“Basically butchery of any sort is a reductive cost incremental process.” Easy for my old colleague Geoff the butcher to say! What he actually meant was the more time and effort required in the butchery process, the more you have to charge for the end result. So generally with Chicken for example, you are better buying the full bird and cutting it yourself.
“H” in our Vegetarian Alphabet was Halloumi. Traditionally Halloumi is made with a mixture of Goat’s and Sheep’s milk. We’ve only a small balcony and the Council would probably not be happy about us grazing a mixed flock on the communal lawns. So Full fat Cows milk did the job.
This was certainly a “Lock Down” time filling gig and realistically it’s probably not worth doing at home normally for the return weight for weight. But we love a challenge. The process is to heat 4l of milk to exactly 32c add Rennet, hold over a water bath at exactly 32c for 45 minutes. Cut the curds, salt and then dehydrate in the fridge overnight. Sounds easy? It took us 4 hours to get to the fridge stage!
But it worked and did taste like the real thing. We grilled some, made crispy Halloumi balls out of the bits we’d broken by being a bit heavy handed and also made roasted Rosecoco Bean and Carrot fritters. A few other bits and bobs and we had a very tasty Buffet style dinner.
