Day 29: we tartare

So today WAS going to be Curtain-Hemming Day (the great idea of Lisa), until I realised that I'd have to extract the ladder from the garden shed to get them down and I happen to be terrified of ladders. Luckily for me, I did some design research that told me pooling-curtain lengths are ALL the rage, so I've decided to embrace the look and remove 'hemming curtains' from my to-do list entirely. So the end result was the same: I got to take it off the list! Lisa, you're brilliant.

In its place, something else I've been wanting to do: make steak tartare.

I love raw food in any of its forms - carpaccio, ceviche, tartare, sashimi - there's not a version I don't enjoy (well, maybe not Torisashi, though *technically* I haven't tried it yet, and maybe it's amazing?? If you've had it, lmk). But while I feel comfortable messing about with raw fish, for some reason it didn't occur to me I could also mess about with raw beef. That is, until our neighbour in France invited us over for lunch last time we were there, and made it for us. It was so good and as he pointed out, so simple; I made a mental note to try it myself.

Today is that day.

First things first: I needed the right butcher. If one is going to eat raw, uncooked beef, it's got to be fresh. So I took a left at the bottom of our street instead of a right and headed for the fanciest part of our neighbourhood: Victoria Park Village.

They don't let you forget it's a village, either.

So much twee, so little money under the mattress. It's why I usually go right.

And then we get to my butcher of choice: Ginger Pig, with its ethical animal husbandry and best sausage roll in London. This is where to go to get a cut of meat good enough to eat raw: 

Church spire, unstripped bikes, fancy doggo - check, check, check. I jangle the coins in my pocket so everyone knows I belong. 

They dry-age most of their beef so I had to tell them I was tartaring it and they picked out the perfect cut for me: 

One of each. 

Then I took home my beautiful fillet tail and gazed at it lovingly for a no doubt hazardous length of time: 

Who wouldn't want to cram this raw straight into their mouth? 

But no, that's not how it's done. It must be cHopPeD first, because we are not a dOg. I used Nigella's recipe - mostly so that I had an excuse to look at her like I did at this meat - and it. was. great. I'd probably use slightly less gherkin next time (I suspect our pickles are larger than the ones she was suggesting), but that's the only thing I'd change. It was exactly what I wanted: 

That yolk on top - *kisses tips of fingers* - could watch it cascade over my beef all day. 

Uh. 

Happy Tartare Tuesday!

Cheers,

Essss