Ah Cooking School, I love you...

Braehead Foods. What a great place. Today I went to my second cooking class, 9am until 4pm all about Scottish Red Meat!

First, we cooked braised blade of beef. They had pre-marinated it in red wine, rosemary, garlic, etc. Good stuff. We did a typical stew thing with it and left it to braise for a few hours while we continued with more meat. (I'm not going to put the recipes up in respect of the intellectual property of Braehead Foods.)

Next, we saw (and ate!) a demonstration of three different fillets of beef from three different breeds of cow. We tried mixed breed, black angus, and dexter. It was amazing how different the dexter tasted- it is purely fed grass, no grain. Interesting (and DELICIOUS).

http://www.gormellick.co.uk/images/25473271.jpg

Next, we cooked peppered saddle of roe deer, which is a small deer that looks like this:

http://www.bds.org.uk/roe.html

We watched the chefs demonstrate how to cut a whole saddle of lamb. Finally, we finished off my making mashed potatoes to go with our braised blade of beef. We ate our beef and our hot chocolate fondant puddings that we had made earlier in the day.

My next class is going to be Our Feathered Friends!

The description from the web site: From free range chickens, gressingham duck and guinea fowl to the more adventurous quail, poussin or squab pigeon. We will show you some simple recipes and fantastic ideas on how to make the most of these fantastic birds. http://www.braeheadfoods.co.uk/classdescriptions.html

I LOVE FOOD!