Tasting notes

Three cheers for chops

‘I WAS THE WORLD’S slowest butcher when we started out,’ admits Tim Wilson. ‘It took me forever to prepare four T-bone steaks!’ Wilson is the founder of The Ginger Pig, the award-winning farming and butchery business that originated from a pig sty in a nearderelict Nottinghamshire farmyard over 25 years ago. Starting out with a trio of ginger-haired Tamworth pigs (bought for £60), he bred a litter that produced enough meat to sell, and eventually took up a stall at Borough Market in London. He now has eight butcher’s shops, farms more than 3,000 acres in Yorkshire, and his meat (the traditional cuts you won’t find in supermarkets), is the holy grail for the country’s top chefs and food writers (get the lamb neck on the bone to make extra- rich stews is one insider’s secret) – not to mention the locals who queue for the epic sausage rolls. And the best bit? You can now buy it online.

‘I wanted to do it the old-fashioned way, and do it well,’ Wilson tells me of the decision to launch the webshop. ‘I don’t want to sell chicken breasts or mince; instead we’ve chosen cuts people used to ask me for years ago.’

Those would be pork chops, Barnsley chops, and even that spectacular centrepiece of 1950s dinner parties, crown roast of lamb. ‘When customers hear that we do it, it flies,’ he says. The string-tied ring of lamb racks is often filled with stuffing, but when roasted like this, the centre can turn a bit soggy, he warns. For a modern take on Easter lunch, Wilson suggests leaving it empty, roasting it pink then tumbling in boiled new potatoes and chestnuts – a favourite combination. ‘It’s the best.’ thegingerpig.co.uk