Restaurants

The cut: shin
The dish: beef shin stew
Dedicated beef-eaters understand the beauty of shin, and the strange alchemy whereby the toughest meat on the animal is transformed by slow cooking into a substance that dissolves on your tongue like a snowflake.

Until recently, shin was for paupers only, and even now it doesn’t exactly fly out of Ginger Pig’s Moxon Street store. Charles Elme Francatelli’s Victorian classic ‘A Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes’ recommends shin stew on the basis that ‘four pounds of leg or shin of beef costs about one shilling’. In ‘English Food’, Jane Grigson remembers asking her mother why she bought shin instead of more expensive types of stewing beef: ‘She showed me how the rounded nuggets of meat are patterned with a transparent gelatinous membrane which holds them together, and adds a smooth, jellied texture to the sauce.’
Feature continues

With master butcher Borut’s help, I cut the muscle away from the bone and leave it coiled on the slab. But it doesn’t look as pretty as Grigson makes it sound. The ‘transparent gelatinous membrane’ is dirty ivory in colour and tough as rope, and the meat clings to it not in ‘rounded nuggets’ but fatty clumps it’s easier to imagine spitting out than savouring. But my scepticism is short-lived. At the end of the evening’s session, Borut disappears into Ginger Pig’s kitchen, emerging minutes later with a huge vat of shin stew which chef Paul has made earlier in the day. The smell alone makes us coo like idiots. But then, what are we supposed to do? It’s like nothing any of us have ever tasted, and we’re all hardy casserole veterans. ‘The two secret ingredients,’ says Borut, ‘are bone marrow and balsamic vinegar.’ He adds that the beef was marinated in red wine for two days before cooking, and that it was cooked on a low heat for approximately seven hours.

I’m determined to replicate the stew at home. But on the Saturday I opt to cook it, an unexpected hitch means that I’m unable to take the shin out of the freezer in time to marinate it as I’d hoped. (I make a right old fuss about this. Be relieved you’re not married to me.) To make matters worse, the cooking time is reduced to three hours from seven after I decide, perhaps neurotically, that it isn’t safe to leave the hob on while we’re out.

‘It’s going to be rubbish,’ I whinge to anyone who’ll listen. ‘I don’t know why I bother. We might as well just eat ready meals.’ ‘Shut up,’ says my wife. With a sharp knife I hack the meat off the cartilage, taking care to leave enough fat to flavour the sauce. I follow Jane Grigson’s (which is to say Francatelli’s) recipe, but use red wine instead of water and add shallots and balsamic vinegar (though no bone marrow: I’m a bit squeamish about bone marrow).

While not the triumph I’d hoped for, the stew turns out just fine. As with sleep, so with cooking: seven hours might be desirable, but in the real world of jobs and kids and First Capital Connect train ‘services’, it’s rarely attainable.

Beef shin stew
Take two kilos of beef shin and brown (ie fry) in lard. Shake in two tablespoons of flour, then add carrots and shallots. Pour in enough red wine to cover the beef, and a cup of water. Add two tablespoons of balsamic vinegar. Season. Bring to the boil, then cover. Turn heat right down and leave to stew for six or seven hours.

We bought our longhorn, Del Boy, at Ginger Pig. For further information about Borut’s butchery classes, see www.thegingerpig.co.uk.