BOX OF DELIGHTS

The vegetable box, or "veg box", delivered to your door from a farm or organic supplier, is now a familiar aspect of food purchase and consumption for many people, who prefer to eat seasonal fruit and veg rather than asparagus that has been flown in from Peru, out of season.

The meat box is a rather newer innovation, offering organic/outdoor-reared/sustainably-sourced meat and related products, delivered direct to address.

I am an unapologetic meat eater. I like meat and I believe it is an important part of our omnivorous diet. However, I am careful about how I buy meat, preferring free-range rather than factory-produced. The meat box fulfills these requirements while also offering more unusual meats not readily available in the supermarket, such as game, mutton and goat.

When I moved to Portland in Dorset in the summer, I was concerned to find a good meat supplier, since my local supermarket does not really offer what I want to buy and cook with. I saw an advert for The Dorset Meat Company (DMC) in a local food magazine and decided to order a box. The DMC offers made up boxes to suit your needs (there's a "Caveman Fitness Box" a "Ketogenic Diet Meat Box" and an "Everyday Meat Box", amongst mouth-watering other options), or you can purchase individual joints, cuts, sausages etc. DMC's boxes are "made up from Dorset and Wiltshire grass fed, free-range outdoor reared meat that has been produced sustainably and in harmony with nature." Because of this, you can expect to pay a little more for your meat, but it's well worth it. Not only are you guaranteed meat which has been sustainably-reared, it also tastes really good! The website is easy to navigate with many tempting photographs and the meat box order arrived quickly, with everything well packed with chiller packs.

My most recent order from DMC was placed to coincide with my chef son's visit. He works as a Chef de Partie at The Connaught, one of London's top hotels, and he has developed a fine sense of discernment about food through his work. I figured if I ordered some fine produce, he would cook us some delicious meals. I was right: he did.

Beef Ox Cheeks (Dorset Meat Company)

Beef ox cheeks are muscular, lightly marbled with fat, and as such lend themselves to slow cooking. My soon made a wonderfully aromatic stock and braised the beef cheeks for about 4 hours before finishing them off in the oven. He served them with a reduction of the stock, roasted pumpkin, roast shallot puree and pearl barley. A hearty, deeply-flavoured meal that was greeted with "oohs" and "aahs" of delight by our other houseguests.



Amongst the other delights in my DMC meat box was a shoulder of goat. I really like the shoulder cut of lamb. Like the beef cheeks, it lends itself to slow cooking and I particularly like shoulder cooked with Indian or Middle Eastern spices. I cooked the goat shoulder with a marinade made from preserved lemons, coriander and garlic and served it with couscous and Zhoug, a fiery green Middle Eastern relish, its heat tempered by mixing it with Greek yogurt. The goat meat was very tender with a sweet, slightly gamey flavour. The shoulder yielded so much meat that I was able to make a lovely aromatic curry with the leftovers, simply served with fluffy basmati rice.

Last night, because it was cold and we needed 'comfort food', I cooked DMC's venison sausages in a rich red wine sauce with juniper berries, jacket potatoes and braised red cabbage. Venison sausages are readily available in supermarkets these days (Waitrose and M&S both sell them), but the DMC sausages were really good: the high meat content and lack of "padding" (breadcrumbs, offal etc) made them really flavourful and I was pleased to discover a second pack of sausages lurking in the middle drawer of the freezer, ready for another meal!

With thoughts turning inevitably to Christmas and the small low-key Christmas lunch I'll be cooking at my mother-in-law's house, I will be investigating the DMC Christmas offerings and selecting something delicious to please all palates.

Recipes:

Shoulder of goat with preserved lemons, garlic and coriander
Venison Sausages braised in red wine

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