So this entry has been a long time in coming. By a long time I do actually mean only five days, but it has seemed like ages. The first butchers I tried to get the meat I required from initially thought they could get everything but had to check, then thought they couldn't, and finally could but only in quantities much larger than I could use. The recipe comes from The Geometry of Pasta by Caz Hildebrand and Jacob Kenedy, the latter being chef and owner of Soho Italian restaurant Bocca di Lupo. I first became aware of author and restaurant after purchasing Theo Randall's Pasta and Amazon subsequently assuming we were destined to be. They were correct. A bit of research later, the persuading of my parents to take me there for my birthday soon thereafter, and finally having received the book for Christmas and I am a fully fledged, cardholding Kenedy-ite. As I've made this directly from the book, I won't copy out the entire recipe (not least out of due diligence towards copyright law.) Instead I shall use this as an opportunity to delve into a subject that has come to the forefront of my eating awareness over the last year or so, that of the ethics of eating meat, specifically in this case of Ravioli Genovese al Tocco as it contains veal and offal from a calf.
I was brought up eating meat, and to be grateful for what was put in front of me and as a result didn't question the relationship between humans and animals raised for slaughter until it was something that I became aware of. With the best part of thirty years of meat eating behind me, it's fair to say that it certainly feels natural, but that's not to say I couldn't bear the prospect of eating a meal that did not contain any meat.
There are many arguments and counter-arguments both for and against meat eating, and as such I'll keep it fairly to the point. Not least because were I to go into significant detail I would just end up crudely regurgitating and paraphrasing Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall on many fronts. I do thoroughly recommend The River Cottage Meat Book as a bible for anyone who eats meat and gives even the slightest damn about what they're putting in their mouth and the consequences of their actions (or more importantly, non-actions.)
I'm not ready to completely cut out meat from my diet, and may never be. But knowing that somewhere a pig has been killed so that I can enjoy a bacon sandwich, or that a cow has been marched off to slaughter for my roast rib of beef on Sunday, it seems right to at least ensure that up until that point the animal has been treated well, and has not been abused, taken advantage of and generally enjoyed a good life. This is beneficial on two fronts, namely conscientiously and unsurprisingly, the quality of the meat. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that meat from a chicken that has never seen daylight and spent its entire life on the receiving end of the distress-induced aggression of the thousands of other chickens imprisoned with it is not going to taste as good as the meat from a chicken that has been free from obstruction to run around, inquisitively looking amongst the natural, nutritional food provided for it. Like with all vague supermarket labeling, meat packaging will try and cover up what they're not telling you by alluding to something it probably isn't. A 'British fresh farm chicken' is certainly not free range unless it explicitly says so. After all, if you were selling something free range you'd shout about it as loudly as possible.
So in order to do the most justice to the animal, it seems pertinent that not only do we demand the animal be treated well whilst it's alive, but also post-slaughter. Of course this means cooking it well to get the most out of the flavour and texture of the relevant cut. At this point I direct you to Jay Rayner's recent excellent article for Observer Food Monthly on the criminality of a well-done steak, and to Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential as to what many chefs may be doing to your requested well done steak (surely whoever coined that term was wrong in the head; forcing all the delicious, juicy moistness out of a steak is not at all doing it well.) As for making use of as much of the animal as possible (after all, it would only undo all the good work to then throw away something that could otherwise be used) I again point you in Anthony Bourdain's direction, this time to the first chapter of A Cook's Tour. This recipe marks the occasion of my first culinary encounter with two cuts largely consigned to the 'that looks/sounds disgusting' scrapheap of British eating habits; veal sweetbreads and calves brains (this is also the cause of the delay in cooking this, as they're not exactly the easiest things to come by.) I'll briefly swat away the debate about whether or not veal should even be eaten with a well-aimed quote from Hugh's The River Cottage Meat Book (did I mention anyone who eats and cooks meat should own this?)
"...what few consumers realise is that to banish veal forever from our shopping list and our menu is to condemn potential veal calves to a fairly heinous alternative to being reared for meat. If there is no market for veal, then the thousands of pure-bred dairy calves born each year that are neither suitable for beef production nor needed for replacing the dairy herd will be shot within a few hours of birth. The fact is that the production of veal is not intrinsically cruel, any more than the production of pork, beef or lamb is."
The crates which lead to veal's tarnished reputation are now banned in EU countries, and British production includes a number of organic producers. If this were not the case, or was unavailable, then I wouldn't be cooking with veal.
After my initial attempts at sourcing the ingredients stumbled, I obtained them from HG Walter's butchers in Barons Court, West London, which comes with high recommendation from Rose Gray, Nigella Lawson and er, Terry Venables. Of course. The dish consists of shin of veal slowly simmered for two and a half hours in a wonderful concoction of the bone marrow from the shin, a mirepoix of vegetables, soaked porcini (and the liquor), beef stock, white wine, tomatoes, bay leaves, parsley, cloves and nutmeg. The meat then goes on to form the ravioli filling along with the the poached sweetbreads and brains, borage (which I couldn't get hold of so replaced with spinach), egg yolks and grated parmesan, while the cooking liquor from the veal is puréed down and strained to make the sauce.
Earlier in the week I had been reading Thomas Keller's method of making pasta dough by incorporating the flour into the eggs in a circular motion on a flat surface. Having already gone ahead and put all the ingredients in a bowl I thought I'd try this anyway within its confines. Next time I will definitely be applying Keller's method to Randall's recipe as it resulted in the best pasta dough I've made yet - after repeated passes through the widest setting it had taken on a velvety texture, so smooth and pleasing to touch. It felt the right thickness for ravioli having only been passed through up to the seventh setting, rather than the eighth, which I have previously espoused as ideal.
As a footnote, obviously when making something that uses so many egg yolks there is just as many egg whites left over. It would be stupid, amongst many other things, to allow these to go to waste. Therefore it is unadvisable to make pasta if you don't enjoy meringues, soufflés, or any other such things heavily reliant upon egg whites. I suck at meringues (as demonstrated by the pavlova I made with the whites left over from the squid ink pasta earlier, since dubbed the spazzlova) so to further my ascendency to the state of Domestic God I adapted Nigella's recipe for Pistachio Soufflés to incorporate white chocolate and raspberries. Here's photographic proof that they did in fact rise.
HG Walter butchers can be found at 51 Paliser Road, Barons Court, London. www.hgwalter.com
Jay Rayner - A well-done steak isn't a food choice: it's a crime
www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/dec/12/steak-meat-animals-cooking
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