Upside to the Horsemeat Scandal

The good news from the horsemeat scandal is that butchers, properly trained old-fashioned stripy-aproned butchers, are seeing a boost in trade. The logic is inescapable: people know that major supermarkets, however much they protest, are about price, price price. We now have an example of where that leads. Processed food cannot it seems be trusted, so the alternative is for people to return to cooking for themselves. And for trustworthy ingredients I'd rather go to Jack Jones Butcher than any massive corporation.

Sadly I don't think this will last. There are people so lazy and incapable they keep a hopeful eye out for a microwavable boiled egg. And it seems MacDonald's have avoided any taint in this scandal, so the hordes of ready-meal addicts will doubtless make their way there more frequently. That vile ad campaign at present - 'Don't Cook, Just Eat' (I keep looking for the sub-title 'If you are sad, have no taste, wish to be spotty and obese and smell of rancid fat' but I keep missing it) - is a measure of things to come.

Horse Meat Good News for MPs

Am I too cynical to conclude that the spate of (plate of?) scandals about horse meat and other contamination of processed foods will have MPs patting their tummies? The lobbying firms will now be in overdrive, and instead of the big hitters enjoying the big dinners, the largesse will have to pass lower down the political food chain.

Among those defending themselves will be supermarkets showing that it was nothing to do with their grinding downward pressure on suppliers that has led to corner cutting. Step forward too a crowd of the giants of the food processing world, out to demonstrate how it wasn't anything to do with them, guvnor, they thought the extraordinarily cheap meat they were buying was kosher - bad choice of words - fine then. The inevitable conclusion must surely be the third plea in Scottish law: 'A big boy done it and ran away.'

It will not just be MPs at the trough, either. Their parties (and it will be all the major parties) will have a boost to funding from some of the big food fish, by which I don't mean halibut. Halibut smells better. So the result of the debate will be 'It's a bit of a pity but we are sure it won't happen again. Honest. Delicious foie gras by the way. And the Yquem with the brulee was wonderful.'

My approach to processed food is - by and large - avoid it. Fresh meat needs care too - I try my damndest to buy from sources I trust, which includes a local Aberdeen Angus farmer, top man Henry Rowntree, for a regular delivery of meat that tastes great, is from beasts that enjoyed a good life, has not been up and down the country to save 2p per animal on slaughter fees, has been hung properly, is tender, and is actually at a very good price as the middle man has been cut out. Of course that means I have to cook it and turn it into ragu etc myself, but as cooking is one of life's great joys why would I want someone else to do it (badly) for me? Why would I indeed get someone to charge me for removing a pleasure from my life? I don't hire someone to drink my wine for me and tell me how good it was.

Austerity and Horsemeat

Recent events have pointed to the fact that there are two ways to be economical in the kitchen: the first is to buy cheap rubbish; the second to devote some time to making the best of basic ingredients.

It is not a massive shock that processed foods at the very bottom end of the market should be the ones where inexplicably horsemeat has been discovered. The explanations that spring to mind are that somewhere in the chain there was a genuine error; or that in that same chain someone did it deliberately. It is hard to imagine circumstances in which 29 per cent of a burger could be horsemeat by accidental contamination, but you never know. 

Behind that, however, is the fact that the continual downward pressure on suppliers by supermarkets is likely to end in some sort of error: if your prices are shaved to the bone you cannot afford the very best monitoring systems, best people, most reliable suppliers of your own raw materials, the numbers on duty you would want, etc. So the supermarket buyer filling the trolley with the very cheapest stuff is not - generally - getting the best and purest - big shock.

With burgers, the product that has caused the furore, it is pretty easy to make your own for not very much, and to enjoy the process rather than the processed. Buy some mince from a reliable supplier; use some stale bread to make breadcrumbs; chop an onion finely; mix together with an egg for binding and seasoning to taste, then form the burgers in your floured hands and grill or fry them. 

I started this post saying it was economical buying rubbish, but that is not really true. As Elizabeth David once wrote, a bad meal is expensive at any price.