HIGH OFF THE HOG

We’re putting pork at the top of the menu with three delicious pork recipes that are sure to blow you away

Time to cook up a storm in the kitchen with some delicious pork recipes

Bacon takes the starring role in hearty breakfasts across the country but when it comes to lunchtime and dinner, pork has often been left in the wings, writes Stephanie Abbot.

With hog roasts now widespread, and a whole spate of excellent recipe books explaining how to cook even the most arcane cuts of pork – we like Stéphane Reynaud’s Pork & Sons, and Fergus Henderson’s Nose To Tail Eating – pork has become about far more than bacon, sausages and chops.

It wasn’t always this way though. Traditionally there was a cultural aversion to pork across Scotland. The ‘Scottish Pork Taboo’, a phrase coined by journalist Donald Mackenzie in 1920, was common among Highlanders but lowlander Walter Scott also alluded to it in his writing. One theory is that this aversion to pork originated with Celtic mercenaries who came into Scotland in pre-Roman times and that it simply lingered on.

These days, however, pork is one of Scotland’s most popular ingredients (although our appetite is dwarfed by the world’s biggest consumer, China, where it is used in virtually every dish). Here, while there’s still plenty of love for a bacon roll or a handy sausage roll, there’s more scope when it comes to bigger meals than chops and apple sauce. All you need is a sprinkling of inspiration.

Luckily, while our shops stock a depressing amount of industrially produced pork from Denmark and Holland, if you know where to look (farm shops and markets are a good place to start) Scotland is home to a growing number of highquality artisan producers turning out some of the world’s finest pork. We have even bred Iron Age pigs, a cross between a wild boar and Tamworth pig, which makes for richly flavoured pork.

Ayrshire bacon has always been a byword for excellence, but now there are many outstanding Scottish producers. Ballencrieff Farm in East Lothian produces rare pedigree pigs, while the free-range Tamworths at Nethergate Larder in Ayrshire are outstanding, and Peelham Farm in the Borders is known for sustainable excellence.

We also like Hugh Grierson’s organic rare breed pork from Perthshire, Puddledub’s white-Duroc pigs in Kirkcaldy and Brydock Farm’s free-to-roam and antibiotic-free pigs in the North East. There are also a growing number of wild boar running around the western Highlands, with an increasing number making it into the pot.

Once a meat that our ancient ancestors avoided, Scottish pork has rightly come of age as a premium product.