Frugal Food: A Week (and a bit) of Chilli

On Monday we were invited out to dinner.

After surviving on Chilli con carne in various guises for the previous week, it was a relief to be out of the kitchen and away from the Mexican ragu which had finally been finished off spooned over a bowl of nachos and laden with vaguely luminescent cheese.

The Le Creuset was washed down, the crusted edges scraped clean and we left it drying on the rack beside the sink as we drove the half hour towards Bedfordshire.

‘We thought about getting a curry tonight,’ he said as a cold lager was passed towards me ‘but the Indian is closed on a Monday. So we’ve cooked a chilli instead.’

The giggles were stifled until the GF and I were alone in the dining room when we simply had to embrace the irony and laugh silently and uncontrollably, resigned politely to enjoy just one more, like the erstwhile butler James in the magnificent Dinner For One.

But it was a very good chilli. Even after the following incarnations

Monday – Burritos

I won’t patronise by offering a recipe for chilli con carne. You have one. I know that much and it would be foolish to think you would change it in any way. It matters not whether it is a genuine Texan number with chuck steak or a basic ragu pepped up with kidney beans and spices.

A burrito should be aching at the seams, the contents desperate for liberation, hence the need to employ a foil girdle. The meat sauce sits atop a layer of Mexican style rice and is piled high with grated cheese, chopped salad, sour cream, guacamole, salsa and as much hot sauce as you can handle.

Tuesday – Enchiladas

The chilli was stuffed into toasted tortilla wraps, rolled and topped with a reduced passata pepped up with a little garlic and chilli pepper. The whole lot was then baked for 25 minutes until steaming hot to the core. Sliced avocado was the ideal accessory.

Wednesday – Keeping it simple…

We got drunk. Accidentally. Returning home with the munchies we ladled the sauce and leftover burrito rice into a bowl, put the microwave on high and shovelled it into our mouths in an effort to soak up excess cheap white wine. It was nigh on perfect. There is no photo.

Thursday – Chilli and Cornbread

Cornbread is one of those items that has a shiny stars and stripes mystique. A hallowed national dish from across the pond that until last week remained a mystery, like a sloppy Joes or Jambalaya or grits.

It was with caution I tipped the recommended amount of baking powder into the batter mix (cornbread is more of a cake than a standard loaf) and as expected it was the overriding flavour to a deeply unpleasant degree. Such excitement, such expectation, such disappointment. Sorry, America, I remain unconvinced on this one.

Friday – Nachos

What better way to end the week than with that Brit pub/diner classic/lazy fallback of last decade, nachos?

Clearly the best part of this dish is the slew of lurid orange cheese that seeps between the crispy tortilla chips and covers the fingers with a layer of tasty grease. But the cooling elements of guacamole, salsa and sour cream and chives were a welcome addition too.

A satisfying and fun experiment in thrift. The cost of the chilli itself? No more than £4, the sundry additions another fiver. Two of us ate for a week (including lunches comprised of the previous night’s leftovers) for about ten pounds.

Now to get some bloody steak…

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Italy: Slow Cooked Lamb Shoulder (plus video)

It’s only so much time that can be spent in a state of blissful relaxation before the mind turns to food.

On holiday breakfast tends to be a mere distraction – a hastily gobbled croissant, piece of fruit or biscotti washed down with a short, sharp coffee. Lunch provides a brief respite from the heat of the day, usually some bread and cheese with a couple of tomatoes on the side.

But dinner is where the magic happens. This is the real centrepiece of the day where effort truly pays off and the gentle preparation can be done whilst gradually slipping into a state of happy inebriation.

As such, the majority of my days were spent thinking about what to cook that evening.

Being in possession of a pizza oven, we, naturally, cooked pizza. But the giant domed edifice was still warm come the following morning: the perfect conditions to slow cook some local lamb.

After adding some more fuel we went in search of the meat and returned with two whole shoulders – almost a quarter of the beast – ready to be browned off, sat atop some freshly picked rosemary and crushed garlic and shoved into the waiting furnace, cooking slowly in a winey bath until it emerged lovingly tender and achingly delicious.

It also seemed a good time to indulge in my first ever video post so please be kind. I’m still learning.

And, yes, I really did come that close to setting my head on fire. Look carefully and you will see the innocent, yet telltale, wisp of smoke rising from my reddening forehead.

Slow cooked Lamb

Leg of lamb is fine, and if that’s your sort of thing then I’m happy for you. But shoulder is the business end, where the real flavour is. It does a bit more work, and as such should be cooked longer and slower, but the effort is worthwhile.

It’s also slightly fattier which will baste the meat from the inside keeping it juicy, rich, tasty and tender.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6PTiukdKTs]

Serves 8-10

Two lamb shoulders, complete with neck
Two bulbs of garlic, squashed lightly under the flat of a knife
Half a lemon
Two handfuls (think bricklayer’s size rather than manicurist) of rosemary
Salt and pepper
Half a bottle of red wine

Season the lamb with salt and pepper all over and brown in a large frying pan. Layer half the rosemary and garlic in a casserole dish big enough to hold everything comfortably. Nestle the lamb on top and then deglaze the frying pan with red wine.

Put the rest of the rosemary and garlic on top of the lamb, squeeze over the lemon then pour over the wine.

Cook in a 200 year old wood burning oven for about four hours, turning and basting halfway through. Temperature? Pretty hot.

NB – Make sure you don’t get too close to the oven and singe your fringe.

If you are only in possession of a regular oven go for about 120 degrees. Serve with potatoes and maybe a token salad. Maybe.

For more slow cooked and half baked musings, follow me on Twitter

Barbecued Beef Short Ribs

[Project ‘Recreate New York Food’ to commence shortly. This is just shameless filler whilst body clocks return to normal and things like mountains of washing get done].

Forget everything you think you know about the rules of the kitchen. For just a few minutes.

This is just plain wrong. It shouldn’t work. Nearly every bodily fibre was screaming, shouting, balling at me to stop and obey the bloody rules. This method flies in the face of conventional cooking methods and tickles the scrotum of classical cuisine before running away and hanging out with the cool kids.

There are some cuts of meat that are user-friendly. They are fast, boneless and easy. The chicken breast. The fillet steak. The pork loin. A sprinkling of seasoning and a quick searing over a high heat and you have a tasty morsel ready for consumption.

Then there are those that need a little more care and attention. And time. Lots and lots of time. In general these are the cuts that I cherish (secretly I think most cooks do, at least those that really love their food).

They are the ones that are left on the bone, that need to be braised in liquid (wine is good. Always) until they are meltingly tender and rich, delicious and unctuous. Or roasted s.l.o.w.l.y.

But they are winter meats.

Now that the sun is here why would you want a hearty stew or daube Provençal?

As such, I thought the short ribs I have would have to remain in the freezer until the clouds roll in, the temperature drops and the desire for rich sauces and mashed potatoes returns once more.

Not so.

I picked up a copy of Gourmet magazine at JFK airport (‘The Grill Issue’).

In it was a wonderful photo essay about a Mexican barbecue supper complete with recipes for a multitude of tasty treats. But one in particular stood out because it made me scratch my noggin and mutter: ‘There’s no way that could work. It goes against everything I know and cheekily tickles the scrotum of classical cuisine.’

Beef short ribs. Unmarinated. Unbraised. Unadorned. Just seasoned with salt and pepper then cooked over hot coals and torn apart by enthusiastic teeth. How could you not want to try that?

One of the best things about barbecue cookery is the purity of it. It’s as close most of us get to recreating the ancestral methods that live on in the collective memory. It’s just you and the fire, the ideal conditions for letting your inner Neanderthal out for an hour or two.

Which is great. And I’m all for delicately spiced fish wrapped in banana leaves or long marinated pork chops or skewers of vegetables drizzled in olive oil. But to really get to the heart of the purity of outdoor cooking all you need is a great hunk of meat.

If you’re going to do this, you might as well go all the way and release the caveman.

Enter the beef. Bones and all.

Seasoned in advance (ignore the hokum about only seasoning meat milliseconds before you are about to cook it), they were left at room temperature until the barbecue was seriously hot (hold your hand the coals about five inches up – if you have to move within 1-2 seconds, you’re at the right heat). Then it was time to cook them.

Where American short ribs tend to be cut across the rib, the English butcher them differently, giving single bones rather than a series of them dotted through the meat, much like the equivalent cut on a pig. It matters not. They need about three or four minutes on each side to really get that tasty browning before they can be moved to a cooler part of the barbecue to cook through.

Leave them for about fifteen minutes, turning occasionally. You have a lot of leeway with these bad boys. A steak can overcook in just a couple of minutes. These butch fellas can take it, begging for more. It’s like watching the cast of High School Musical take on a team of Jack Bauers (oh, I would give a minor appendage to witness that).

Once cooked leave them to rest for 10-15 minutes (absolutely freaking essential) – just the right time to dish up whatever it is you would like to accompany your feast. Salad? Perhaps not the best option. I’d go for beer. And maybe a mound of potatoes. Concessionary veg optional.

Season the meat again – just a little turn of black pepper and some sea salt and dig in. This isn’t dainty food. Use of hands is not just recommended, it is mandatory. The taste is incredible. I’ve never had a steak that tasted as good as these. Honestly. Not a single steak has ever come close. The flavour is intensely meaty, packed full of umami and downright deliciousness.

If you’re used to meat that is so tender it may as well have been pre-chewed then these will come as a shock. They offer up some resistance (hardly surprising considering they are the Jack Bauer of the food world) but in a really satisfying way.

I don’t want my food to fall apart in my mouth. My incisors and molars evolved for a purpose. Precisely this purpose: for tearing off mouthfuls of completely delicious beef, still on the bone and tasting exactly like beef should.

Naturally, I cooked too much. The rest were left over night then sliced thinly, still pink, to go into wraps the following day with some spicy beans, spinach, guacamole and chillis.

Anthony Bourdain has a term for food like this: It’s the sort of food that you would only serve to friends, and people you already know you are going to like. Put your inner sceptic to sleep for just one night, invite over some people you know will appreciate this (vegetarians need not apply) and make a long, long evening of it.

For more meaty mouthfuls, follow me on Twitter

The Butcher’s Apprentice

Food is a process.

Whether you are eating an apple freshly plucked from a low-hanging branch on a warm Autumn evening or munching through a Big Mac in a harshly lit McDonalds, you are taking part in a process.

An awareness of this should be essential, especially when meat is concerned.

Many of us consume meat without thinking about the full implications of the process required to transform a living, breathing animal into something we can eat.

As a result the process has become convoluted and swollen like a diseased abscess. Now consumers can pick up neatly packaged portions of meat, hermetically sealed and bearing no resemblance to the cow, pig, sheep, chicken or springbok that it was once a part of.

Spending a day learning the basics of animal butchery with a qualified expert is one such way you can restore an awareness of the link between what we eat and where it comes from.

So, that’s what I did.

I’ll let the pictures tell the rest of the story (full article will appear in due course, once it has been published).

A whole lamb carcass, covered in mutton cloth (meat hates being wrapped in plastic).

I learned the basics of how to butcher lamb, pork and beef but due to technical issues (ahem, did someone say ‘memory card’?) only managed to get pictures of the lamb.

The tools of the trade – a boning knife and steel. Knives are sharpened regularly throughout the day. Blunt knives are far more dangerous than razor sharp ones.

Once the mutton cloth is off, the lamb starts to resemble an animal. You can see the kidneys in the foreground like two shiny conkers.

The carcass is then divided into ‘primary cuts’…

…before starting to look like more recognisable pieces…

…like this rack of lamb being french trimmed.

The completed rack which went straight into the shop’s display, mere metres away, within a few seconds of this picture being taken.

A good butcher doesn’t just portion up pieces of meat. Much of the day is spent expertly preparing a range of other items – hams, sausages, brines, bacon or boned shoulder of lamb stuffed with parsley, garlic and olive oil:

You don’t get that in a supermarket.

So, what did I learn?

I learned that butchery is a skill, an artform, that is worthy of respect and can take years to master.

I learned that it’s hard work.

I learned that there is a world of difference between production line meat of the sort that we buy in supermarkets, and rare breed, well-treated, well-hung meat that is available in butchers’ shops.

I learned that butchers have a bigger range and better prices than any of the supermarkets. I came back with cheeks, trotters, tails and lamb breast. Not to mention a promise that anything else I wanted could be ordered in. Sweetbreads, tongue, beef short ribs and many other treats are on their way.

I learned (and I have the sore hands to prove it) how to do a butcher’s knot (photo tutorial to follow).

I learned that the anatomy of lambs, pigs and cows is almost identical (no, really).

And finally? I learned that getting your hands dirty is an inevitable and massively enjoyable part of being a food writer.

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Game on…

It’s only recently that I’ve been aware of game. Not in a completely blinkered way where I was totally blind to its existence but in a more immediate fashion. I’ve always known that pheasants and rabbits and venison were available but rarely did they feature on the menu at home and even when they did, they invariably came pre-packaged in neat little portions, in no discernable pattern at various points in the year.

And whenever we ate it, I enjoyed it. Venison steaks are an absolute joy, especially when served achingly rare with a sweet sauce. Game casserole was also a favourite although it never made it onto the table more than two or three times a year.

It was only when I started writing about food and in turn reading more about the joys of cooking, seasonality and provenance that I became more aware of the importance and pleasure inherent in game.

Seasonality, an aspect of cooking that is of paramount importance to me, is perhaps most prominent with game. Fruit and vegetables exist at the fickle whim of the weather – too much rain, too little sun or a late frost can push back or bring forward the first potatoes of the year or halt the rise of the young and tender asparagus stems. We know broadly when spring lamb is going to be ready or the time of year when trout is at its best. But there are no absolutes.

The appearance of game, on the other hand, is so firmly set in the calendar that you could set an atomic clock to it. It is not just certain months or weeks when you can expect to see the first few partridges or pheasants – you can be sure of the exact day, days that are set in stone in The Calendar and are as important to some as Royal Ascot, The Henley Regattta or The Wimbledon Final.

‘The Season’ kicks off on August 12th, the Glorious Twelfth as it is known, which marks the first day you are able to shoot grouse. Duck, goose and partridge follow on September 1st and pheasants are fair game a month later.

By the end of February many of these are once again off the menu until the months roll around and the whole thing starts again.

For an enthusiastic cook, this is indeed a glorious time of year. Game is everything food should be – slow bred, wild, able to wander around the countryside and free from any insidious hormones and growth promoters. It is a world away from the intensively farmed, pre-packaged meats that have come to dominate the supermarket shelves and now form most people’s idea of what meat is.

With game, even if you buy it ‘oven-ready’ there is a connection to the land and an awareness that what you are about to consume was, until recently, running or flying round rural Britain. There is a purity to it and an almost unfathomable desire to treat it with respect.

This desire is only accentuated when you get hold of something only recently dispatched – head, feathers and guts in tact. This is hands-on food that offers an experience that every meat eater should consider trying if only to appreciate the moral implications of consuming the flesh of another animal.

I’m not going to pretend I am an expert at this. The only time I have been shooting was with an air rifle whilst in the Cub Scouts and then the target was round, paper and lifeless rather than bird-shaped, fleshy and living. Nor am I going to moralise on the rights and wrongs of being a carnivore. My personal belief is that eating meat does come with a necessary need to think about animal welfare and the connection between a burger and a cow or a pork chop and a pig but that is for another day.

What I would suggest is trying to get hold of a complete bird, just once, to experience what it is like to turn something that looks like it was once alive into something resembling a meal. Because it is a great experience that only gets easier with time and practice.

The first time I did the necessary prep work on a pheasant was a few months back (you can read about it here) and, I am happy to admit, it was not an easy process. Like Lady Macbeth frantically and desperately washing her hands, I tried for two days to remove the smell from my fingers although I am sure that it was almost certainly psychological. The mental images, too, are still strong and I approached the whole process with a degree of some fear and trepidation.

But nevertheless I was ball-bouncingly excited when I heard that a colleague of my girlfriend’s was going shooting last weekend because I knew what the result would be.

Sure enough, on Monday evening she arrived home with a heavy bag containing two freshly despatched pheasants: one young hen and one hefty cock whose large spurs and considerable size suggested he was something of a battle weary veteran.

They hung in the garage for two days before I decided to settle down and ‘do the deed’. Fortified with nothing more than strong coffee (last time required wine, much wine) I settled down and started plucking, a process that is almost therapeutic and quickly transforms a recognisable bird into something that resembles meat.

Once naked and the head has been removed, the gutting is a grim inevitability but, honestly, after the first time it presents little problem and within moments I had two birds ready to be washed and butchered as well as a plate of giblets, perfect for making a rich stock along with the bones.

The whole process from start to finish took close to an hour, not bad considering that I managed to prevaricate for almost two the first time I was presented with a complete pheasant. At the end of it I had four sizeable breast portions and a large handful of meat, ideal for creating a rich winter pie to eat in front of a crackling fire with a large glass of something red and warming. Game on indeed.

Home Charcuterie Part One – Making Rillettes

Charcuterie is an aspect of the culinary arts that has long interested me both theoretically and on a more practical level. I find it truly wonderful that something that began as a necessity grew into the art form that we know today.

On the broadest level it encompasses the vast gamut of skills from curing and smoking to drying and salting. In short it is about preservation. It was about making sure that precious parts of an animal that would spoil quickly were not wasted and could be eaten throughout the year, long after the prime cuts had been roasted and consumed. It was about thrift. It was about economy. It was about the reality of slaughter and respect for the animal that had just been killed, making sure that as little as possible was wasted.

In the days before refrigeration and deep freezing, our ancestors had to come up with myriad other ways in which to preserve the meat from the pig or cow or sheep that was far too large to eat within the few short weeks (days sometimes) before the meat started to spoil.

Thankfully, these were tasty and delicious enough for the practice to continue and flourish even after technology made it possible to preserve meat simply with the application of cold temperatures and even now we still enjoy the salamis, hams, pâtés, terrines and other items that they perfected over generations.

But charcuterie is not a practice that many home cooks embrace and it is becoming a lost art beyond the specialist. Which is a shame because many aspects of the practice are easy enough to replicate in any domestic kitchen – not to mention, incredibly cheap.

This surprises some people – pâtés, terrines and salamis are expensive when bought in delicatessens – but the components themselves are the cheaper cuts of meat, those which could not be simply roasted over hot coals: the tough bits, the offal, the bits that need a little more care and attention in order to become delicious.

In the spirit of adventure we set about attempting the charcutier’s art for ourselves this weekend. Keen to keep things relatively simple we shied away from chorizos, salamis or cured hams (plus we really don’t have the space to hang a full pig’s leg just yet) and chose instead to make a pâté and some rillettes, which are one of my single favourites in the charcutier’s entire armoury.

The first time I ever had rillettes was when I lived and worked in west London and invariably got my lunch from the best deli-café I’ve ever had the pleasure to dine in (sadly now a hair salon). They are rich, decadent and so tasty that even the mere mention can bring a smile to my face (see above for Tony Bourdain’s rather excellent summation of this glorious food).

Made with either duck, goose or pork cooked long and slow in fat they are not for those who view calorific items with scorn or trepidation but given the scarcity with which they are eaten, and the all-natural origin of the ingredients, I personally don’t think this is an issue – I’d much rather eat a few spoons of this sort of food once a week than gorge on a microwave chicken tikka masala or other such culinary monstrosity.

For our version of this classic French pâté type preparation we used pork belly and shoulder to be cooked down in some back fat. Once the belly had been skinned (which we use to make pork scratchings – nothing wasted here) it was cubed and placed in a large pot with the cubed shoulder cuts (often used to make high grade sausages) and the rendered fat. After the addition of a little water and a bouquet garni it was cooking time. And it takes a while. Three hours at a tremulous simmer so that the occasional bubble will make its way to the surface before bursting is necessary in order to cook the pork to the ideal texture.

Once cool, the pork was then shredded, seasoned with salt, pepper and a little allspice, before being left for a day or so to allow the flavours to develop, meld together and take on that distinctive Gallic character.

This is food alchemy at its finest. The gradual transformation of base ingredients into a finished product that is infinitely more than the sum of its parts and just to be sure, we made a lot. Certainly enough to keep us, and others, dwelling in happy porcine reverie until well into the New Year. Mmm, rillettes.

In Praise of Delicatessens

I have a real ‘thing’ for delis; you know, a vaguely irrational adoration bordering on obsession. A deli is the absolute epitome of culinarianism. Of course, I have a deep set admiration for butchers, bakers (less so for candle stick makers), cheese mongers and the myriad of other ‘mongers’ you care to mention, but, for me, a delicatessen trumps them all.

In a deli you can be absolutely sure that each and every item in there is worthy of its place. You just know that there is not a single item on the shelves or in the fridge that is freeloading and hanging on to the coattails of its counterparts. Every slice of salami, every wedge of cheese, every loaf of bread deserves to be there and has been hand chosen after the owner has tasted, tested and compared hundreds of other contenders.

In a deli, quality is king. The delicatessen owner knows that his or her reputation hangs by the sheerest gossamer thread and as such they have to adopt a perfectionist’s attitude. To be fair, if they weren’t utterly passionate about charcuterie and cheese and sourdough bread, they probably wouldn’t have opened a deli in the first place and as such take extreme pleasure in stocking only the finest produce from the best suppliers.

As one who enjoys talking about food to any who care to reciprocate, I know that a suitable conversation can be virtually guaranteed in an independent deli. Within seconds of a smiled greeting, the conversation will almost invariably turn to seasonality or provenance or the benefits of raw milk cheeses over the pasteurised variety.

And they know so much. It’s all very well knowing the vague area from which a specific air dried ham originates but knowing the name of the farmer’s secret illicit lover? I’d fully expect them to be able to tell me the particular grass that a particular sheep has feasted on to make milk for a particular cheese but knowing the shepherd’s mother’s favourite wine? Wowee.

OK, OK, maybe I exaggerate slightly, but only slightly. Seriously, these are the places to go if you need any culinary advice at all. Not only will they be able to sell you the ideal cold cuts to serve as a light lunch in June but also the right pickles and wine to go with them. They’ll be able to put together a cheeseboard of such complexity and excellence that you’ll doubtless be rendered speechless by its sheer perfection. And you’ll be able to pick up some suitably artisan oatcakes to go with the cheese.

This isn’t about showing off, or one-upmanship. It’s about approaching food in the same manner as you would art or music or repairing a car. It’s great to fumble around by yourself for a while but sometimes it’s best to reign in the services of an expert, someone who does this for a living because it is what they love and is what they are fucking good at (please excuse the expletive but I really do feel very passionately about this).

There are a few notable delis that I try to frequent when time, location and budget allow. La Fromagerie in London I’ve written about before, ditto the Cheshire Smokehouse. The Cambridge Cheese Co. is now my closest and certainly the best that I know of for miles. Finally, there is Barbakan, just south of Manchester city centre which we paid a visit to a couple of days ago.

As well as some of their famous bread we picked up some Polish kabanos, a small packet of chorizos and a healthy chunk of Italian lardo, cured pig back fat from Tuscany.

Most exciting, though, was the presence of this season’s first Vacherin Mont D’Or, in its distinctive round, wooden box, a sure, and tasty, sign that we are truly into autumn. This seasonal cheese is produced on the Swiss-French border using only milk from Montbéliard and Simmentaler breeds who graze on the lush summer grass of Franche-Comté. It is a real treat and I try to buy at least two or three during the winter months for special occasions. Using the well-known adage ‘if it grows together, it goes together’ as a point of reference, you could do a lot worse than cracking open a bottle of soft Burgundy to go with it. Hardly the healthiest way to end a meal but certainly one that should bring warmth and smiles to any cold and miserable winter night.

A Pheasant Experience, Part Three: Pie From The Sky

After three gloriously culinary days in the Swedish capital I’m feeling invigorated and inspired with a burning desire to record each and every single detail of my trip, but before I launch into the most recent gastro-recollections there is the small matter of the newly plucked pheasant to deal with.

Where once we had a full-feathered bird, we now had something that resembled a recognisable foodstuff – a young and plump example of a bird that I’ve eaten occasionally but never truly appreciated until my hands-on experience. The feathers were gone, the guts and head removed and now all that remained was to find some way to do justice to this magnificent creature. I turned to the champion off all things simple, tasty and British, a man who refuses to even grant a nod of recognition to the health police: Fergus Henderson.

His book, ‘Nose to Tail Eating’ is a veritable manifesto of wholesome, and ever-so-slightly adventurous cuisine. It isn’t food that turns the stomach in the same vein as a globetrotting extreme eating adventure, more a celebration of food that has long been out of fashion but, thanks mainly to Henderson who is considered a revolutionary champion in the food world, is making a resurgent comeback. Perhaps it is a product of the current economic climate, but there seems to be an increasing interest in the ‘fifth quarter’ and those cuts that can be purchased for a fraction of the cost of the leaner parts of the animal. There is also a burgeoning realisation that it is just not viable, either economically or environmentally, to raise an animal only for the majority of the meat to end up on the scrap heap. So, with the freshest and most local meat I have ever had the simple pleasure in obtaining, I picked his book off the shelf and flicked to the section on ‘Birds and Game’.

Whilst roasting the bird, complete with a hefty amount of streaky bacon to prevent it from drying out (pheasants, like the majority of game, have little fat and so can quickly become frustratingly dry within minutes), was one option, I felt that this particular pheasant warranted more attention and thus we plumped for the ‘Pheasant and Pig’s Trotter Pie with Suet Crust’. Although it might be worth noting that this is not food for those following a strict dietary regimen, I’d rather treat myself occasionally to something in this bracket and eat sensibly during the week rather than face eating a series of insipid ready meals, misleadingly marketed as ‘healthy choice’, or ‘low-fat’. But that’s just me.

This is slow food: not particularly challenging, labour intensive or time-consuming but the finest example of what Anthony Bourdain refers to as ‘culinary alchemy’ when something magical happens behind the oven door and the long slow cooking process renders the traditional peasants’ cuts tender and delicious. The sort of cooking that is perfect for the weekend and can be completed in three or four short bursts of kitchen based activity.

First off, the trotters needed to cook in red wine and stock and a chunky mirepoix of vegetables (onion, carrot, celery, leek and garlic) complete with bay leaves and peppercorns (this combination is the cornerstone of slow food). Three hours was sufficient and once the cooking liquor had been strained and reserved the meat was stripped from the trotters and set aside. A hefty chunk of unsmoked bacon was then thinly sliced and fried in duck fat with four onions (thinly sliced) before being placed in a roasting dish with the trotter meat.

Finally it was time for the glorious pheasant which had mellowed overnight but still retained that familiar gamey tang. After being portioned into four, it was browned in the remaining duck fat then perched atop the fragrant pile of pork in the roaster. The cooking juice was poured over the top and the whole thing was covered in foil then placed into the oven to undergo its magical transformation. After filling the house with increasingly powerful and delicious smells (there is little that can beat the warming and homely intensity of meat cooking in wine and stock), it emerged from the oven to cool enough to strip the meat from the bones.

We strayed from the recipe slightly by using vegetable suet instead of the beef variety for the pastry but it made little difference and there was a frisson of excitement as the lid was rolled onto the pie dish, filled to the top with this unusual pheasant, porcine and wine combination. A little egg yolk brushed over the top completed the process and it went back into the oven for a final time.

Forty minutes later we had our pie: a golden crust like a quilted covering for the delights that lay beneath. A warm breath of enticing steam raced through the lid as the spoon cut through the pastry and I felt a pride in what had been created. It was the first time I’ve felt a profound and genuine connection with the food on my plate borne by the knowledge that I’d been involved in the entire field to fork process. My enthusiasm for such culinary adventures remains unbounded and I hope there will be many more to come. And the taste? Completely, utterly and totally delicious, made even more so by a vast spoonful of Heinz Baked Beanz and generous slop of tomato ketchup on the side.

For more on Fergus Henderson, click here (St. John Website)