Let's Eat Meat
Eat meat, but eat less and eat better – that, if any, is this book’s philosophy. That's not to say we should stint on great hunks of beef, cut paper-thin and served with glistening gravy, charred steaks, or golden deep-fried chicken. Nor should we forgo slow-cooked lamb, roast Chinese duck, Keralan pork curry or rich jambalayas, cassoulets and daubes – you’ll find recipes for all of these here. But read on and things get a little less carnivorous.
In the Less Meat chapter, meat shares the limelight with other ingredients, and in Meat as Seasoning, scraps of beef, lamb, pork and chicken are eked out to give depth to a range of dishes. There are 120 recipes in total, ranging from meat feasts such as roast beef through to game stock and everything in between.
Let's Eat Meat shows us how to enjoy meat, whether it is a prime cut or a scrap of meat used in a way that is thrifty but never mean. With an eye on welfare, it encourages us to spend money on eating less but better meat. But this is no revolution: here are recipes for dishes rooted in cultures where meat is a luxury, and so delicious you will return to cook them again and again.
Tom Parker Bowles is an award-winning food writer. He writes a weekly column for the Mail on Sunday and is Food Editor for Esquire. His first cookbook, Let's Eat, was published to critical acclaim in 2012, and he is also author of Full English (2009), which won The Guild of Food Writers' Award for Work on British Food, as well as The Year of Eating Dangerously (2007) and E is for Eating – an Alphabet of Greed (2004). He lives in London with his wife and two children.