This is still my stuff.

I took it out of the ’fridge early, rubbed on some oil and black pepper, and left it to breathe for a while. The plan was to make the best approximation I could of Jack O’Shea’s advice by giving this cross-cut onglet about 90 seconds on each side, as close as I could get it to as high as the grill would go, and then letting it rest for a good five or six minutes. It wasn’t the thickest slice I’ve seen, so I was a little concerned about over-cooking it; as it turned out, had I been in more squeamish a mood today, it probably could even have borne another 30 seconds each side, but the result was perfect for my currently vampiric mien, and the flavour - obviously largely due to the careful maturing at the ’Pig, though enhanced, I do believe, by Mr. O'Shea's tips - was quite extraordinary: a deep, broad beef, smooth and round, with a tangy edge of offal iron. This cut’ll get nowt but praise from me.

One of my leaving presents from POKE was a huge bag of extremely good steak. Fillet, ribeye, T-bone, sirloin, and one of the biggest rump steaks I've seen, matured for 45 days. Not content with that, amongst other things (including a monster Friday night out) they also very generously indulged me with the gift of a day's beef butchery course at the Ginger Pig in Victoria Park. To say I'm eagerly awaiting it doesn't really begin to encapsulate my feelings about it - mild trepidation mixed with delight and excitement would go some of the way. In the meantime, I'm going to enjoy these pre-cut steaks enormously. Thanks, Pokers!

There was a seriously cadaverous feel to this onglet I had from the usual place last week. Something about the texture, the sinewy, raw viscerality of it, spoke to me of torture, death and decay. Bloody tasty, though.

I know I’m always going on about meat, but, well, that’s because it’s so great. When it’s good, that is — and when you buy it from the Ginger Pig’s new Hackney branch, that’s exactly what it is.

The shop itself is nicely understated; no airs and graces, just a clean, fresh, white room with lots of light, a blond wood floor and, by way of an entirely natural, unassuming, and gently confident assertion of pedigree, a glass door through to the meat store. The huge variety of wares on display is beautifully presented and incredibly tempting; when the lady serving me and I had sorted out our bacon business and she asked if there was anything else I wanted, I had to restrain myself from embarking on a pork–belly and fore–rib spree.

Instead I contented myself with this prime fillet steak, by comparison with other purveyors of meat hardly a snip at around £8, but boy, was it worth it. I wouldn’t have expected myself to describe a fillet as “buttery”, but that’s what it was, in texture and even in taste; the blandness to whose acceptance we’ve become inured in seeking tenderness elsewhere was replaced by a soft, round and, yes, buttery flavour in the front of the mouth, reinforced on further rumination by a big, broad beef bouquet of the type one normally associates with a large joint.

Fantastic stuff, but I couldn’t help but be a little saddened by the thought that this is really what we should get everywhere. Without wanting to take anything whatsoever away from the Ginger Pig’s wonderful produce or principles, it’s a sad indictment of the current state of affairs that this should stand so far ahead of the rest of the processed, packaged, sanitized dross that we as a society have learned to expect, simply by virtue of practicing the sort of artisan husbandry that can only derive from a passion for providing the very best.

I’ve recently been trying to buy more food from small local shops. The menu thus obtained has until recently consisted most notably of vegetables, chilis and the like, as there are a couple of independent everything-sellers near enough to where I live; not having a butcher in the same local strip, I’d been leaving the supply of meat to Sainsbury’s.

Last week, in a fit of vague dissatisfaction with the quality, taste and price of said supply, I walked straight past the entrance to the Kingsland shopping centre in whose bowels the supermarket lurks, and straight into a halal butcher a few paces further along the road, where I bought 2 huge fillets of halal chicken for the princely sum of £1.75.

On converting this poultry acquisition into an extremely hot Thai red curry with the addition of the biggest Scotch bonnet I could find (my current culinary flame), I discovered, to my mild surprise, that the chicken was by my reckonings at least ten times better than that sold under the “Taste the difference” or “Organic” marques in Lord Sainsbury’s automated emporium. Not only much more tender, but tastier, and if I could tell that even through the swathes of spice, I mused, perhaps I was onto something.

So yesterday I went back and bought half a kilo of beef mince (again £1.75) and this steak, the latter priced at £3.19. You can't really get a decent sense of scale from the photo, but to give some idea, those who know me will know that I like a decent-sized steak, and even after cutting this one in two, it was still almost too much. (Obviously I wasn’t going to let a simple piece of cow beat me, but you get the picture.)

It wasn't the best steak I’ve eaten (though to be fair, it’s up against some stiff competition), and it wasn’t as significantly better than its supermarket counterpart as last week’s chicken - but it was very good, and it cost around a third of the price of my previous supplier's (see how easy that was?) equivalent wares. The mince is currently stewing in a slow chili con carne, so I don’t yet know how well that compares, but preliminary tastings seem good, even if the recipe was probably originally devised to cover up the shortcomings of less-than-perfect meat.

So, given that the motivation behind trying out this new meat channel was in large part to get away from the pre-packaged, plasticised, depersonalised and conveyor-belted “produce” purveyed by the Tescos and the Sainsbury’s and the Waitroses of the world, and that it incorporated an admittedly slightly uncertainly-targeted but nonetheless present and intended nod towards better provenance and husbandry, am I, in buying halal meat, whose actual level cruelty in preparation I’ve been unable realistically to ascertain from writings on Internet (SHOCK), merely rubbing my own snout further in a mire of hypocrisy? In addition, does the method of slaughter actually have any beneficial effect on the taste, or was the improved quality merely down to less mechanically or factory-farmed animals used by this particular butcher?

Fucked if I know.