You may have read about the new campaign to use all our technology and experience to create what at least one newspaper called a "designer steak", or rather steaks and beef generally, for the foreign market. Teagasc recently revealed new plans to make our beef conform more to what the Continental consumer wants. And it is not the same in every country. Not only do our farmers have to manipulate the diet of the cattle, but also new techniques have to be employed at the processing level. It has been found, for example, that beef from animals finished on a diet of concentrates is more tender than that from animals finished on grass alone. And if they are fed on maize silage, they produce whiter fat than animals fed on grass silage. White fat is preferred in some countries to cream fat. (The things you learn from reading The Meath Chronicle!). And research, it appears, shows that if the producer hangs carcases from the hip, they are more tender than the usual hanging from the hook.
Big steaks are surely a macho thing - the sort of food that athletes train on. That idea has probably been at least modified. And how many men know the difference between fillet steak and other versions - rump steak, chuck steak, to begin with? The women will. And everyone knows that steak tartare is raw, minced fillet with raw onions and raw egg yolk. But when we go abroad, do we not tend rather to explore the great world of fish and shellfish, and other delights? Foreign holidays are surely changing our eating habits as we modify our food for export. One steak you haven't heart of: whin steak. Whin refers to the method of cooking rather than to the shape or content. You may prefer the word gorse or furze. You can lay the steak on wire mesh or chicken-wire over the burning whins - preferably, or of necessity, out of doors. Or simply hold it over the burning whin fire on a graip or fork - we are getting very rural. And, of course, barbecues could take this on board, though smaller bits and pieces would be more usual.
The originator of whin steak - as far as this corner is concerned - is Basil Blackshaw, whose recent query about the value of feeding whins to horses got this plant into the discourse. He says the whins give a wonderful flavour to the steak and, of course, there are no prickles left to pierce your tongue. Y