In February 2007 I chanced upon a marvellous cookbook: The Ultimate Recipe Book by Angela Nilsen. It had just been published, so I'm not sure how (or where) I came across it so soon, in the days before my compulsive food blogging.
But I was instantly taken with Nilsen's approach of selecting 50 classic dishes and setting out to define the ultimate recipe for each one. In her quest she used her own considerable skills and knowledge of cooking and also consulted with many expert chefs, food writers and regional specialists to glean as many insider tips and suggestions as possible. Then she tested, tested and tested again, fine-tuning as she went.
The result is this wonderful cookbook, published by BBC Books under the brand of Good Food Magazine (for whom Nilsen worked as Food Editor and then Acting Food Director before creating the Ultimate series of recipes).
In her introduction to quiche Lorraine, Nilsen points out that "what you don't put into a quiche Lorraine is as important as what you do". It's a good reminder that quiches with "salmon, watercress, brie, even broccoli" might be jolly nice but are not Lorraine!
Quiche Lorraine is a simple dish with just a few ingredients. To me, that's where it's beauty lies.
One of Nilsen's advisors for this recipe comments that a great quiche Lorraine should be "like a rich savoury custard with lots of bacon gently set in it. The custard should be creamy, not solid, and the tart slim."
We enjoyed this quiche recipe when we first made it, not long after buying the book but with the huge influx of cookery books I've amassed in the last couple of years, the book had been neglected at the back of the shelf. Recently I yearned for a good home-made quiche and dug the book out again.
Angela Nilsen's Ultimate Quiche Lorraine
Ingredients
Pastry 175 grams plain flour 100 grams cold butter, cut into pieces 1 egg yolk cold water
Filling 200 grams smoked or unsmoked lardons 50 grams Gruyere 200 ml crème fraîche 200 ml double cream 3 eggs, well beaten pinch of ground nutmeg
Notes We used smoked Denhay bacon cut into pieces. We used a strong, well-aged Gruyere and doubled the amount to 100 grams. As it was the nearest available pack size, we used 170 ml of double cream. We added the extra egg white (leftover from the pastry) into the custard filling, which compensated for the reduced cream content.
Method
Make the pastry by putting flour, butter, egg yolk and 4 teaspoons of cold water into a food processor. Process in pulses until the mix binds.
Line a 23cm diameter flan dish or tin (we buttered and floured ours). Nilsen suggests a tin that is about 2.5 cm in height.
On a floured surface roll the pastry out as thinly as you can.
Ease the pastry into the base of the dish, trimming the edge so it sits slightly above the lip of the dish (to allow for shrinkage). Lightly prick the base with a fork and chill for 10 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 200 C (180 C fan).
Line the pastry with foil and weigh down with baking beads (or any other suitable weight – we used a smaller metal pie tin). Bake for 15 minutes.
Remove the beans and foil and bake for another 4-5 minutes until the pastry is pale golden.
If you notice any small holes or cracks, patch up with leftover pastry trimmings.
While the pastry cooks, prepare the filling.
Dry fry the lardons for a few minutes until they start to colour. Nilsen suggests discarding the cooking fat and draining but we tipped it into the custard mix for added flavour.
Cut three quarters of the cheese into small dice and finely grate the rest.
Scatter the cooked lardons and diced cheese over the pastry base.
Beat together the crème fraîche, double cream and (pre-beaten) eggs. Add nutmeg and seasoning. (You shouldn't need much salt given the bacon and cheese).
Pour into the pastry base, over the bacon and cheese.
Scatter the grated cheese on top.
Bake for about 25 minutes at 190 C (fan 170 C) or until golden and softly set. The centre shouldn't feel too firm.
Remove from the oven and allow the quiche to settle for a few minutes before serving.
As you can see, our pastry was just a touch soggy in the base, though this didn't detract at all, for me. This may be because we didn't roll the pastry thin enough or because it needed an extra minute or two of blind baking.
This is a really delicious recipe and very straightforward. I definitely recommend that you try it.
Use only the recommended 50 grams of cheese if you want a milder, more custardy flavour.
Back in May, we spent a lovely long weekend in Dorset for Pete's birthday.
As the visit was all about great local food, I was keen to visit local producers and learn about their products, their history, their processes and not least, the people.
Truckles
George and Amanda Streatfeild of Denhay Farm were kind enough to respond to my somewhat last-minute pre-trip email with an invitation to visit and learn about their traditional farmhouse cheddars and dry cured bacons.
Raw milk tanks; Pete and George
We started off chatting to the Streadfeilds in George's little office, where we learned about the history, the challenges and the current production processes of Denhay cheeses and bacons before a visit into the cheese production areas, including the maturation room where large and small truckles are kept at just the right temperature and humidity.
Block cheddar
The Streatfeilds produce cheddar in three forms – traditional 27 kg truckles, smaller 2 kg rounds called Dorset Drums and 20 kg blocks. The milk comes from their own cows, which are Freedom Food accredited by the RSPCA.
Truckles and Dorset Drums; George turning the cheeses
We were delighted to be able to try some of the cheese on site, as George extracted a shiny, yellow cylinder with his cheese iron, to test one of the maturing truckles and Amanda cut a slice off one of the blocks too.
Amanda preparing a tasting
The cheese is a delicious, traditional, nutty cheddar – properly savoury without the European-style sweetness creeping into many cheddars. For me, it's a touch mild, but I do have a tendency towards ridiculously strong cheese!
Checking on the cheeses
Waitrose buy most of it and sell it under their own brand West Country Farmhouse Cheddar, but some is sold (under the Denhay name and also their SpoiltCow label) to other supermarkets, independent retailers and even exported to America and Europe.
When we left, we're given some of their dry cured bacon to try. This is available in many supermarkets as either Denhay or SpoiltPig.
The cheese is good.
The bacon is magnificent!
Such a perfect texture and flavour, in fact, that we've become quite addicted to it, buying ourselves at least a pack a week. We have it grilled and crispy for breakfast or stuffed inside bread for the perfect bacon sandwich and we use it in cooking too – most recently, a delicious courgette carbonara using courgettes from the garden.
Denhay cheese soufflé with Denhay bacon
Below, you'll find a long but fascinating interview with the Streatfeilds, followed by a few video clip interviews and tasting sessions inside and outside the factory areas.
Key: George Amanda Me
We started farming here in 1952 and we started milking cows in 1953 when we realised that this part of the world grows grass. If you grow grass, the one thing you should do is turn it into milk as that’s more profitable than turning it into beef and sheep. That’s the traditional view.
And it’s a very traditional dairy area. There are a lot of small dairies still, in this vale.
In those days (’54, ‘55) we had 3 dairies of 50 cows each – people came from all over the country to see one man milk 50 cows by himself, “couldn’t be done by himself, not possible!”
So we’ve grown from that base. The first big change was in 1959 when we started making farmhouse cheddar. We used milk from our cows and we bought in from neighbouring farms and we made 7 days a week and we made 400 pounds a day. And it dominated our lives.
Where you’re in here is the Marshwood Vale.
Historically there’s no water in the vale so the herds were only 4 or 5 cows at the most. And there was a history of neighbour warfare because the neighbours who had the springs on the hillside dammed them up for their cows. At night and the other neighbours, who didn’t have water, would come up and break the dams…
The main products from the Marsh of Vale were eggs and butter. The farmers would go from the vale to Bridport or Axminster to sell their eggs and butter. The result of that is that they had a lot of skimmed milk, which they made into Blue Vinney. This was one of the areas where it originated.
Now the original Blue Vinney is a horrid cheese. Very dry… very royal blue blue and because it was properly skimmed milk, albeit it by hand, it didn’t have a lot of flavour, because It’s the fat that gives you flavour.
Moving to beef, why people whinge about no flavour in beef is coz it’s too lean.
And why as a bacon producer I’d always eat streaky bacon because that’s got the flavour in it.
So anyway, we started making cheddar in 1959.
How did they learn to make cheese, your parents?
Oh my old man never actually made the cheese, he employed a cheese maker!
He employed Ken who was with us until 1982/83.
We’ve only ever had 3 cheese makers, we’re on our 3rd cheese maker at the moment,
The answer is that you seek advice from other cheese makers; the cheese making fraternity is very good at helping each other even though we’re competitors in other ways. So he had a lot of help from other farmers and a lot of encouragement.
In those days it was very easy because you sold your milk to the milk board and were paid on the 20th of the month following production. You bought it back from the milk board and turned it into cheddar but you only had to pay for it five months later. You had 5 months free credit. Brilliant! A lot of big farmhouse cheese makers built their whole lives on that credit so when that credit stopped, when the milk board ended, it was very painful for them.
So that’s how it started.
And at the same time as that we put in the piggery because when you make cheese you’ve got whey, which is the watery liquid leftover from cheese making, and that’s what we feed our pigs, whey and barley meal.
We grew and grew and grew and at our peak we had about 750 sows and we were making about the same volume as we are now, probably about 2 vats a day 6 days a week, a vat is a tonne… so that’s…
A lot?
No we’re really small, one of the smaller makers.
We got out of pigs 8 years ago - we lost a shed load of money on pigs – pigs do that, if you’re an economist you know they go up and down,
I’ve heard that but I don’t know why they go up and down? Why is that?
Very easy, the traditional reason is that when pigs are on the floor, the big barley farmers then don’t sell their barley they turn it into pig meat, because that’s more profitable. The more pigs are profitable the more and more pigs get produced, and then they get to a point where suddenly there are too many pigs and it all crashes. If you ever studied economics it was a regular 3 year pig cycle and a 10 year blackcurrant cycle … same thing…
There were probably four good reasons why we got out of pigs, profitability being the very big one. The second one was that our buildings were very old and inefficient and really you’ve got to have efficient buildings. The third reason was that, because of the change in legislation – which is quite right and reasonable, I’m not attacking it in anyway – to have cows and pigs on the same block of land is too many livestocks. If you’ve got a pig farmer in East Anglia with arable land, it’s not a problem, but here with dairy… we were going to fall foul of everything.
The fourth reason and probably the one that to me was the most driving reason is that we were developing the Denhay brand on the bacon side (as well as the cheese side) and it was very clear that that the consumer perception of premium brands is high welfare and the consumer perception of high welfare with pigs is pigs outside. Now, today [a gloriously sunny day] it would be lovely - the pigs would be very happy outside! But you can’t keep pigs outside in West Dorset. We get 36 inches of rain on very heavy clay. Go and do it on the Thetford Sounds with 24 inches of rain and the sand is so dry you can drive on it – here you can’t drive a car after an inch of rain. So, the wrong part of the world.
But we started curing bacon in 1994 (after the air dried ham in 1989) and we reckon we’re pretty good at curing bacon, so we continue to cure bacon. But we now source all British outdoor reared pork from around the country. Some comes from Devon… some comes from Gloucestershire… some comes from Norfolk… some comes from Scotland…
I take it those pig producers have no interest in doing that to the meat themselves?
No, most pig farmers are pig farmers and that’s the end of the argument.
The disadvantage we have is that we are only interested in backs and bellies. The big problem with British livestock farming (and this will keep you blogging for generations, this) is using the carcass in balance. Anybody can use a back and a belly - what are you going to do with the legs?
Oooh gammons, when do you buy gammons, when do you eat gammons? Christmas! Thank you, I rest my case! You try and sell a gammon at this time of year, a hopeless task, don’t know why, a fabulous product… We do a stunningly good gammon but we can’t sell it except for Christmas when we can’t make enough!
And shoulders, what do you do with shoulders? Make sausages… and… sausages…
So what we do is we buy from abattoirs. No good us making a relationship with the pig farmer, because they want to sell the whole pig. So we make relationships with abattoirs and we buy the bits we want…
I guess then that means you have to make sure your product is premium to offset the fact that you’re now paying more for the pig parts than you would if you farmed them?
You’re absolutely right, that’s absolutely smack on. And so premium is what we do, so we’re outdoor reared, we’re Freedom Foods accredited…
What does that mean, Freedom Foods accredited?
The RSPCA have a Freedom Food scheme and it’s based upon the five freedoms, if I can remember them all – freedom from thirst, freedom from hunger, freedom from fear, freedom from cold and freedom to express their natural tendencies…
[The five freedoms as more fully defined by the RSPCA as freedom from hunger and thirst, freedom from discomfort, freedom from pain, injury and disease, freedom to express normal behaviour and freedom from fear and distress.]
And so to be Freedom Food accredited doesn’t imply it’s outdoor reared so we have to tie the two together.
But, for example our cows are all Freedom Food accredited so the RSPCA come 2 or 3 times a year and look around. It means, if I say to you, “we look after our cows well”, you know it’s independently checked rather than me just saying it. And it’s something that Waitrose require us to do, too.
Yeah it’s one of the things I love about Waitrose actually is they’ve been looking at that for so much longer than everyone else, it’s great that everyone else is now interested but they’ve been doing it for a long time…
It’s second nature for them!
Anyway to come back to cheese, we were all traditional – that’s with the cloth bound – until 1984 when we realised we were a very large fish in an extremely small pond and the air was getting rarefied so we changed and we now make 12 vats a week of which 11 are block and one vat is traditional.
I don’t know much about cheddar so tell me what that means…
The difference is that a traditional cheddar has a rind on, is round and weighs 27 kilos. A block cheese is rectangular, weighs 20 kilos and doesn’t have any rind. I’ll show you the difference later…
And so we made that change and that block cheese is what you mostly buy in Waitrose as pre-packed cheese.
The majority of cheese you buy will be cheddar in the UK.
So that’s still our favourite cheese?
I wouldn’t say it’s our favourite cheese but it’s the one that most people use. If you’re making sandwiches, you’ll use cheddar, if you’re cooking you’ll use cheddar, unless the recipe calls for something different…
And so that is the bog-standard line.
The problem we face - We’re going through a very very difficult phase at the moment – is how people decide which cheddar to buy.
[We ramble a bit here, but essentially, George tells me that many consumers choose based on price, promotional offers and packaging, with very little understanding of the differences in styles of different cheddars.]
The problem we face is that farmhouse makers are making a different style of cheese to the majority of cheddar now available. If you compare our cheese to the market leaders (Davidstow, Pilgrim’s Choice, Cathedral City, Seriously Strong…) they are two totally different styles. And I’m not knocking Davidstow, it’s a really very good cheese… The market leaders are all very European in style, they’re quite sweet – if you ate one you wouldn’t say sweet, but it’s that kind of Emmental flavour. Whereas the traditional farmhouse flavour is much more savoury flavour.
[George is also frustrated by the way that some cheddar retailers, making cheeses in this newer, sweeter, European style are marketing their cheese with slogans about it tasting “how cheese used to taste 50 years ago”, which is completely inaccurate.
I agree to the suggestion that I should do a blind tasting of a few different cheddars, including some traditional farmhouse cheddars and some of the modern market leader brands, though I haven’t done this yet!
We move on to talk about PDOs]
Cheddar is something I've never ever paid that much attention to. I always thought though that you couldn't change the style of it that easily because they were protected, is cheddar just not protected in that way?
Well West Country Farmhouse Cheddar is protected…
The generic term cheddar isn't then?
Generic cheddar definitely isn't but West Country Farnhouse cheddar is. But there are still things you can change. The weakness of the PDO scheme is that it's only as good as how it was written/agreed in the first place. Cheddar was actually one of the earlier PDOs and it was fairly weakly written and so you can produce a whole raft of different cheese under the PDO. It has a value but not as big a value as it should have.
[I talk about the Stilton PDO and the Stichelton story, which is the only example I know – the Stilton PDO was nailed down to specify a pasteurised cheese, even though that was, at the time the PDO was created, a fairly recent development and the traditional recipe had always been unpasteurised. When a new kid on the block came along wanting to make a traditional unpasteurised Stilton, they were forced by the PDO to call it something else, and Stichelton was born. We agree though, that in retrospect, this did them a huge favour, from a marketing perspective.]
A PDO is only as good as the rules that were written at the time.
It sounds like whoever is big and successful at the time is the one that gets to pin down the PDO to what they want it to be?
That's probably fair!
So what are you doing to address this, because that's quite a challenging thing to deal with really?
We’re scratching our head about it! It's only in the last 6 months that it's really become very evident and that's because so much cheese has been sold on promotion.
[We then ramble a while about bacon, and which brands Pete and I have noticed/ bought from our Waitrose.]
There will be at least three or four Denhay bacon products on the top shelf and then there'll be Duchy Originals and that’s us too.
Really, that's you?
We've done Duchy Originals bacon since 1999.
I assumed it was done somewhere in his estates, I had thought it was farms that he owned. Interesting! So what's the difference then between the Duchy Originals bacon and the one that's branded Denhay?
Well it's the cure, they wanted to do a different cure.
And they're organic and we're not.
Are the pigs theirs?
Not necessarily... and in future won't be.
OK, so it really is a brand for them more than anything, they can control the quality?
Yes, it's a brand that delivers quite a lot of money into The Prince’s Charities Foundation and it's a brand which the Prince is very passionate about and watches and manages in terms of quality control and what products go in, what don't go in.
As of the middle of June it's going to be Dutchy Originals from Waitrose and it'll only be available from Waitrose.
[We talk about how we shop for bacon, and how oblivious we are to the different packaging and information printed on the packaging and how consumers often don’t read or notice anything other than what they are already familiar with.
The conversation moves on to Waitrose, and I talk about how I like shopping in Waitrose not only because of the quality but also because they have always had much more of a commitment to looking after their producers.]
Again, that's what we always read in the press, that Waitrose look after their producers, do you feel that or not?
They are very good, very good indeed.
Is it a marked difference from the rest of them?
Huge!
We've dealt with Waitrose, supplied to them for 25 years.
Another thing I like about waitrose is how they say that if they find a producer that can only produce enough for three stores, if they like it they'll still take it and put it into three stores. I don’t know how much they do this but I do see a difference in products stocked in different stores.
That's correct, for instance you can buy our butter in only three Waitrose stores I think it is. And at Ocado.
[At this point, we don white coats and go to visit the cheese producing and storage areas.]
--- with many thanks to Jow Lloyd for her help transcribing the audio file ---
Videos
(Please forgive quality of sound and image composition – these videos were taken purely to give me an audio file for transcription, as above, but decided to share the videos instead. Pete's actually really good at shooting video when he knows it's going to be used as video! And ignore how daft I look in my orange hat and white lab coat, please!)
Pasteurisation, Homogenisation, Sterilisation
Making Cheddar
Grading the cheese
Truckles and Dorset Drums
(no idea why this one is a different size ratio, it's from the same video footage, same settings but when I export it to youtube it loads differently to the other 5)
Snowflakes and Schnapps by Jane Lawson has a Scandinavian feel about it, focused as it is on hearty dishes with a winter theme. But actually, Australian-born Lawson covers a much wider swathe of Europe in this tome.
The book's blurb invites us to "Join Jane Lawson as she takes you on a culinary journey through the magnificent cold-climate cuisines of the snow-cloaked regions of northern, central and eastern Europe. From the seaside towns of Scandinavia, to the alpine villages of Austria, from the ski fields of France, to the fairy-tale castles of Germany, and as far afield as the white-blanketed cities of Russia and beyond, comes this enticing collection of traditional recipes with contemporary flair."
All in all Lawson visited Germany, Austria, Hungary, Russia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Czech Republic, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, France, Switzerland and Italy during the research for her book.
It's a beautifully solid, sturdy book with an elegant embossed and spot-varnished cover, with the occasional spot-varnished snow flake drifting subtly across the thick pages and vivid, slightly retro-styled food photography showcasing a wide range of intriguing recipes.
Many of these catch my eye – potato flatbreads with smoked salmon, doughnut balls with mocha soup, gingerbread-spice coffee, almond hot chocolate, spiced buttermilk waffles with rhubarb molasses and orange whipped butter, pork and cabbage cakes with sweet onion relish, garlicky pelmeni with brown butter, herbs and yoghurt, slow cooked lamb shanks with Janssen's temptation, coriander roast chicken with walnut sauce, quark fritters with honey syrup, balsamic-glazed veal sweetbreads with white bean and sage fritters, veal cutlet with wheat beer sauce and winter vegetable strudel, beef fillet in parmesan pastry with truffle butter sauce, molten black forest puddings with cherry compote and kirsch cream, prune filled pancakes baked in caramel with spiced cookie cream, roast goose with apple, cider vinegar gravy and golden potatoes…
But whilst the book is beautiful, I think the styling may have been taken a little too far. Chapter titles are a little too cute for comfort: Baby It's Cold Outside (snacks, soups, and warming drinks); Warmed To The Core (breakfasts and slow-cooked dishes); Diamonds And Fur (more decadent recipes, bringing out the bling for entertaining); and Dreaming of a White Christmas (presumably dishes fit for seasonal and celebratory feasting).
And it's disappointing, in a book described as a culinary journey, to find no introduction or even description of the recipes at all, let alone the places, peoples and cultures they hail from. Whilst it's clear that Lawson has taken broad artistic license with the recipes, taking inspiration from the cuisines of the countries she visited rather than producing a faithful record of authentic methods and ingredients, this lack of background information makes it much harder to connect to the recipes, to understand their textures and flavours and be drawn into making them.
Perhaps it's for this reason that I went for the familiar, a dish that I already associate with the snow-covered reaches of Northern Europe and remember from the many visits to Sweden I made during my childhood.
Lawson's meatballs with vodka dill sauce may not be exactly the same as Swedish köttbullar but they look pretty close.
Meatballs With Vodka Dill Sauce
Ingredients 160g fresh white breadcrumbs 185ml pouring (whipping) cream 350g minced beef 350g minced pork 1 large egg 1 onion, very finely chopped 1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg a pinch of ground allspice 1 teaspoon sea salt 1/4 teaspoon white pepper 2 tablespoons butter 1 tablespoon oil 1 tablespoon plain flour 435 ml hot beef stock 1 1/2 tablespoons chopped dill (plus extra to garnish) 80 ml vodka Lingonberry preserves to serve
Method
Combine the breadcrumbs and 125 ml of the cream and leave to sit until the breadcrumbs have absorbed all the liquid.
Add the beef and pork mince, egg, onion, nutmeg, allspice, salt and white pepper and combine well.
Roll the mixture into 3 cm balls and place in a single layer on a baking tray lined with baking paper. Cover and refrigerate for 3-4 hours to allow the flavours to develop.
When ready to cook, heat half of the butter with the oil in a large heavy based frying pan over a medium-high heat (do not use a non-stick pan).
Cook the meatballs, in batches, for 4-6 minutes each, or until browned all over. Remove and set aside.
Add the remaining butter and the flour to the pan and stir.
Gradually whisk in the hot stock and the remaining cream, scraping up any cooked-on bits.
Add the dill and 3 tablespoons of the vodka, and bring to the boil, whisking continuously until smooth and thickened slightly.
Return the meatballs to the pan, along with any resting juices, and cook for 10 minutes or until tender.
Stir through the remaining vodka and season to taste.
Garnish with the fresh dill and serve with lingonberry preserves as a condiment.
Tip: Serve the meatballs over some sautéed or mashed potatoes or buttered noodles, with the lingonberry preserves on the side as a condiment. A shot of Vodka is a must!
Notes
We made a few changes to the recipe, mainly because we had 600 grams of minced beef and the same again of minced pork in the freezer. We scaled up the quantities of all the meatball ingredients, making a whopping 52 meatballs, 36 of which we froze for later use.
The remaining 16 (yes, we're greedy piggies) we cooked as per the instructions, the only omission being dill, which I don't like. Having forgotten to defrost any of our home-made stock from the freezer, we used a beef stock pot, which worked fine for this recipe.
Our sauce wasn't as dark as the photograph in the book, perhaps because we didn't brown the meatballs enough or maybe because our stock wasn't as dark as Lawson's. However, the taste of the meatballs and cream sauce were very much in tune with my memories of Swedish meatballs and gravy.
My only negative would be that adding so much of the vodka into the sauce right at the end gave the finished sauce a somewhat too astringent vodka taste. In future, I'll either add all or most of it before bringing the sauce to the boil or simply use less overall. (And this coming from someone who rather likes boozy sauces).
On the basis of this recipe, I'm hopeful about the success I might have if I tried some of the others, though many of them seem to be more complicated and time-consuming than I have patience for.
The problem for me remains the lack of any introduction to each recipe, and the lack of background information overall about the countries Lawson took inspiration from and the original dishes she used as a starting point for her own recipes.
That said, it is a beautiful book, the very epitome of coffee table food porn and the kind of book any food lover would surely love to receive as a gift, whether or not they go on to make many of the recipes. And I have always been rather a sucker for spot-varnishing, as my husband can attest – I've been known to sit stroking such varnish with a demented grin on my face. So you can only imagine how happy little dainty snowflakes of shininess have made me…
Many thanks to Murdoch books for the review copy.
Snowflakes and Schnapps, published by Murdoch Books, is currently available from Amazon for £14.99, cover price £25.
Not long after the girls' steak club was born, the ladies pigfest was germinated. Who knew there were so many women desperate to consume an entire suckling pig, St John Restaurant style?!
Given the cost (and size) of the pig, a suitably sized group of eager women was quickly assembled. Groups are encouraged to order a feasting menu, where the entire group shares two starters, the suckling pig and vegetables and two desserts, all served family style.
We chose the famous St John roast marrow bones and fresh, whole crab with mayonnaise to enjoy before the pig. And eccles cake with Lancashire cheese and spotted dick and custard to have after.
The food itself was fabulous. The crab was fantastically fresh and served with a tangy mustardy mayonnaise. The portion of marrow bones (with parsley salad and toast) was a little small (and there weren't nearly enough toasts for one each) but it was good and fatty and full of flavour.
The pork was meltingly tender and so delicious, though the crackling wasn't as crispy as many of us had hoped. I tried pig tongue for the first time, others had the cheeks. The buttered greens and potatoes served alongside were excellent.
I can't comment on the puddings as I had to leave before they arrived. And that leads me to the crux of the matter. All the good food in the world couldn't entirely make up for a bit of a service fiasco.
Despite having ordered the menu in advance (and it being served in large communal dishes, family style) and made an early evening 7.30 pm booking the starter didn't arrive for 50 minutes and the pig for more than an hour after that. Some of the girls had to leave to catch last trains. I simply found that, by 10.40 pm and with dessert still not in sight, I was crashing and set off for home too.
Those that stayed report that dessert was good, when it finally arrived.
To their absolute credit, the management of St John were quick to notice our disappointment (twitter was full of it!) and have been in touch to apologise sincerely, investigate what went wrong with a view to ensuring it doesn't happen again and, best of all, have invited us to return for a champagne and dessert party on the house! Vive la Pigfest!
Fans of Indian cooking may like to visit Mamta's Kitchen, a family cookbook on the web. Mamta is my lovely mum and provides most of the recipes (with many also kindly provided by family, friends and readers). Pete (my husband) and I created and maintain the site.
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