Labour of Months

I haven’t written a blog entry for ages. Too long. In fact it’s becoming a bit of a thing with me – I’m rather shy of starting again. What on earth have I got to write about, I thought as I went to stoke the Aga for my morning cuppa? Nothing more than anyone else, that’s for sure, but then that is the joy (for me) of reading diaries…peering into the hum-drumness of other people’s lives and picking out what I find interesting or reassuring.

Firstly the snow; it has to be mentioned. Who remembers snow like this so early in the year? No one I know. I love it! Last night I emptied the hot Aga riddlings into the tin bucket outside our back door and the snow was crisp and deep in the back yard. There was no moon or stars but still there was an opalescent snow light. Back in the warmth of the kitchen, huddled in a box of straw in the fireplace, was a young black hen recovering from a night out in the cold. I gave her a stroke and a drop of water from a jam jar and decided that she was definitely on the mend. A couple of intrepid Ladies of the Dicker battled their way through the snow to come and practice Christmas songs but we got no further than mulling some wine and drinking it and suddenly it was bedtime and their van was stuck in the field so Dave had to come out of his hiding place to ferry them home in the land rover.

This morning I opened the curtains and the winter wonderland had turned to brown sludge. Not a sign that we had ever had snow this week except for the children’s carefully constructed igloo which was just a sad spot of a molten memory in the field, and my friend’s abandoned van sinking deeper into the mud as I watch the torrential rain turn the field into an earthy soup.

With the weather this week I am glad that our three pigs went to slaughter last Monday. Imagine how dire it would have been for them. Freezing temperatures and then hauling themselves through an icy bog all for the sake of a pig nut or two. I’m sure I’m on dodgy ground here - because of course one can reason that death is probably not a better option than a muddy life - but we do eat meat in our family and to me it’s about the quality of the life of  the meat that we eat that is important. Ours have been reared outdoors according to what the French used to call the Labour of Months. This quite simply means that you work with the changing seasons to rear, preserve and eat your pigs.

In the past if you had enough room to keep a pig and a few chickens then you could feed the family throughout the year. Pigs are omnivorous and will eat quite simply anything which they will obligingly turn into top quality meat. These days we don’t feed pigs household slops but you can feed them fruit, vegetables and nuts that come straight from the field or orchard to supplement their rusk diet. This means that they can be fed throughout the year on excess from the kitchen garden; overgrown courgettes, beetroot leaves and the like and come the autumn they are fattened on acorns and apples from the orchard including the apple cake (a.k.a. ‘cheese’) from the cider press. By the time the excess apples and acorns have run out, the pigs should be well grown enough to be sent off to slaughter at the end of November just before the really unpleasant weather sets in.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

December is traditionally the time when the pig would be transformed into the preserved meats that would provide a Christmas ham and keep the family fed for the rest of the year if supplies were rationed. These days, even those who keep pigs tend not to use traditional preserving methods because it is easiest to just apportion up the meat and store it in the freezer as oversized chops, a couple of roasting joints and some breakfast sausages made with a proprietary seasoning mix.

There is not much of a tradition of charcuterie making over here but to me it seems that the most honourable thing to do with your lovingly reared pig is to use every scrap of meat from nose to tail and trotter and the best way to do that is to preserve the meat in the myriad of ways that the traditional French Charcutier would. It has taken trial and error, quite a bit of research and some helpful courses over the last couple of years to learn the finer points of charcuterie but I’m really looking forward to working on these pigs as I think that this meat will be particularly sweet and succulent.

The pigs have been hanging in our walk-in fridge to tenderize this week. On Monday Dave will butcher them (while I go Christmas shopping) and then for the rest of the week he and I will turn the meat into saucisson, salami, chorizo, air-dried hams, fromage de tete and other delicacies that you would normally find in a French Charcuterie.

Back to today. I have just braved the gloom and downpour to go and check the hens. They are bedraggled things huddled under their hen house (which is raised off the ground on stilts). I suggestively nudged them inside but they were not ready, preferring to huddle close to Bentley, the cockerel, until he gives the go-ahead and leads his ladies to their perches. But his head count will be short of one: the little black hen did not make it and despite our best efforts she died this morning and will be buried next to a robin that Louis found frozen in the snow.

The heat of the midday sun…

Last night we sat outside and as the sun went down a mist settled upon the field like a shroud bringing a drop of dew to the gasping plants. Bats darted beneath a mauve, star speckled sky and the silhouettes of familiar trees took on eerie profiles.

This morning, up early and another cloudless, baby blue sky. The sun was already hot and harsh, the mown meadow parched and brown, dust from the cracked earth billowing underfoot. It feels like another country that we live in; the wild flowers that thrive this year are  poppies, mallows, cornflowers and ox-eye daisies – their lives brief and stunning under the glare of this Mediterranean spell of summer. Marigolds and nasturtiums from last summer have self seeded everywhere and the garden is blasted with shots of hot colour.

But there is no time to stop and smell the roses because in the kitchen garden there is a race going on to see how fast every single vegetable can mature and run to seed in order to reproduce in these life threatening drought conditions. And the only thing that will stop this is water…

A heady combination of water and long hot sunny days should produce some bumper crops but in order to achieve this I feel like a nurse in a very busy ward running from plant to plant to administer just the right dose at the right time. Watering can’t be done at a leisurely pace throughout the day, it has to be done early in the morning or late in the evening, because there is a fine line between quenching a plant’s thirst or boiling it alive with an ill-timed lunchtime tipple in the heat of the midday sun.

Last summer, Dave and I – virgin smallholders – reared some pigs to help us dig a vegetable plot, then we threw some seeds in the ground and waited to see what would happen. Vegetables grew and so did the weeds, in abundance. We hunted for the vegetables we had planted, harvested a surprising amount and brought them in for use in the Tin Drums.

This year we’re a bit more in control even though it doesn’t feel like it most of the time. We have our small Land Army for a start. Charlotte and I are in charge of the kitchen garden, racing as fast as we can to get the last of the hundreds of leeks in for the winter, nurturing the tomatoes and peppers in the scorching heat of the greenhouse, checking beneath the horticultural fleece that protects the magnificent brassicas from the dreaded cabbage white butterfly which decimated our entire crop last year, and harvesting whatever has ripened overnight.

Dave and Matt the Chef are in charge of charcuterie. We now have a small field kitchen out at the smallholding and facilities for smoking and hanging our cured meats. We are making everything from air dried ham, chorizo and bacon through to the pork pies and pates – all now on the Tin Drum menu. The herbs and fresh ingredients used come straight from the herb bed or the kitchen garden the minute they are needed; nothing hangs around getting past its best.

Since I last posted a blog entry, Rose, our oldest daughter has finished her degree and started work full time at Seven Dials Tin Drum and it is now, more than ever, a family business. Rose was just nine years old when we opened the first Tin Drum at the Dials. That was way back in 1998 when bars were smoky, food was Fusion and from far flung shores and climate change was still only registering with those who knitted their own sandals. Things have changed so much over little more than a decade and climate change and the credit crunch have affected all of our lives. We are looking closer to home for enjoyment now and that includes learning the delights of food that we can grow ourselves. Eleven years ago I hadn’t even grown cress on blotting paper and if anybody had told me I’d be growing and rearing food for the restaurants I’d have thought them quite insane. But things can change in the most unexpected of ways.

Spring

The other night  I reclined in a Barcelona chair sipping a dry martini (shaken, not stirred) in the penthouse suite of a gentleman dressed in pyjamas. He sipped his martini and read a little From Russia With Love out loud. Ian Fleming drank a bottle of gin a day, he told us, as my three friends and I marvelled at the potency of the meagre liquid in our glasses. And while Fleming snoozed and awoke sporadically to try out the drinks from agent 007’s repertoire, his wife got on with writing the Bond novels.  I love Brighton – the things that go on in hidden away places, the things you learn - especially when Spring is in the air and the May Festival is just around the corner.

So, it is here, at last…Spring…all blowsy and frilled with blossom, tossing its lush good looks this way and that in the April breezes, demanding attention. And we scurry about squeezing in a last minute pruning, planting out fragile seedlings because  those killer frosts that still sneak over the fields on an April morning just don’t seem possible when the midday sun warms your back.

We’ve been here in the country almost two years now. I was gazing out of the window the morning after my night as a Bond Girl (albeit of the Moneypenny type), taking stock of how our lives have changed over this time. Everything was quite still in the field, the sky was clear blue, the hawthorn blossom that edges our field crisply white against it. The kettle began to boil. I was just about to turn away from the window and make coffee for the land workers when Peggy and Bluebell – Charlotte’s long haired dachshund - bounded onto centre stage in the field and tumbled about in a raucous display of affection. I arranged some tin cups on a tray as I watched the dogs and then, in the distance, I spotted two figures walking slowly up the long drive towards the house. The woman was clutching a book to her breast. Her pale frizzy hair and green pleated skirt betrayed no hint of vanity. Beside her, a man in beige with a black briefcase. Jehovah’s Witnesses! They proceeded slowly as if time was of no issue to them, seemingly also oblivious to the dogs that hurtled about them in circles. Quickly I loaded the tray with the coffee pot, milk and sugar and I was just about to scarper out of the back door to take refuge in the greenhouse when I noticed something else out of the window. A shed was moving serenely across the field, complete with air drying hams swinging inside it. From where I was standing this was all I could see…the shed moving at a funereal pace, the dogs darting in and out of view and the purposeful progress of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. I grabbed the tray and ran.

Outside, peering over the garden wall, it became clear that the shed was being pulled along by our little blue tractor with Dave at the helm, an aim clearly in mind. I mouthed the word ‘Coffee?’ at him, but I had been spotted by the Jehovah’s Witnesses and they were heading straight for me.

Well, I can’t be rude, so I stood my ground and waited. I listened to birdsong while they preached – and then I very politely told them that I had to get out into the field and assist creation by planting some more seeds!

Winter

As December seeped in, wet and warm, we booked our three sows into Tottingworth abattoir. Meanwhile, as we awaited the day, we had decided to buy a couple of legs of pork from Tottingworth for hams for ourselves. We prepared them and took them down to our cellar where they would salt cure for a while. When curing hams I go down to the cellar every day to turn them and check that they are fully covered with salt.

The rain pelted down relentlessly and we were surrounded by a sea of mud. All we could do was to stay inside and sit the storms out. The hams had been down in the cellar for a couple of days sitting in their boxes of salt on a high bench. I went down to do the daily turn, only to find that half way down the stairs I could go no further…we were flooded and the hams were nowhere to be seen!

Some nice men with a big pump came out pretty quickly to get rid of the water for us…about 3 ft of it. They worked tirelessly outside in the dark and the rain and all I could think about was making sure they had an endless supply of hot drinks to keep them warm. Eventually they emerged and came to have a quiet word with me. ‘Madam,’ one of the nice men said in hushed tones, ‘we have cleared the water and we are taking an inventory but I just thought I should mention that there appears to be some…er…flesh…in your cellar.’ He looked at me with a raised eyebrow.

‘Oh!’ I said, ‘Hams!’ I had quite forgotten to mention them, ‘…Just a couple of hams, that’s all!’ and realising what they must have looked like where they had come to rest on the cellar floor, I added reassuringly, ‘Really nothing to worry about.’

The flooded cellar has been an ongoing problem over the winter because we have clay soil here and the water table was so high that there was nowhere for it to go, so it came into our cellar. After a while we were told that the water would have to stay in the cellar until it drained away of its own accord to avoid the pressure from the waterlogged land outside pushing our cellar walls in. Our house was being held up by flood water!

The cellar is all dried out now and we are renovating it and sorting out the drainage because it’s a great space for storing wines and preserves and has the perfect humidity and airiness for hanging chorizo and air dried sausages.

Halfway through December when most people are decorating their Christmas trees and tweaking the bows on the gifts that they have wrapped for under the tree, we took delivery of our three sows from the abattoir. Two of them went straight to the Tin Drums and we kept one for ourselves. Mark from the Cottage down the road used to be a butcher and he came up to our house with his tins of cider to teach us how to butcher a whole pig, a lamb and a venison. You have to work really fast doing this and it’s best done when the weather turns really cold, which it obligingly did. Whilst the men butchered, Charlotte (the Tin Drum’s Land Girl) and I prepared salt cures and molasses cures for hams, sweet cures for sides of bacon and pancetta, and herb and spice mixes for sausages and chorizo. For three days we worked late into the night as the snow settled all around us. Dave, in true Heath Robinson style, turned one of our sheds into a smokery and after the meat had been salt or sweet cured, it was cold smoked over hay and oak chips. The results are truly delicious.

The clock was ticking and Christmas was almost upon us. We went out one snowy evening and bought our Christmas tree but when we came to decorate it, we couldn’t find the decorations. They were under water in the cellar. All ruined. We did our best with jewellery and chandelier droplets and salt dough angels but it didn’t look quite right. But word had gone round, and friends from Brighton and the village brought us gifts of baubles and hearts and and ginger biscuits to hang on the tree and by Christmas the tree was the loveliest I had ever seen it. One day just before Christmas there was a knock at the door and Tess who owns the Village Shop, and her cousin Sam, came in bearing the most amazing gingerbread house. It was ‘Gingernash’ – a perfect replica of our home with almond roof tiles, chocolate finger ridge tiles, pathways made of boiled sweets, flower beds filled with liquorice allsorts and a tumble of sweets falling from Dave’s bio-diesel shed which the children were allowed to ‘tidy up’. How kind people are.

We snuggled down for Christmas. In the new year, the snow whirled and drifted and settled all around us. The holidays went on and on and it seemed to the children as if a miracle had happened and school would never open again and they would grow up in a pure white world catching snowflakes on their tongues, sledging on trays and building giant snowmen. We were isolated; there was no way we could get into Brighton even in the Landrover and so we settled down to work on the Tin Drum menus.

Over the past year or so as we have been growing our vegetables and rearing a few animals, we have also been learning traditional ways of preparing and cooking food. At the smallholding we have been working on recipes using the food that we know we can produce ourselves. Last week Stuart - the new manager of Seven Dials Tin Drum, and Greg, Pete and George – the head chefs from all three of the restaurants, came out to the smallholding for three days and we turned our kitchen into a training kitchen.

It was a chance for us all to work together and refine butchery skills, experiment with traditional ways of curing and preserving meat and discuss, develop and cook all the dishes that will soon be on our new menu. At the end of each day we opened a couple of bottles of wine and all sat around the farmhouse table to eat and discuss the dishes.

We are really excited about the new menu. It is the culmination of a real team effort. It will be fine, local, rustic food served with great wines and beers, and we hope you will enjoy it.