Mutton Pies share TV Star Status with Prince Charles

Mutton Pies share TV Star Status with
Prince Charles

Surfing the net took me a long way yesterday, not only across the
Atlantic Ocean but back in time more than half a century ago.

I followed a link named "Get Reading" thinking it was taking me to
a site encouraging people to do more reading but I landed in a
publication "Get Reading" published in an english town called
Reading by the Reading Evening Post.

The story of the day was about a segment of the show named One's
The One featuring Prince Charles who was promoting mutton meat
as a tastier alternative to lamb or hogget, the phase between
lamb and mutton.

The article reported that the Prince of Wales has been drawing
attention to mutton for a couple of years as a way of helping the
local farmers as well as introducing a tasty dish.

Chef Alan Oxlade, whose pub specialises in serving fresh mutton
from Longcourt farm in Newbury, said: "Mutton is less fatty than
lamb and it has more flavour than lamb, which can be just six
months old when they kill it. Mutton is from sheep over two years
old.

Mr.Oxlade was given a recipe for a mutton and turnip pie which was
cooked for two to three hours in chicken stock, juniper berries,
onion, celery, and winter vegetables. It was then put into dishes
with pastry added over the top. After the pre-recorded segment on
The One Show, live guests in the studio were invited to taste
Mr. Oxlade's mutton pie.

After his five minutes of fame, Mr. Oxlade has decided to share his
pie with more than the celebrities on the show. He says "it's quite
a wintry dish made with the best neck fillet of mutton, which is why
we have priced it at 12 pounds" So mutton and turnip pie is now a
special on the menu at the Shoulder of Mutton, and if it's popular,
it may become a regular feature of the menu.

As I hinted in introducing this article, I was reminded of a time
during the German occupation in Brussels, Belgium when people in
my family traveled in old tramways to the countryside to buy mutton
from farmers who were selling it on the black market.

In my home we made a ragout with the mutton meat cut in chunks and
cooked slowly on the stovetop - various winter vegetables were
added when the meat was close to being done.

Mutton was eaten in Belgium, France, England and I imagine in many
european countries but mutton seemed to have lost popular favor in
England after WW2. I read that the reason for that was that the
soldiers got so much canned mutton throughout the war (no gourmet
cooking there!) they shunned mutton when they came home.

The New York Times reported in a 3-29-06 article Much Ado About
Mutton, But not in These Parts that most Americans have never
tasted mutton, putting us and our Anglo-Saxon cousins in the
minority since mutton is consumed in quantity in France, Africa,
The Caribbean, the Middle East,India, parts of China, Australia
and New Zealand.

I googled the word "mutton" and found some sites featuring recipes,
of course the mutton in the recipe is most often lamb but the spices,
cooking methods and presentation make those recipes look mouth-
watering. I am adding URLs to a couple of sites for you to visit.

Mutton Bityani
http://people.cis.ksu.edu/~aruljohn/recipes/indian/muttonBiryani.html

SpiderKerala Recipes - Mutton Biryani
http://www.spiderkerala.com/kerala/recipes/popups/RecipeDetails.aspx?RecipeId=243