Meet and eat Blythburgh Free Range Pork

In January Jamie Oliver challenged the British public to take more notice of the conditions in which pigs are kept, but very few pork farmers will let the public onto their farm to see conditions for themselves. But, one Suffolk farmer is so confident of the standards of his free range pigs that he has agreed to do just that on Food Safari’s Free Range Pork in a Day on Saturday May 16th.

Food Safari is a new venture which offers field to fork experiences and Free Range Pork in a Day will take attendees on a pork journey starting from a farm walk at Blythburgh Free Range Pork, to a butchery demonstration and hands-on sausage and charcuterie workshop and feast at The Anchor, Walberswick.

At Blythburgh Free Range Pork on the Suffolk coast near Southwold, attendees will see for themselves the high welfare standards of led by award-winning farmers, Jimmy and Alastair Butler, who are passionate about producing great tasting pork. Blythburgh pigs are free to roam in large paddocks giving them the space to display natural behaviours like rooting in the soil and playing. Not only does this improve their welfare but it also means they grow at a slower more natural rate and this in turn results in flavoursome, succulent meat.

Alastair Butler says: “We are firm believers that the future of British pork lies in the public understanding more about where their food comes from and then people can make informed decisions about what they eat. think Food Safari is a wonderful way to show people our farm and make the connection between farming and flavour. Remember a free range pig is a happy pig and a happy pig surely tastes better!”

Back at Food Safari’s base, The Anchor at Walberswick, traditional Suffolk butcher Ray Kent will who’ll show attendees how to tackle a pork carcass. Recent reports have suggested that there is a resurgence of interest in the forgotten cheaper cuts, like shoulder and belly, and Ray will show us all of these as well as suggesting their uses in the kitchen.

Following the butchery demonstration, Mike Keen, The Anchor’s Head Chef, will show attendees how to create their own sausage recipes which will be barbequed for lunch. Mike will also show participants how to create charcuterie and ham in your own kitchen. The day will wrap up with a relaxed pork lunch with beer and wine expertly selected by The Anchor’s own Mark Dorber.

Saturday May 16th , 10am-5pm

Cost: £150 per person, £250 per couple to include a pork lunch, drinks and your own butchery to take home.



**Book by Friday 24 April and get 20% off** email info@foodsafari.co.uk

Event report: Wild Meat in a Day

Sunday saw Food Safari's inaugural game day play to a packed house at The Anchor, Walberswick on the Suffolk coast, using the specially converted learning space as our base. After coffee and some gamey canapes we started the day by learning the nitty gritty of venison butchery from Ray Kent, a professional butcher with a lifetime's experience of getting the most out of a prime carcass. At least one of the group thought Ray was the "star of the show" as he deftly demonstrated how to tackle this amazing meat.


Ray showed of a stunning fillet which would have sold for £65-70 but there are more inexpensive cuts (venison burgers are are fantastic alternative to beef). The venison was supplied by our good friends at The Wild Meat Company who specialise in fine, humanely killed game, prepared to the highest standards. Robert Gooch, MD of the Wild Meat Company was on hand to provide his expert insights into the world of game.

The group was quickly up to speed and preparing joints of their own like pros. With a little basic tuition and some very sharp knives (German are best apparently but get them professionally sharpened from time to time to keep them in prime condition) it is perfectly possible to learn the craft of butchery at home.

Following the butchery demonstration, Mike Keen, head chef, demonstrated some delicious game recipes including my favourite - a spiced partridge dish with fenugreek and coconut milk providing a nod to the Eastern origins of this bird as well as a stunningly rich jugged hare. The Anchor's outdoor grill was put to unseasonally early good use and the wafts of grilling game drew quite a lot of attention from Walberswick passers-by. The group got stuck in to stuffing and chopping and by this time we were all getting pretty hungry.

The day concluded with a communal game feast around a huge table. Mark Dorber the charismatic proprietor of the Anchor and globe-trotting beer expert matched each dish with either a beer or a wine. There was a lot of smacking of lips when Mike served pheasant simply roasted with a stuffing of local Wonmill cheese and redcurrant jelly under the skin to keep the breast moist while allowing the skin to crisp to a succulent juiciness. By combining with the classic Belgian ale Duvel the dish was lifted even further. The fenugreek partridge met its match with unusual and very intense barrel fermented release from San Francisco's award-winning Anchor Brewing Company. The barrels had previously contained spirit (we couldn't agree whether gin or rum) that lent the beer increased gravity (strength) and flavour. This beer is pretty secret stuff - Mark had been sent a bottle to review for potential release to the UK market and it was the kind of one-off foodie moment that I love!

Thanks from the Food Safari team to all concerned for making this such a fantastic event. The game season returns in the autumn when we'll be exploring game birds as. Meanwhile we're back at The Anchor and nearby at Blythburgh Pork on 16 May with our very special take on Pork -Pig in a Day. See the Food Safari website for booking details.

Wild Meat in a Day - last chance to book

Wild Meat in a Day - prepare it, cook it, eat it
Sunday March 29th
The Anchor at Walberswick, Suffolk

Join Food Safari to round off the game season with a fun, hands-on day preparing, cooking and eating game. There are just a few places left on the event which takes place in ten days time.

The workshop will be led Robert Gooch of The Wild Meat Company. One of Rick Stein's Food Heroes, Robert started the Wild Meat Company in 1999 with the aim of taking "the muck and mystery out of buying and eating game". Wild Meat Company sell wild game from woods, forests and fields in Suffolk killed by local farmers and landowners.

Robert will share his wealth of experience about local game, habitats and seasons. The focus will be venison and we'll explore how different varieties of deer produce different meat.

Generally speaking, the smaller the deer, the more fine-grained and delicate the meat will be. Roe and muntjak are more gently flavoured animals while fallow deer have grainier, richer meat, and the big red deer give the most open-textured and gamey venison of all. Robert will explain why wild animals that have roamed freely are likely to be a little more robust in flavour and texture than their farmed counterparts, which will have had a more restricted range.

Venison is rich in protein and lower in fat than other red meats and is a good source of B vitamins, iron, phosphorus, zinc and selenium. Mike Keen, The Anchor's Head Chef will demonstrate so tasty and inspiring game dishes as well as sharing tips and ideas for preparing game at home. We'll round of the day with a tasting menu of game dishes and suggestions about complementary pairings of game with wine and beer.

Full details of the day are available on our web site: Food Safari or email info@foodsafari.co.uk

Charles Nash of Sutton Hoo Chickens

We are deeply saddened to report that Charles Nash died suddenly on March 8th. He was one of the country's genuine Food Heroes and his early death is a great loss. His friendly face will be missed at farmers markets across Suffolk.

We send our heartfelt sympathy to Charles' family.

We were lucky enough to spend a fascinating morning with Charles in November walking around his farm at Sutton Hoo (Chicken the Full Story) and had hoped to share this experience with others through a Food Safari event in the summer this year.

We're informed that his family will continue to run Sutton Hoo Chickens in his memory and we hope that we may be able to offer this event at some time in the future so that people may have the opportunity to learn more about his legacy.

Brew day at Grain Brewery: report

I arranged for Tim to visit Grain's microbrewery in Alburgh on the Norfolk/Suffolk border for a day learning how to brew beer. Well it was his birthday and thankfully he did bring a few bottles back and also agreed to blog his experience!

"I managed to get lost on the way to Alburgh but what a beautiful place! On the North side of the Waveney valley which runs along the Suffolk/Norfolk border this is unexpectedly rolling English countryside. When Phil Halls and Geoff Wright were looking for a home for their new brewery in 2006 they saw and rejected lots of potential sites including a range of different farm buildings and (thankfully) characterless premises on industrial estates at a much higher cost. When they found their current site at South Farm they knew it was right for what they wanted to do.
What I learned between 9.30 and 4.00 is that the life of a craft brewer is physically demanding, full of sensory (particularly olfactory) stimulation and occasionally repetitive.

All brewers develop their own unique recipes. Today we were brewing Grain's session bitter Oak and throughout the process we referred to a sheet listing the precise weights of ingredients.
The first part of the brewing process is to combine hot water (called liquor in brewing terminology - it just sounds better doesn't it?) with malted barley which comes in big sacks.
This lets the heat release the natural sugars in the barley (which will later be turned to alcohol by yeast) in a big open barrel called a mash tun. The clever bit at this stage as we learned at Beer Academy is combining different types of malted barley: pale, crystal, chocolate in different proportions to create beers of very different flavours and colours. Oak majors on pale malt - Maris Otter to be precise.




The sweetest cup or two of the resulting 'wort' is discarded and then the rest is transferred to a copper tank where it is boiled with hops. Two types of hops are added in two stages: first bittering hops which add bitterness; and then at end of an hour or so aroma hops which 'spice' the brew adding a wonderful, heady aroma. These aroma hops are an expensive ingredient (by weight) but really contribute character and zing to a beer like Oak.

While the 'boil' takes place we get our hands and boots dirty shovelling the spent barley out of the mash tun (see below) - it's oddly satisfying and we just finish in time for Jimmy the farmer to come and pick up the sacks of waste barley husks to feed to his sheep. How about that for thrift and sustainability?



The brew is then transferred into a fermentation tank where it will, with the addition of yeast the following day, begin to become beer as we know it with the malt sugar converted to alcohol. The beer we brewed will be ready in a few short weeks and Phil is going to give us a call when it's ready!"

We really like Grain's beers and are impressed with the way Phil and Geoff are working to bring their beer to new audiences : check out their classic session bitter Oak which has some lovely aromatic hops on the nose, the Ruby Porter which is full, sweet and creamy with that 'Ovaltine' flavour from crystal malt and the Strong Pale Ale which has quite a serious drink with a kick.

At Hill Farm Oils - extra virgin rapeseed oil

Hill Farm Oils are one of the great success stories of farm diversification in Suffolk. They've taken a familiar crop, rapeseed, which turns so many fields bright yellow from April onwards and produced a nutty cold pressed extra virgin rapeseed oil. The oil is now widely available in Waitrose and Sainsbury's nationwide, East Anglian Tescos as well as independent farm shops and delis.

The Fairs family have been farming for 35 years in and around Heveningham, near Halesworth in Suffolk, but in 2001 Sam Fairs was inspired to develop a new product from the rapeseed crop after hearing a friend had been rapeseed oil tablets to lower his cholesterol. Sam began to experiment with the cold pressing the rapeseed into a premium cooking oil that has half the saturated fat of olive oil and is high in omega-3, an essential fatty acid which can help lower cholesterol and prevent heart disease.

Rape covers about 3% of England's farmland and closer to 10% in some areas but it is not a crop that we usually associate with food. It's main use is for the manufacture of cooking oils, margarine and processed foods, with much of the by-product used as animal feed. Many varieties aren't even edible and are used for the production of lubricants and adhesives to cosmetics and gardening products.

It was fascinating to talk to Sam about the challenge of getting people to switch their buying and cooking habits. Sam talks about how olive oil has become so deeply ingrained in our minds as THE healthy oil, the one we reach for automatically in the supermarket aisle or standing at the stove. His focus is on educating people about the health benefits of rapeseed oil and encouraging them to try the taste for themselves. He tells me how in their experience once people have tried Hill Farm Oils they are converted (I vouch for this). Their greatest marketing opportunity is to get people to see the oil being used in cookery demonstrations, used in recipes and promoted by food writers and chefs. Mark Hix is a great fan and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall often uses it in his recipes. Mike Keen, Head Chef at The Anchor, Walberswick tells me he's a big fan and we'll use it wherever possible in Food Safari cookery demonstrations to encourage more people to give it a try.

Sam gives me a tour of the site and talks through the cold pressing process and shows me the bi-product which becomes cattle feed. The whole process from pressing to bottling is extremely high-tech and makes use of some very expensive bits of kit. The Fairs family have invested heavily in this enterprise.

Sam generously gives me several bottles of oil to try at home and to pass on to friends and chefs!

I've made great use of it and recommend it to add texture and flavour to home-made bread, to replace butter in muffins and flapjacks and for stir-frys and roasting vegetables; its high smoke point make it ideal for this.

If like me, you try to buy as much food locally as you can, Hill Farm Oil is great news - single-estate, extra-virgin oil from just up the road - has to be a great alternative to Italian, Greek or Spanish olive oils.

Blythburgh Free Range Pork - January 22nd

Like anyone who's travelled up the A12 towards Southwold and Lowestoft, I've been familiar with the Jimmy and Alastair Butler's Blythburgh Freerange Pigs for a few years. They've almost become as much as landmark of this part of the north Suffolk coast, as the stunning Blythburgh church. So it was great to get meet one half of the team on a wet and stormy January morning.

The light sandy healthland soil around Blythburh has limited agricultural use but it is, apparently, the best land for outdoor pig-keeping in the whole of the UK. Unlike most free-range reared pigs, the Butler's spend all of their lives outside and have 80 times more space to run around in than conventionally reared pigs. This, they say, is reflected in the quality of the meat.

The pigs freedom to roam develops good muscle and tender meet. Being exposed to the sun and weather maintains the pig's skin in better condition leading to superior crackling on roasting joints. The breed of pig adds to the flavour, JSR Cotswold Gold sows are a blend of lines, including traditional breeds, specially bred to thrive under outdoor conditions. The Butlers run 1200 of these sows on 120 acres in addition to the 75 acres utilised by the growing pigs.

The pigs are fed a natural diet containing no antibiotics or growth promoters. They are grown about 20 per cent slower than normal pig production which makes the animals more mature at slaughter - which again contributes to the juiciness and flavour of the meat. The piglets remain with their Mothers (sows) in insulated arcs for nearly four weeks until they reach a healthy size and strength to be weaned off milk onto solid food. This means the sows can have a well earned rest allowing them to recover after having so many hungry mouths to feed and the piglets are moved into large straw filled tents and huts that become their new homes.

Alastair tells me that they are one of the only pig farmers that are happy to have people visit their site because they are confident in what they are doing and know that people will not see any of the shocking practices, like castration and tail docking, revealed by Jamie Oliver's recent programme, Jamie Saves Our Bacon. Those with beady eyes will have spotted Jimmy in the studio and some footage filmed on their farm.

Blythburgh Free Range Pork is a perfect partner for Food Safari, focussed on providing a high quality product with impressive animal welfare and a conviction that the future of British pig farming depends on the public wanting to know more about where their food comes from, rebuilding connections with farmers and demanding a responsible food chain.