You’ve got to not only admire the chef that puts ‘dirty beef dripping’ on his menu, you’ve got to order it. So I did. And Tim Abbot, chef and manager of The Pigs pub near Holt, Norfolk, is the man that’ll prepare it for you. I can’t recall seeing dripping on a menu anywhere else in the UK. The dripping is but one choice from the ‘iffits’* section of the menu along with potted cheese, sweet cure herring, mushy peas, haslet and cauliflower fritters. However it’s in porcine matter that The Pigs really shines. All the pork comes from Dave Smith at Perfick Pork, just a few miles away in Great Ryburgh. If you take the road out of Binham you can see his animals in the fields. Dave favours a Duroc boar put to a Large White sow, and hangs the meat for several days to let it firm up.
On Tim’s specials board is ‘pieces of pig’ with the caveat (or full-on encouragement in my case) ‘may include heart, ears, ribs, cheeks, sausages’. The ears are brined for a few days, before being finely sliced and deep fried, they’re crunchy and delicious. The cheeks come slowly braised in the pub’s own specially brewed beer, and the belly pork comes with smoky bacon beans and black pudding. Now we’re talking, a large plate with bits of pig on, pass me a fork.
For all the forgotten-cuts nose-to-tail eating bru ha ha of the past few years, in reality few chefs have the balls – quite literally on one occasion Tim tells me – to give offal much space in their kitchens. While this sort of cooking and ethos can be found at its source, St John restaurant in London, it’s rare to find it in simply laid back country pub. “We’re a destination pub” says Tim, “people have to come to us rather than pass by, so we have to offer something different”. It’s no wonder then that Country Life gave the place Country Pub of the Year 2009.
It’s great to see the humble pig, so associated with East Anglia, given its due reverence. However it’s not the only regional speciality on the menu. Matt Strutt is pastry chef at the Pigs and as well as turning out fabulous lardy cake, parkin and junket, also serves Norfolk Biffins. The name biffin is said to be derived from peau fine, (Fr. Beautiful skin). Mentioned in Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol’, Norfolk biffins are a specific breed of apple once popular in the county, that were placed in a cooling bakery oven on straw for hours to bake before being strewn with sugar. Matt’s versions come cored with suet, apple and sultanas, and plenty of brown sugar. Biffins are seldom grown commercially in the country or anywhere else these days, and consequently Matt uses Bramley’s as far as I can tell.
If all this has whetted your appetite, but you’re a bit short this month The Pigs, like the Crooked Billet in Wiltshire, offers a barter system. A blackboard in the restaurant bares the text ‘if you can grow, breed, shoot or steal any thing you feel might be at home on our menu, let’s do a deal’. So if you happen to have a biffin apple tree, or anything else in your back garden get in touch with Tim and Matt.
