A good butcher is hard to find

My grandmother was a farm and station cook. I grew up eating delicacies that were left after the owners in the big house, and then the staff, had their prime cuts.
Then we ate like kings, eating brisket, boiled sheep’s head, stewed kidneys,, pigs fry, sweatbread casserole, stewed tripe, and on Sundays – roast rabbit.

I now choose to live in a cosmopolitan area of Sydney, where there are Asian, Mediteranian, Arab and African migrants. So there is a solid market for cooks who want traditional ingredients for their dishes.

There are three or four independent butchers in our small suburb. The competition is tough, for quality, variety and price. On Easter Saturday the queue at Supreme Souvalakia , a wholesale butcher in the high street, starts at 6.00 a.m. and winds around the block till late afternoon.

Forget the $40 a kilo lamb cutlets and the Wagyu beef. This is a time for eating economy meals at home.

At the bottom end of the contemporary meat scale, there’s supermarket meat, wrapped in heavy plastic, tough and chewy. ( The meat has the same nutritional value as the plastic packaging.

Butchers in shopping malls specialise in novelty meat, covered in mysterious sauces and marinades to hide the fat, gristle and discoloration. The cost is higher than in the supermarkets, but if the meat has been ground or pounded, it can be easier to chew than the cheapest steaks from the chain stores.

Independent butchers in the high street have to follow the whims of trendies and the yuppies, in order to survive. If the latest glossy cookbook suggests a particular recipe or cut of meat, that’s what the independents have to display in their windows. And very little else.

At growers’ markets around town there’s a few herdsmen selling enough of their stock to pay their bank managers for a week- good fresh meat, but a very limited choice.

Occasionally I find a real butcher. Years ago I supported a butcher who bought the prime prize winning steer from the agricultural show each year, and rationed cuts of the animal to regular customers. It was good eating. Perhaps the best hamburger mince I ever brought was from the on-site retail shop at the city abattoir.

The variety of sausages on sale at most butchers are a worry. What’s in them? I think most butchers use anything that can’t be sold as dog food in making their sausage. The trick is to waste nothing.

When I asked a butcher for cow’s cheeks the other day, I was told, “that’s junk, we just mince them up”. Yet at several of four star restaurants around town, cows cheeks is one of the highest priced plates on the menu. Trendies can easily be duped.

The difficulty is to get good value at bottom price. That means skipping snooty meats and rediscovering proteins our grandparents knew when meat was scarce.