The Australian diamond
I went, as is my wont, to the Preston market on Saturday, to stock up on meat, to freeze in sensible portions in separate plastic Glad-Wrap bags, for barbecuing in the near future. I got two kilograms of barbecue sausages and three kilograms of chump lamb chops…
Well, I almost lost the chops. After I told one butcher that I wanted a couple of kilograms of the chump chops he went to grab a plastic bag to put them in. Meanwhile, another customer told another butcher at the stall that he wanted the whole tray that was on display. That butcher grabbed the tray, my butcher returned, and I was in the kind of situation where you’re supposed to assert yourself, and say: ‘They’re my chops. I was here first.’ But the other guy was much bigger than me, so I just tried to look sad…
The other guy got the tray, but the butcher said to me: ‘Wait. I’ll get you some more’, and toddled off. I was upset because I wanted those chops: I’d seen them, I’d compared them to all the other chops on offer, and they were the best I’d seen for sale at the more than a dozen different butchers offering lamb chops at the market.
It all ended happily: the butcher went off and cut me three kilograms of chump which looked as fine as the ones I’d seen and only charged me twenty bucks for them, the going price for the two kilograms I’d wanted. But while I was waiting for him to come back I looked for something for lunch the next day.
Kate and I had been a bit short of money recently, so the other week I had bought two aged eye fillet steaks to have for lunch. An eye fillet is only a small cut, but it’s very flavourful, and with some steamed vegetables makes for a decent meal. An eye fillet steak is a budget-minded treat: a really good bit of beef for only a couple of bucks (if you know where to shop, of course).
There was a couple of very nice looking eye fillets on the tray. Normally I wouldn’t make a big deal of it, but since I was being stuffed around a bit, I got the butcher to pull the tray out from behind the counter and I pointed out the two steaks I wanted.
I chose them because they had consistent marbling and were both quite similar in size and colour, with no thick streaks of fat that would fail to dissolve when the meat was cooked. and no visible flaws: two perfect little treats.
We ate them the next day. We cooked them on the barbecue along with some asparagus, mushrooms. sweet potato slices and eggplant drizzled with olive oil. And they were fucking lovely: there are few things in life as pleasurable as the taste of really good beef, and each had cost less than a Big Mac.
And I remembered something Vlado told me. He said to me: ‘Beef is the Australian diamond, but too many Australians don’t appreciate it.’
I’d always thought it was a strained analogy, but then it hit me. This was exactly what Vlado was talking about: polished little Australian diamonds.