we went on down to Motril for a quick bite to eat and some shopping. We were hoping for inspiration for a Valentine's dinner - there have been lots of adverts on uk tv for meal deals - 2 courses for £10 or 3 for £20 including wine - but when we see these meals we think, well we could cook that or we do cook that so it's not special. But inspiration didn't come. We eat quite well here, we have the time to cook from scratch and we both enjoy cooking, meat is good quality and if it's expensive such as beef or lamb, then we buy less of it and less often. So that makes it difficult to choose something 'different' for a special meal.
But there are things that we only see in big supermarkets, I saw some big thick pork chops with the fat and rind still on, meat is normally trimmed so much and I think it needs fat for flavour and to keep it moist while cooking. So 2 big chops were the start, then John found some solomillo de Iberico de cerdo (pork fillet) which was very expensive per kilo but - and this is from the label - producción controlada - and it said it was ecological. The meat itself was very pale and marbled with fat. Add to that a selection of baby sausages and a chapata (ciabatta bread) and we had more than enough. Except then we found a selection of small pastries for dessert.
The chops were tasty and juicy, too many sausages so we have some for brunch today, too much bread so we have enough left for toast, and the solomillo was marvellous. Melt in the mouth meat. The little pastries were good too, followed by coffee with Baileys (or a Baileys taste-alike version) and all that cost just over 13 euros.
We bought some croissants for Saturday breakfast and even including our fast food lunch we only spent just over 25 euros.
PS: This from Wikipedia: The Iberian pig is a traditional breed, native to the Iberian Peninsula. The high intramuscular fat is what produces the typical marbling; this, together with traditional feeding based on acorns, is what makes its ham taste so special.
And from an online meat company: Iberico solomillo, frozen, 600grams costs £35 which is 42 euros. So our 268 grams for 5.62 euros wasn't expensive at all! It's just when you see the price per kilo is 21 euros compared to pork chops at 5.75 a kilo then, well lets just say there was a sharp intake of breath!
Thanks to LaTienda.com for the picture of the meat.
The meat in most supermarkets here in the US has no fat at all. Like you said, the meat is tough and tasteless. There is one chain of supermarkets that carries fatty meat, but the closest store is 90 miles away. My daughter lives very close to it, so when I visit her I do all my shopping there. Otherwise I do without it. Another problem is pre-packaged meat. Yuck, it comes in tubes shot with some kind of gas, that keeps it "fresh' for 30 days. After it's removed from these tubes it has a shelf life of 5 days. I'll never buy from the stores that sell their meat packaged this way.
ReplyDeleteThe local meat here is tasty and very fresh, certainly not tough, but still too trimmed for my liking. One of our butchers doesn't always have much on display but when you ask he cuts the meat you want while you wait. Pork is his speciality, he has been known to bring out half a pig and ask which leg I'd like when I wanted a big Xmas joint!
ReplyDeleteMeat preserved in gas? Isn't that what they do to pre-cut pre-washed bags of salads as well? Another pet hate of ours? Meat that is pumped with water to bulk it up and that oozes out during cooking. Fresh is best, local is better, home grown veg is good too.