New season Dorset lamb

While lamb and Easter have become as inseparable as fish and chips, spring lamb - a surprisingly delicate meat - is easily (and often) abused with powerful, overwhelming flavours. It's also, with such an early Easter this year, going to be in relatively limited supply; here's how you go about reserving some and how to make the most it.

The only breed that will produce lamb naturally in time for spring meat is the woolly Dorset (above). Our ewes lamb in early December, and so new season lamb feeds almost exclusively on mother's milk, as there are slim pickings on the ground during winter time. As a result it doesn't develop the huge, bold flavours you get with the late summer animals and winter hogget, but instead has a beautifully soft and delicate texture and flavour, which is one of the finest treats of spring.

Where you might otherwise cook lamb with rosemary, garlic, anchovies, capers and peppers, exercise restraint with spring meat and reach for what is in season at this time of year - wild garlic, kale, leeks, spring onions, purple sprouting broccoli and spinach. We're a little bit early for English asparagus and Jersey Royals just yet, but when you spy some, they're a perfect match. If you're looking for something to fill your glass, a good quality white Rioja or a light red such as a gamay would do the trick.

Legs should be served a little pink, while shoulders still need long and slow cooking in order to tenderise. Both benefit from a longish rest, so wrap them in foil and throw over a bath towel (top tip!) to keep the heat in while side dishes are finished and glasses topped up.

Pre-ordering
Due to the popularity of legs of lamb, you might want to order one in advance. You can place an order by visiting your nearest Ginger Pig shop, or call the farm on 01751 460091, Monday 25th - Thursday 28th March, 9am - 5pm and speak to a member of the head office team. All other cuts should be available, though you can pre-order if there's a something you particularly want to guarantee. If you can, please try not to call your shop to order, as they don't have the facilities to take an order over the phone.

Easter opening hours
Our shops are open as usual, except on Easter Sunday and Bank Holiday Monday, when they are all closed (and we'll be having a nice rest!).

Spring chickens

Our Askew Road butcher Tom has been driving to Paris every week for over a year, to deliver beef to a butcher and restaurant and bring back French poultry and Limousin veal. While there are certainly some great British birds to be proud of - and we sell a couple of very fine examples - there's a lot of specialism and variety to be had from French poultry, and we're proud to be one of the few stockists in the country. 

 

From left to right (excuse the slightly blurry pic!) we've got:

 

Canette de Barbarie

Neat little Barbarie ducklings which will serve 2-3 people. Full flavoured with a bit of game about them, comparatively lean but incredibly tender if given the right care and attention in the kitchen. Although they roast well, they're absolutely superb pot-roasted; roughly chop some fennel and carrots, and add to a heavy pot with peeled shallots, garlic cloves and a couple of halved plums. Add a couple of bay leaves, cinnamon sticks and star anise, and season with salt and pepper. Add 100ml water, cover and roast at 160°C, basting every half an hour or so, for two hours or until the juices run clear. Serve with rice or potatoes and greens - and as you carve the duck (it should be amazingly tender), remove the skin and pop it in a hot oven for 10 minutes to make duck scratchings.

La pintade de Challans

Or heritage breed guinea fowl to us. They're a slow-growing breed which reach maturity at about 13 weeks - more than twice what some poor chickens are given. They graze and peck at grain, grass and herbage, which you can really taste in the meat. Definitely recommend pot-roasting these as they're quite lean; a few stock vegetables, aromatics and herbs, a large glass of wine (in the pot!) and a slow roast with the lid on. From the Challans region, from farmers who are certified to rear to the exacting standards above.

Poulet fermiere de Landes (top centre, red label)

"Chicken farms of Landes" - another region known for its fantastic approach to poultry rearing, with a Label Rouge stamp of of quality. These birds are a fairly leggy, corn fed variety, producing rich, tender and juicy meat. Again, reared outdoors and slow growing, these chickens have a bit more fat to them than you might expect and benefit from roasting a little lower and slower than you usually would.

Poulet noir du Gers

Another Label Rouge bird, easily recognised by their distinctive black legs and feet. The primary choice in many top French brasseries - a little leaner perhaps than the Landes chicken but still has bags of succulence and flavour. As with all Label Rouge birds, completely free range and matured to a minimum of 81 days (a good twenty days more than some free rangers over here), and hung guts in to make a good, tasty chook.

Coquelet

Just as the name suggests, a little chicken - ideal for one or two people. Roast, pot roast, or poach - a versatile and tasty little bird.

We do sell much more British chicken than French, and - as ever - are committed to the best in British farming. But these offer something a little different and a lot delicious - we hope you'll give one a try over the weekend.

A little note about food chain security

There's a good chance that if you're reading this post, you're unlikely to have come directly into contact with the beef products recently revealed to contain horse meat or pork. While it's not my place to comment on the economic and social factors wrapped up in the growing horse meat scandal, I felt I wanted to write a little bit about our produce and how it is reared, sourced and produced.

Our pork, beef and lamb comes largely from our own land, from Blansby Park, East Moor and Grange farm up in North Yorkshire. The latter is where I live; where our main butchery and offices are, and where our  stockmen and women - the people who look after our animals - come and sit at my kitchen table each day for their lunch. This meat is supplemented with animals reared from our breeding stock, by a number of farmers with whom I have worked closely to ensure that every chop, shoulder and steak is exactly as I want it to be. Each of the fields we own completes a seven-year lifecycle, from lush green grass in year one, through wheat, barley and fodderbeat, to grazing pasture for cattle and sheep. This lifecycle makes us one of the most sustainable farms in the UK; a varied mix of arable and livestock which helps to keep the land rich and fertile - without pumping it full of chemicals. 

The British poultry we sell is free range, and comes from two fantastic farms. The fourth generation Packington farm in Staffordshire provides us with a very good free range chicken, while the Botterills - old friends of mine - on the Belvoir Estate rear for us a slightly older, richer, heritage-breed bird, as well as our Christmas turkeys and geese. We are the only business to buy from the Botterills, and the father and son team continue to be an inspiration to me, such is their dedication to animal husbandry and quality.

A bit over a year ago, Askew Road butcher Tom and I started visiting Rungis market just outside of Paris each week. We'd select free range French poultry - poulet noir, poulet de Bresse, proper Barbarie ducks - and Limousin veal, because we simply haven't found products like them in the UK. While there's a lot to be said about the importance of using English dairy bulls rather than wasting them, Limousin veal attracts me because of its flavour and heritage. Limousin cattle are reared specifically for meat, and while the beef can be tough, the veal is simply superb. Calves are outdoor-reared with their mother until slaughter, and so suckle on mother's milk its entire life rather than being weaned and removed. Each body of Limousin veal carries a certificate of authenticity, and with this a promise of quality and transparency of source. We're the only British butcher who can buy directly in Rungis market, and Tom now makes these weekly trips himself -  he's becoming quite the rosbeef celebrity around the market halls.

Of the cooked things we sell - from lasagne and stews to our infamous sausage rolls - everything is made in house. The prepared meals are made in our Askew Road and Moxon street shop kitchens, with meat from the counter and fresh ingredients as you would at home. Our pies, sausage rolls, hams and terrines are made by head baker Les and his team at Grange farm, from the same meat that goes down to our London shops.

While you're not going to get the cheapest meat from the Ginger Pig, what you are getting is an assurance of quality, flavour, good animal husbandry and value - and we're not as expensive as some might think. We're never going to be able to produce a burger for 50p, but if you compare the closest a supermarket can produce to our meat in terms of quality, you might be surprised by the price. As of their website today, Tesco beef mince is £11.90/kg whereas ours is £9.50/kg; their pork escalopes are £16.06/kg where ours are £9.60/kg; their rump steak £35.44/kg where ours is £21.50/kg, and their chicken breast supremes - only supplied frozen - are £22.13/kg where ours are £13.50/kg. Like I mention above; we're never going to be cheap, but we do represent good value.

As ever, if you have any questions about what we sell or how it is produced, do get in touch.

Tim Wilson

Owner and founder of the Ginger Pig

Customer enquiries:

enquiries@thegingerpig.co.uk

01751 460091

Press and media enquiries:

nicola@thegingerpig.co.uk

Chilly weather eating

The view from Grange Farm, our head office in Levisham

Beautiful? Stunning! But very, very cold. Join us in eating for heating, and let salad leaves wait until the weather warms up a bit; here are a couple of our current favourite winter warmers.

Pudding. Not the type with custard - though we're very partial to those too - but a big, savoury pudding filled with something meaty and slow-cooked. Make double quantities of a stew, ragu or casserole, and use the cold leftovers to fill a savoury pud.

For a rich, pillowy suet pastry crust, mix together 350g plain flour, 175g beef suet (Atora is fine, though don't buy "light") and a good pinch of salt. Add enough water to make a smooth but firm dough - you shouldn't need more than 150ml, as once you've worked the suet in it starts to bind everything together. Grease a large (2lb) pudding basin with lard. Separate the pastry into two balls, one around 1/3 of the mix, one around 2/3. Roll each out, and use the large one to line the pudding basin; the pastry needs to be pressed lightly into the dish, and large enough to hang over the sides a little. Fill the pastry case with your cold filling, brush the pastry edges with water and press the pastry lid down on top. Cut a greaseproof paper disc to fit neatly over the top, then cover the basin tightly with foil, secured with string (tie it so that the string makes a cross over the top). Steam as you would a Christmas pudding for 1hr, let it sit for five minutes, dig in.

Pork. Okay, so that's a little broad, but we're not called the Ginger Pig for nothing. Cassoulet, sausage stews, slow roasted pork belly, pulled pork shoulder...you name it, we want to eat it. We're particularly fond of our garlic Toulouse sausages cooked for ages with lentils, butter beans, shallots and good quality tinned tomatoes; easy on the bank balance, and only one pot to wash up - yes!

Carbs. It's ages until salad season, and we're not giving up our potatoes, pasta or rice for anything while it's this cold. Bring on the risotto, ragu, and massive dishes of dauphinoise, we're diving in.

And if we ever prize farm dog Brisket away from it, we'll be keeping warm by the AGA. Not holding out much hope on this one...

Love me tender

We're pork galore this week (even more than usual) as we start to cure our Christmas bacon, and a happy result of this is that we have quite a lot of pork tenderloin - the porcine equivalent of fillet of beef. In the shops from tomorrow (Saturday), and we're feeling rather generous; it'll be £12.50 a kilo instead of £16.50, so fill yer boots and get cooking.

Although it's a fairly lean cut - and fat usually means taste - these tenderloins are from free range, slowly reared, rare breed pigs, and so still have bags of flavour. There are loads of recipes for pork tenderloin out there, however here are two of ours, both on the table in around 40 minutes.  Go East with a warming, zingy Thai curry, or make Tim's pork, pepper and mustard 'quick casserole', something he makes on the farm at least once a fortnight. Each recipe serves 2-3, and is easily scaled up if you're feeding a crowd.

Thai pork curry

If you want to make a noodle soup instead of serving over rice, add 250ml of good chicken stock with the coconut milk and ladle over cooked Thai rice noodles to serve.

Ingredients

1 pork tenderloin, around 700g

1 tin full fat coconut milk 

Fish sauce

Handful coriander leaves

Spring onions

Curry paste

1 large piece of ginger

3 sticks of lemon grass, coarse bits removed and discarded

3 cloves garlic, peeled

1 white onions, peeled

1 red chilli (deseeded if you don't like it too hot)

Stalks from a bunch of coriander

2tbsp sunflower oil

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp sugar

Cooked rice, to serve

1. Roughly chop the ingredients for the curry paste, then blend until smooth. 

2. Heat a little oil in a frying pan and add the paste. Fry over a medium heat until sweet smelling and golden, for around 15 minutes. Add the coconut milk, and simmer for a further 15 minutes.

3. Meanwhile, cut the pork fillet into rounds roughly 1.5cm thick. Season with a little salt and pepper, and brown in a separate pan. Once browned, set to one side.

4. When the sauce has been simmering for 15 minutes, add a few shakes of fish sauce to taste. Add the pork pieces and cook for a further 5 minutes, to ensure that the pork is cooked through. 

Serve over cooked rice with plenty of sauce, chopped spring onions, and coriander leaves.

Pork, pepper and mustard casserole

Everyone has a failsafe, delicious but on-the-table-before-you-know-it dish; here's our owner, Tim's. Serve with something starchy to soak up the sauce and steamed green beans, broccoli or sautéed cabbage.

Ingredients

1 pork tenderloin, sliced into thickish rounds

1 white onion, sliced

1 red pepper, sliced

1tbsp Dijon mustard

2tbsp wholegrain mustard

250ml double cream

Fresh green herb of your choice - tarragon, parsley, chives and basil all work well

Squeeze of lemon juice (optional)

Salt and pepper

Butter and oil for frying

1. Put a knob of butter and a drop of olive oil in a large frying pan. Season the pork pieces and fry over a high heat until golden brown. Remove from the pan and set aside.

2. Turn the heat down a little and add the onion and peppers to the pan. Fry until fairly soft and sweet smelling, add the mustard and cook for a further two minutes.

3. Return the pork to the pan and add the cream, a little salt and pepper and the fresh herbs. Simmer for five minutes, taste, and adjust the seasoning if necessary. Add a little lemon juice if you feel it needs it, and serve.

Turkey day

Whether your favourite turkey day is Thanksgiving or Christmas, buy the best bird you can afford and don’t stuff it up. Here are our tips for making the most of your festive bird.

The turkey

Ours are a traditional Bronze bird reared by Gerald and Richard Botterill. The birds are fed a natural diet of homegrown cereal and vegetable protein, and are left to free range on the Belvoir Estate (lucky things). They grow slowly and naturally to full maturity, after which they’re slaughtered on the farm (no distressing transporter), carefully dry-plucked and hung for 10-14 days to give great depth of flavour and succulence. 

A note on quills: one of the characteristics of the bronze turkey is their dark plumage, when plucked it can leave dark marks and tiny pieces of quill in the skin, especially around the wing and under carriage. These are a little more prevalent in Thanksgiving birds as they haven’t yet all moulted, but rest assured that they are absolutely nothing to worry about, and are a trait present in all Bronze turkeys; the marks and quills disappear during cooking. 

The Botterills showcase all of the elements of good animal husbandry, and continue to produce the best, tastiest birds we’ve ever tried. Try one for yourself and see.

At home

Take the vacuum-packed giblets out of the cavity, and rest the bird on a large plate at the bottom of your fridge - don’t be tempted to wrap it in cling film, as this can make the skin clammy and encourages bacteria. 

If you’re not cooking your turkey for a few days, it’s wise to use the giblets now. Make a simple stock using everything except the liver, and a few aromatic vegetables; this stock will keep 4-5 days if covered and placed in the fridge.

Stuffing

Truth be told, we prefer to leave the stuffing on the side rather than in the bird, as stuffing adds extra weight, increasing the cooking time which can dry out the meat. Instead we like lots and lots of streaky bacon over the top of the bird, which adds flavour and bastes the flesh without increasing the cooking time. That's not to say we don't like stuffing! Mix together pork mince, breadcrumbs, an egg, grated onion, fresh herbs, seasoning and grated lemon zest, form into balls and pop in with your roast potatoes for the final 15-20 minutes.

Temperature

Possibly the most important thing to do when you’re cooking a big turkey, is to take it out of the fridge a long time before it goes in the oven - eight hours should do the trick. If you only give it an hour or two then the bird will still be quite cold in the middle, and this is what leads to uneven cooking, meaning dry turkey or even worse - still raw in the middle. Just make sure the dog doesn't get it while it comes up to room temperature...

To cook

Rub the skin with plenty of butter and pepper and cover the breast with lots of streaky bacon. Make a big tin foil cross inside your roasting pan, place the turkey in the middle and wrap the foil around to make a loose but closed parcel. Cook at 220˚C/ 425˚F/ Mark 7 for 40 mins. Reduce heat to 170˚C/ 325˚F/ Mark 3 and cook for approximately a further 3 hours (small turkey), 3 1/2 hours (medium), 4 1/2 hours (large) and 5 hours (X-large). Uncover for the last 30 minutes and remove the bacon to crisp the skin. Stick a long skewer in the fleshiest part to test for doneness; the juices should run clear. Wrap the turkey well in foil, lay a bath towel over the top, and rest it for up to an hour before carving - trust us, it’ll be super-succulent.

And then there are leftovers, a subject which deserves a post all of its own.

French onion soup

It’s getting chilly and so to soups, stews and pot roasts we return. Every week one of our Askew Road butchers, Tom, drives to Rungis market just outside of Paris to select French poultry and Limousin veal for our shops. A trained chef, his head is often turned by outstanding fresh produce too, and this week he returned with nets of new season Roscoff onions.; slightly pink and beautifully sweet, just the ticket for French onion soup.

On the surface this is a very simple dish, but it only really shines with a boldly rich stock, sweet, slow-caramelised onions and lots of patience. We like to mix in dry white wine with and a pleasantly-hoppy-but-not-too-strong Indian Pale Ale, the latter giving the soup a bit of bite and marrying well with the savoury Comté toasts. If you don’t particularly like the hoppy (slightly bitter) flavour of an IPA, replace it with more beef stock – which has to be the real deal, no cubes here please.

Serves four for lunch or as a robust starter

750g Roscoff onions, peeled

65g beef dripping or butter

500ml proper beef stock

200ml lightish IPA (nothing too gutsy)

200ml dry white wine

100ml water

Sea salt and black pepper

To assemble

4 sliced of baguette, around 2cm thick

120g Comté, grated

A little butter

1.     Firstly, get ready to cry: although these onions have a beautifully sweet flavour, they still have a sting in their raw state, and you’ve got a lot of chopping to do. Cut each onion in half, and slice across the width of the onion to make lots of very fine semi circles, around 1-2mm wide. This gives you lots of surface area to get good caramelisation.

2.     Put a large, wide saucepan or stockpot over a low heat and slowly melt the butter.

3.     Add the onions and a few good pinches of sea salt, stir well and let them gently cook, stirring every 5-8 minutes or so.

4.     After half an hour, the onions should be quite soft but still fairly white; turn the heat up just a little, watching the onions don’t burn or colour too quickly – you’ve still got about another hour of slow caramelisation to go so grab a book and a beer and keep stirring occasionally, scrubbing at the base of the pan with a wooden spoon to release any sticky bits.

5.     When the onions have a very soft, sticky and almost jam-like consistency and a deep golden brown colour, add the remaining ingredients, and healthy pinch of salt, a few twists of pepper and simmer gently for 45 minutes. After simmering, taste and add salt and pepper to taste - remember that the Comte will add a good umami kick to the finished dish.

6.     To assemble, lightly toast the baguette slices, just enough to dry them out a little.  Spread a very small amount of butter on both sides. Ladle the soup between four heatproof bowls, and add a baguette slice to each one (if you like the bread really soft, turn the slice over so that both sides have been in contact with the soup). Cover liberally with the grated Comté, and place under a hot grill for a few minutes to melt the cheese. Serve immediately, and be careful not to burn your fingers.

You'll be able to buy some of the ingredients from us this weekend, but because some of our shops are near fantastic cheesemongers or greengrocers, not everything will be everywhere. 

Hackney: Comté, stock and onions

Askew Road: Comté, stock and onions

Moxon street: stock and onions

Borough Market: stock

Bon Appétit!