Lots of Porkies Being Told During Election Time - So I Made a Pork Pie Instead

My vegetarian friends need read no further, but this week I made a pork pie - and very good it was too. But it reminded me of a time a few years ago when I interviewed the owners of a Cornish company which had won a clutch of prestigious national awards for its festive range of porcine products. 

The Primrose Herd, a family business based near Redruth, swept the board after the National Federation of Meat and Food Traders (NFMFT) asked the country’s top butchers and meat producers to submit their favourite Christmas products for the first ever National Festive Meat Products competition.

The Lugg family entered a variety of pork based products and took home two gold awards, four silvers and one bronze.

Owner Sally Lugg told me: “We have worked extra-hard to develop our Christmas range, offering customers the finest quality pork combined with our favourite festive flavours. The family recipes for stuffing, chipolatas and pigs in blankets have done us proud in this competition.”

The judges were particularly impressed with the shoulder of pork, and sage and red onion festive chipolatas – it was these which scooped gold awards above hundreds of other entries.

I can vouch that it is superb. It reminds me of the Sunday lunches I enjoyed as a child when our butcher sourced all his pork from farmers and smallholders in the district. And all of them, without exception, kept just a few pigs outdoors in the orchards adjacent to the farm.

In more recent times I have enjoyed pork raised by friends who’ve also kept a rare breed or two on their smallholdings or in their orchards. I add this because it is no coincidence that the Primrose Herd pork has exactly the same deep and savoury depth of flavour.    

Sally and her husband Bill have been rearing their own traditional-breed Gloucester Old Spots and Large Blacks since 1999. But to meet demand they long ago extended the business to take in pigs from a number of Cornish small farmers and smallholders who keep rare breeds like Tamworths, Welsh, and British Lops.

The animals are slaughtered at a local abattoir just ten minutes away from the Primrose Herd HQ, then the company’s in-house team deal with the carcasses, producing cuts and joints to order but also making their own amazing sausages, bacon and an extremely toothsome and popular Cornish hog’s pudding.   

It all seems a long long way from the early days over a decade ago when I went to the hills behind Redruth with Taste of the West chief executive John Sheaves on a mission to judge the Primrose Herd products. It was a grey, grim winter’s day and the rain was blasting in horizontally off the Atlantic to whip the eaves of a humble home where Sally Lugg surprised us somewhat by telling us she used to be a bank manager. 

“My father kept pigs at Callington, but he died during the foot and mouth outbreak and my mother was left with the herd,” recalled Sally who was working at the bank at the time, while her husband Bill was still operating his successful plumbing business. “We’d got these rare pigs and nobody to look after them - we took them on, and it was a bit of nightmare.”

Armed with an undoubted passion for pigs, she eventually left her job to begin developing the Primrose Herd business. It wasn’t long before juggling family duties with a burgeoning pork empire became a struggle – then Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen Cornwall restaurant opened and things really took off.

“When they put in a big order, that was a pivotal moment,” said Bill, who gave up his plumbing work to join forces with his wife.  

Now, all these years later, the business continued to expand and the couple’s children all have some involvement. The family must be doing something right because they’ve been reaping both regional and national awards for over a decade.

The Primrose Herd pigs (and those they buy in) are kept outside as much as possible and their lifestyle and diet is designed for slow, natural growth – this in turn encourages excellent marbling in the meat and the delicious deep flavour.

In the old days the couple mainly sold through various farmer’s markets, but now the Luggs supply many of Cornwall’s top restaurants, award-winning farm shops and delicatessens, and sell the full range of pork products online.

Sally told me about the basic concept behind the idea of using only traditional breed pork, the meat of which can be difficult for producers to shift…

“It is quite difficult to find an outlet because the traditional breeds do run to fat a bit - added to that the coloured ones aren’t as easy to cleanse, so you do get black hair on them,” said Sally explaining that the Primrose Herd had developed a special market for the meat. 

“People like local smallholders come to us - it is good for them and good for us. If you are a pedigree breeder then obviously not every pig is going to be of show quality or good enough to be a breeding animal. So you’ve still got to find somewhere for those pigs to go. By coming to us it means, if you do show as a pig breeder, you can keep your best animals and pass the rest to us.”

When it comes to the amazing flavour of the meat, Sally commented: “There is more fat running through the meat than you’ll see in the modern hybrid pigs which are kept indoors. They just don’t have that fat cover - and when you are cooking pork that is what you need.”

Not so long ago, all animal fat was regarded as health-damaging - but nowadays there are new ideas about the meat from creatures that have enjoyed a more natural diet. “I think there’s a lot to be said for natural fats versus manufactured fats,” said Sally. “There’s nothing wrong with the fat in our meat and it does taste much better.  

If you have a nice bit of fat underneath the rind on your pork chop you will experience a big difference in flavour. 

“Added to that, we use every piece of the animal. I’ve always thought it important that you do that. More and more chefs are asking for many different cuts, like pig cheeks for example, and doing exciting things with them. A great many of our customers are chefs - and we talk to our customers every week to make sure there are no issues or discuss new ideas.

“We butcher everything here - we manufacture the sausages and hogs’ puddings and the bacons and gammon. Actually, hog’s pudding is still one of our best sellers - people from all over the country buy it from our online store. We get a lot of repeat custom and the feedback we get is that a people remember the tastes of their childhood. They really do say our pork is like the meat their granny used to serve.”

And what could be more important at Christmas than packing a festive punch when it comes to flavour? See the Primrose Herd website (http://www.primroseherd.co.uk/ ).

Festive Pork Pie recipe from Primrose Herd

INGREDIENTS FOR HOT WATER CRUST PASTRY

100g diced lard

100g diced butter

200ml water

550g plain flour

1 ½ tsp salt

3 eggs (2 for the mix 1 for glazing)

INGREDIENTS FOR FILLING

1 KG Diced Pork Shoulder (5mm)

250g sausage meat 

250g smoked bacon lardons

15 sage Leaves (fried until crisp)

4 sprigs fresh thyme (picked and chopped)

1 tsp salt

1 tsp ground black pepper

1 tsp ground white pepper

½ tsp ground mace

½ tsp ground nutmeg

½ tsp cayenne pepper

1 large bay leaf

250 ml of pork stock made from trotters

INGREDIENTS FOR CRANBERRY TOPPING

500g fresh or frozen cranberries

1 orange 

200g soft brown sugar

5 cloves

1 cinnamon stick

180ml port

1tbsp honey

15 sage leaves for garnish

PASTRY 

Melt the butter and lard in a pan with the water – don’t let it boil, a low heat is best here.  Place the flour and salt in a bowl and make a well in the centre. Pour in the beaten eggs and mix together then add the hot water/fat from the pan and combine until you have a soft dough, you may need to add a little more warm water if your dough is too dry. Wrap the pastry in cling film and chill in the fridge for at least an hour.

FILLING 

Thoroughly combine all the filling ingredients except the bay leaf and stock. The fried sage will crumble into the mix and give a fantastic flavour boost.

ASSEMBLE

Pre-heat oven to 180c/gas 4. Cut a quarter of the pastry off and keep to one side (this will be the lid), wrap in clingfilm and put back in the fridge. Next roll out the remaining ¾ of the pastry on a floured surface, you need a 30 cm circle about 1 cm thick.

Now line 20cm springform tin. Press pastry into the sides of the tin. Fill with pork mix, pressing the bay leaf into the centre.

Roll out the remaining piece of pastry to make the lid. Brush edges with beaten egg, lay the lid on top and crimp the edges tight. Make a 1cm hole in the top of the pie then bake in the preheated oven for 30 minutes.

After 30 mins lower the oven temperature to 160/ gas 3 and bake for a further 1 hr 15 mins.

Remove from the oven release the springform from the pie. Brush top and sides with beaten egg and return to the oven for 15 minutes to give a glaze. Allow to cool. Once cool warm your jelly stock and use a funnel to gradually pour into the opening on the top of the pie, you may need to tilt the pie around a little to encourage the stock into all the nooks and crannies. Refrigerate to set jelly.

CRANBERRY TOPPING

Remove peel from the orange in large slices and juice it. Add all ingredients except the sage to a saucepan and simmer for 15 – 20 mins until thickened. Taste and add more sugar if required.

Remove peel, cloves and cinnamon, allow to cool for 40 – 50 minutes.

It’s now ready to use, spoon over the top of your refrigerated pie then pop back into the fridge until set, overnight is best.