Pork to Fork in a Day

by Jo Eames

Last Saturday saw unusual activity at the Peach Barns. First to arrive were Charlie Barr (head chef at The Fishes, North Hinksey) and Joe Boiling (sous-chef at The Thatch, Thame). Lee Cash and I came next, lugging cases of St-Veran and Aspall's Suffolk cider.  The guests found their way to rural Oxfordshire okay, an assortment of food journalists and their partners, followed by Mark from North Aston Organics (our fellow farm tenants) with a box of freshly-harvested vegetables, including a Savoy cabbage with the dew still on it, which could have done duty as “Audrey 2” in the school production of The Little Shop of Horrors I saw just the night before.

Finally, the guest of honour. She arrived with Simon in an Aubrey Allen van and was carried in by Simon and Joe, complaining he didn’t know how the Mafia did it! She was a fine specimen, a sow from Jimmy Butler’s Blythburgh farms, her skin already conditioned for crackling by the salt breezes that blow onto the Suffolk coast and keep the pigs cool and moist. Pigs can’t sweat naturally. Did you know that? Another common saying put to the sword.

She lay there, split into two sides, clean and rather majestic on Charlie’s butcher’s block. It was impossible not to treat her with respect. Well, she was looking at us.

Charlie donned the chainmail and gauntlet of a professional butcher (or Arthurian knight – Lee has his eye on it for fancy dress purposes) and soon the head was set aside for brawn and one of the journalists was being shown how to excise a kidney. They were a little tentative to take up the cudgels at first, but by the time the loin had gone into the oven for lunch they were taking it in turns to carve up chops, saw through ribs and trim the belly.  Seems you can get the staff, after all.

We broke for lunch about 2.30. Joe had been busy in our training kitchen while Charlie was wielding her boning knife and soon the board table was laden with pork, crackling, potatoes roasted in duck fat, apple sauce from my orchard and the most vivid fresh green Savoy cabbage. One of the guests said he hadn’t touched cabbage in thirty years, since it was last forced on him at school, boiled to sludge. On Saturday he had seconds.

Then it was back to the mincer to make sausages and chorizo. Lee demonstrated his link-tying skills and then the writers had a go. The shadow of Brucie in his Generation Game heyday hovered over some of the efforts, for those of us old enough to remember. And so the day ended in laughter, and we carried off the chops and the sausages to tell tales of our butchery prowess over supper and breakfast at the Fleece in Witney.

We enjoyed it so much we’ll be doing it again and offering it to our pub guests as a Pork to Fork Day. February, probably, if you’re interested.