Ginger Pig Meat Book: good recipes for great meat

I remember going up to Lincolnshire write a piece on The Ginger Pig back in the early 90s well before artisan food producers were in vogue. It was a small farm turning out some excellent pork from the strangest pigs I’d ever seen, wiry ginger-haired Tamworths.

Fast forward 18 years or so and the farmer Tim Wilson now has three vast farms up on the North Yorkshire moors and ironically is the main supplier to my son’s steak restaurant Hawksmoor along with other top London restuarants. So I guess, as they say, I have history with Tim so it’s hard for me to be objective about his new book which is co-written with cookery writer Fran Warde.

It is of course about meat - how it should be reared, how to choose it and some really useful information on how to use different and less well-known cuts. The recipes - a good mix of the traditional and more adventurous - are seasonal, woven into a month by month diary of life around the farm.

This month (May), for example, features spiced Jacob’s Rib, an American-style recipe for an unusual rib cut, slow roast chilli beef made with top rib, a duck and pistachio pat (great for summer entertaining) and the delicious Ginger Pig beef bourguignon pie I published yesterday. In October you’d find smoked pork hock and parsley pasta, spiced and seared goose skirt (beef not goose - the cut the French know as bavette) and an Asian beef curry made with clod of beef.

There are also recipes for curing your own ham, thrifty lamb ‘henrys’ a shoulder cut you can use instead of overpriced lamb shanks and the awesome Ginger Pig sausage roll, the best I’ve ever eaten. The photography, both of the dishes and the countryside, is just lovely (though this shot, right, is mine from a visit I made earlier this year).

Tim and Fran have done a great job. This is a super book for any meatlover who wants to understand and make more of the meat they buy. You could look to it for inspiration at any time of year.

PS: A word of warning that should really go without saying: you won’t get the results you should from this book if you don’t use good meat. Which doesn’t just mean well-reared but well butchered. So go to your local butcher or buy from a reputable online supplier. In fact you can now buy direct from The Ginger Pig.

Kitchen - Recipes from the Heart of the Home: Nigella's latest tips the scales at 1890g

The latest orthodoxy about bookselling in these straitened times must be that a book has to be big to sell well. Hence the 492 pages devoted to Nigella’s latest opus Kitchen which weighs in at 1890g or 4lb 2 oz. (Out of curiosity I checked).

Does the world actually need another Nigella book? Or another of Jamie’s or Gordon’s, come to that? Even if you only own one there’s very little chance you’re going to cook through all the recipes. If you’ve bought all seven so far there can barely be room on your bookshelf. Maybe fans feel if they skip a volume some terrible curse will strike them down and all their cakes and souffls will flop.

That said a new Nigella book has much to offer that you don’t get in her tiresomely arch TV programmes. She lives and breathes (heavily) food - I suspect she spends most of her waking hours thinking about it. While some of her ideas are pretty gross (I wouldn’t wish Grasshopper Pie on my worst enemy) others are genius. The ideas of making roasties from gnocchi and ‘chocolate brownie bowls’ in which to serve voluptuous scoops of ice cream are inspired.

Most of her middle of the night brainwaves, it has to be said, seem to involve concoctions that are sugary and/or carb-laden. Nigella is not an author to turn to if you’re on a healthy eating kick. But I will definitely have to try her Marmalade Pudding Cake, not to mention her Pumpkin Scones, Treacle Slice, Beer-braised Pork Knuckles with caraway, garlic, apples and potatoes, Indian Roast Potatoes and Peanut Butter Hummus (why did no-one ever think of that before?). Oh, and a wonderfully puffy Toad-in-the-hole made with sausage patties rather than whole sausages: “the platonic ideal of the Sunday night supper” as Nigella puts it.

What redeems her books - and it’s easy to forget amidst all the pouting and innuendo - is that she actually is a cracking writer having been a serious journalist (and a former deputy literary editor of The Sunday Times). For every incredibly irritating “If you like blue cheese as I swooningly do” there is an elegantly crafted passage that is sheer joy to read (viz the introduction to the Maple Pecan Bundt Cake recipe that shows Nigella at her self-deprecating, humourous best, confessing that she actually isn’t a natural baker).

There are some seriously good ideas about what to do with leftovers (viz the Mixed Meat Pilaff) though the rather messy design of the book makes it hard at times to see where one recipe stops and another begins and some great practical tips in the Kitchen Confidential section. Like how to make your own buttermilk and why you don’t need self-raising flour.

I don’t think it’s as good as ‘How to Eat’ but I find myself being drawn to the book in spite of myself. And at the current discounted price of £13 - less than the cost of a pizza and a cheap glass of wine, for heavens sake - it’s ridiculously good value.

Ryn and Cordie - in search of the perfect partner (the food & wine matching formula)

Leafing through Ryn and Cordie’s new book I realised how untypical it was. You get the impression most wine books - even ones about food and wine matching - are written for middle-aged men. The few for women tend to be of the fluffy Chicklit variety with cartoons indicating that wine isn’t really a subject they need overly bother their pretty heads with.

I suppose it was inevitable that it took a couple of feisty Australians to put a new perspective on it. Ryn and Cordie, a couple of bright women who run their own marketing business have approached it from the perspective of two busy professionals so it’s short on theory and long on recipes with a few basic rules and tips thrown in. Plenty of inspiration, not too much reading.

The recipes are simple and related to the time of day - though R & C are made of sterner stuff than I am if they can face a glass of bubbly with their muesli in the morning. But I like the sound - and look - of baked eggs with Spanish-style beans and chorizo (paired with Tempranillo), char-grilled scamorza with heritage tomatoes (Barbera) and potato and lemon frittata (Hunter Valley Semillon). As you’d expect from an Aussie book there are plenty of Asian-inspired dishes like beef with ginger and lemongrass (Verdelho) and pork gyoza with mint, coriander and chilli dipping sauce (“a super crisp beer”) but also some nice home-made bruschetti, pizzas and pies.

The only downside to the book is that all the wines are Australian but fair enough given that it is self-published (good for them) and that their primary market is obviously going to be their home one. There’s also the odd match that I’m not sure I buy into (like Coonawarra Cab with cauliflower soup) but they’re more than made up for by inspired pairings such as rosewater pannacotta with Turkish delight, pistachio biscotti and pink muscat.

If you already know a fair bit about food and wine matching you may not feel there’s quite enough in-depth info about the subject for you but if you’re a newbie - or giving it to one - it's a perfect introduction to the subject.

For a sample of the recipes and pairings in the book check out Ryn & Cordie’s website. You can also buy it direct from the site for A$29.95

A review of Josh Wesson's 'Wine & Food'

It’s almost 20 years ago now since Josh Wesson wrote his first book on food and wine pairing - the ground-breaking Red Wine with Fish: the new art of Matching Wine with Food which he co-authored with David Rosengarten. He then went on to set up the attractive and innovative wine store Best Cellars which groups wines by style

This book takes a similar approach. (It also, interestingly, adopts the presentational technique Mitchell Beazley pioneered in my own Wine by Style published in 1998 which identified wine styles by flavour icons though I have to concede they do it much more prettily here!)

At the heart of the book are 50 recipes grouped to go with each of the wine styles. So, for example, in ‘smooth reds’ you have a flavour profile of the aromas and flavours to expect, the grape varieties that share these characteristics and six recipes that would suit wines of this type accompanied by ‘old world’ and ‘new world’ matches

With many old world producers now making wine in what might be conceived as a new world style I’m not totally convinced about this breakdown, these days. From recommendations with the pan-roasted duck breasts with dried-cherry sauce you might conclude you could only drink Merlot if it was from the New World whereas you could equally well partner the dish with a modern red Bordeaux. But the basic advice is sound and the recipes attractive and lavishly illustrated (despite being published by Bonnier Books in the UK, this is a Williams Sonoma title).

I can’t wait to try the coffee-rubbed back ribs, a good match, Wesson says, with Rioja Rosado or - intriguingly - an off dry white Zin. This book is clearly not for wine snobs.

The main disappointment is that there’s nothing on cheese which would have been helpful, even at this introductory level but if you want an unscary wine book to give to an enthusiastic cook who is always expressing his - or more likely her - frustration at not knowing more about wine this is a good option.

Personally I still find Wesson’s first book, of which I still have a well-thumbed copy on my bookshelf, more exciting.*

NB Oddly I can't find a copy of this edition on Amazon. I picked it up in a branch of Waterstone's in Oxford Street where it was selling for £16.99. You may have to order it from a bookshop or contact the publisher direct.