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It’s fair to say this past year has filled with frustrations – missed time with loved ones, cancelled events, job worries, not to mention the constant fear of catching coronavirus.
Which, of course, we ended up doing.
Yep. After barely leaving the house for a year and then only venturing out the front door for the school run and – when restrictions allowed – the gym and gratefully receiving my first vaccine, I STILL managed to get Covid-19!
I was actually very lucky (I’m assuming the immune boost from that first vaccine played a big part in this ‘luck’), as I only really had two days of feeling rubbish, then I was essentially symptom free – apart from one particularly annoying thing.
I totally lost my sense of taste and smell, which doesn’t seem like big deal in the grand scheme of things, but – take my word for it – it seriously sucks. You don’t realise how much you rely on food for enjoyment and comfort until it’s taken away, especially when you’re imprisoned in a single room and can’t even hug your children!
Added to this was the fact that, one week before, I’d been talking with the team at Swaledale online butchers. This Yorkshire-based company specialises in whole-carcass butchery (which means they use the entire animal to make a range of quality products and nothing goes to waste) using top quality native rare breed meat.
These breeds have fallen out of favour in recent decades, as they’re slower to mature and prefer a grass and hay-based diet. Breeds introduced from the continent were faster growing, high yielding and lean, meaning greater profits, but – as aficionados will argue – less taste.
At Swaledale online butchers they’ve dedicated themselves to traditional livestock, such as the Highland cow and the Yorkshire Middle White pig, as their top priority is always taste, not the bottom line.
When they offered to let me pick some meat from their online store, I was SO excited! The husband doesn’t cook in general, but the one thing he has mastered is barbecued meat. While it might seem strange – a little reckless even – to cook an expensive Tomahawk steak, or beautiful joint of beef on the barbecue, believe me when I say it elevates the meat to a whole new level of smokey, rich, juicy goodness.
Just ask the Argentinians, who are famous for their ‘asados’ and where cooking meat on the parilla grill is a South American ritual and a much-loved social occasion.
After much deliberation, I chose a beef rump roasting joint, a Tomahawk and a Cote de Boeuf. The meat arrived a couple of days later (you can choose from a selection of delivery dates), thick, tender cuts marbled with fat, that had my mouth already watering.
Then, Covid came along and totally messed up my barbecue plans! We decided to forge ahead and cook the beef joint – regardless of my lost senses – as it didn’t seem fair for everyone else to miss out.
That weekend we fired up our gas barbecue and heated it to sizzling before adding the beef joint. I’d bought OH a Meater digital thermometer for Father’s Day, which goes through the thickest part of the meat and monitors the internal heat and sends the results via Bluetooth to your phone. You type in the type of cut you have and exactly how you want it to be cooked and it sets off an alarm when the meat is at the perfect temperature. Clever, huh?
It totally takes the stress out of cooking any type of meat – particularly when it’s as fancy as the cuts from Swaledale online butchers. Still, we were a teensy bit nervous putting this rump roast on – after all, you don’t want to spoil such a beautiful piece of meat.
After letting it rest, OH and I both held out breaths a bit as he cut into the roast. The meat was smokily charred on the outside, but had a beautiful blush-pink centre… utter perfection.
This was the point where I felt a big wave of jealousy – of all the times to have lost my sense of taste! OH and the girls were literally swooning as they tasted the beef; even my youngest – a notoriously fussy eater – was totally won over.
I couldn’t NOT try some, and I was surprised to discover it was still enjoyable. It’s hard to describe, but although I couldn’t actually taste the meat my tastebuds were still reacting to the different elements of the flavour profile – for example, I could tell it was salty and could also register the slightly bitter umami taste the barbecue cooking had leant it.
The meat was melt-in-your-mouth tender and soaked in the savoury juices; in a funny way, not having the smell or taste made me appreciate these other aspects even more – like how music sounds better when you have your eyes closed.
It was the most delicious meat I’d never tasted.
A few more weeks have passed now, and we’ve already placed two more (paid for ourselves) orders with Swaledale online butchers. My smell or taste hasn’t totally returned yet, but it hasn’t stopped me enjoying our back garden asados. I keep telling myself that if I’m the Swaledale meat tastes this good now, just imagine how amazing it’s going to be when my senses are back to 100 percent.
I can’t wait!
READ: My 5 Tastiest Dairy-Free Finds // Adopting a More Plant-Based Diet
