A meaty dream

I dreamed this morning about getting a piece of beef top rib from a version of the butcher that I used to use at Cheam, one use of which is noticed at reference 1. Pineger's. A version, in that the shop now seemed to have a downstairs for ordinary customers and an upstairs, a bit nearer the cutting action, for special customers.

So I was upstairs while the butcher cut my top rib out of a hind quarter (which I now think is the wrong quarter). He arrived at a large joint in two halves. Large bone on one side, meat on the other. An image perhaps derived from the shin I bought last year from the butcher at Manor Green Road and noticed at reference 3.

I peer closely at the beef, being careful not to actually touch it, to find some smaller flat bones of the sort I was expecting, between the large bone and the meat. He should have made his cut between these smaller bones and the large bone.

He explains that to do that, the whole cutting operation would have to be done in a different way, and proceeds to do this different cutting on the other hind quarter, getting something much more like what I was expecting.

But I get his first attempt, which he puts in a large aluminium tub, rectangular rather than round, which he invites me to carry off to the paying place. This being the coronavirus friendly way of doing things. I ask about the ticket for the meat but he tells me that the paying place will know. Not clear what happens about wrapping it up, but I don't ask about that. I look around and eventually light upon a side table containing a large paying contraption. 

There is a young lady counter hand come up from downstairs with another tub for payment, appearing to contain a couple of ready meals rather than meat.

I find that I have forgotten to bring my wallet with me. At which point I wake up.

Reference 1: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/2009/02/snowdrops.html.

Reference 2: http://www.fxbuckleybutchers.ie/. Bing didn't turn up anything relevant for top rib, but Google found this Dublin butcher who has heard of it - although the illustration above does not involve any of the bone that I expect. A cut we used to have reasonably often, starting with the butcher that used to operate next to the station at Harringay West in north London, near fifty years ago now.

Reference 3: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/09/shin.html.