Beefy success in Japan

Full plate for Meat & Livestock Australia ‹ Japan Today: Japan News and Discussion

Lots of interesting facts and figures here about the success of Australian beef in Japan.

In other meat news - on Sunday, I tried braising a rolled lamb shoulder in wine and stock, with onion, garlic, carrot, parsnip and celery in the mix, and lots of rosemary.  This smells fantastic while its cooking, and after 2 hours,  the meat is falling apart tender.  But the meat flavour tends to be a bit weakened by being cooked in liquid, in a way roast lamb isn't.  Sure, the stock mix tasted nice, although as usual with herbs, if you cook them too long their taste starts to disappear.   The liquid also had a fair bit of fat in it, and it tended  to run off the meat and so didn't work so well as a seasoning.  I suppose one could cook this one day, and refrigerate the liquid so as to remove the fat, and then boil it down a bit to reduce it to a thicker consistency.   But this is starting to reduce the benefit of braising - put it in the oven and just come back in two hours.

I still thought it a moderate success, but the family outvoted me from trying again.  Such is life.

(Actually, I think these problems can be dealt with by using the very, very slow baking method instead.   That's what I'll try next...)