][1]With a culinary CV that lists dishing up rook and grey squirrel, Colin Clydesdale and his kitchen teams have never been afraid of exploring the less well known parts of the ingredients map.
Now the man behind Glasgow’s Ubiquitous Chip and the two Stravaigin restaurants has hit on another attention-grabbing idea: Colin has bought a Highland bullock from Woodneuk Farm in East Renfrewshire and, over the next couple of weeks, he aims to cook and serve every edible part of the animal.
Such tongue-to-tail eating used to be the norm but, until recently, many customers and restaurants focused only on the premium cuts of meat. As everyone tightens their belts, eating every part of the animal has come back into fashion and Colin and his chefs are going to see how far they can take the idea.
The team expect it to take the three restaurants around two weeks to use all the beef. It is estimated that the animal will provide some 1500 portions and will feature in around three dozen different recipes.
The chefs in each restaurant have created a series of dishes mixing modern and old techniques to make the most of less known cuts of beef. The heart has been slow roasted and sliced like pastrami. The livers and kidneys are being fried and the pluck has been made into beef haggis. No edible part of the cow is wasted.
The cow will be used differently in each restaurant. For example, the Ubiquitous Chip is using the shin to create osso buco, a slow cooked stew of meat and marrow, to bring out the inherent flavours of the cut. Stravaigin will be serving a fiery Asian style blade of beef. Stravaigin 2 will be creating subtly spiced koftas.
Ciaran Gourley, General Manager of the Ubiquitous Chip, said, ‘The economic times have made people take another look at previous unknown cuts of meat and offal. Here, we have tried to show just how tasty these ingredients can be.’
If the idea grabs you can book a table by clicking on the highlighted restaurant names above.