Tonight's episode is definitely one for the meat lovers. Poh offers her service as apprentice to butchers, Jason and Bill and in the kitchen Poh and the boys demonstrate how one cut of meat can produce two very different dishes.
Growing up in a Chinese household Poh wasn't exposed to cooking with large pieces of meat but as someone keen to develop her cooking skills in a country that produces great meat she is determined to learn more. And who better to teach her that a couple of men who admit to being "born to be butchers". Jason Bradley and Bill Smith have had a shop together for eleven years and were more than happy to take Poh on as an apprentice for a day. After delving into a bit of dicing Poh proved she was a dab hand at customer service and discovered how the time honoured tradition of fritz giving is at the heart of good butchery.
In the kitchen Poh tackles her first roast. The leg of lamb is marinated with mustard and infused with rosemary and garlic before being beautifully roasted. A braised cabbage dish provides tang to cut through the richness of the meat and Kipfler potatoes "smashed" and baked with butter give an added crunch. Poh also makes traditional gravy using the pan juices from the roast, stock and red wine. It's a beautiful warming winter dish. The butchers do what butchers do so well by changing the way we look at cuts of meat. They take a leg of lamb, just a Poh used in her roast, and then bone and butterfly the leg before marinating it in a Greek style marinade using fresh Greek oregano and then pan frying and serving with lots of garlicky yoghurt as delicious Greek Yiros. Bill then cooks up two different steak cuts. Poh finds them equally tasty and equally tender, a real eye opener given that one cut is twice the price of the other. Yet one more reason why getting advice from a good butcher can really pay off.
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