Veal

When I can, I like to buy free-range English veal. Unlike veal from loose-housed calves – or worse, from calves housed in the infamous crates – this meat comes from young animals reared with their mothers, and suckled either at pasture, or if the weather is unsuitable, in airy barns. Their diet is grass or hay, as well as their mothers’ milk, which produces a light pink meat rather than the iron deficient flesh of crated calves.

Much of the veal sold in Britain comes from Holland, which imports many of the young live calves from Britain to be reared in the crated system now banned here. No straw, no room to turn around or exercise in any way and a diet of milk powder produce the white, tender flesh for which people are prepared to pay high prices. I prefer to pay an even higher price for free-range veal, choose one of the less expensive cuts and make it go further with other ingredients.