sheepish

My favourite recipe comes from an unexpected source for Indian flavours, Rick Stein in his "Coast to Coast" book. His recipe is for "Dry Spiced Potatoes and Cauliflower with Fennel Seeds". It's a dry mix, something to serve with another dish with a sauce. The potatoes are cubed small and parboiled for 6 mins. The spices dry fried and ground. Small florets of cauli are fried with onion, ginger, garlic, green chilli and fennel seeds. When nearly cooked the potatoes plus spices are added and heated through with a lid on for 3-4 mins. Very popular in our house.

I'm liking Zacky's list. A lot. I'd also like to suggest a personal favourite that I'm just about to dish up. Changde Clay-Pot chicken from Fuschia Dunlop's Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook. Chunks of chicken, in my case wings chopped into 5 pieces, deep fried twice til brown. Then simmered in chicken stock with chili bean paste, garlic cloves, casia, ginger and chili. Top with strips of green pepper and spring onion greens. Just the boy at the moment where it hasn't got above 0C for more than a week, our water supply has frozen up and the track from my house resembles a bobsleigh run.

Sounds like poor quality peppercorns, which is sadly quite common. In the UK anyway. You have to hunt for a trusted source.

You'd easy keep 2 in half an acre. Probably much less. Although expect a churned, muddy patch when they're gone. Pigs you generally need to feed once or twice a day. They will graze if there's grass, but you'll always have to suplementary feed.

Mine have about 30 acres of mixed woodand and pasture. 4 pigs usually in that. Really, they are easy to load. I feed twice a day and they run to a bucket of feed. Pigs are the easiest animals to load because you feed them year round. Sheep are harder. Cattle are much harder.

I think I've just got used to it in high-end place, but it still grates to get it added to wine. I know the deal with wine, I'm going to pay 2.5-3.5 times retail price, and I think that alone should cover my glass and someone to top me up - a task I am quite capable of doing myself but seems analogous to wandering around naked to most waiting staff given their reaction to such an attempt. Interesting what you say about France. Not eaten out there much, but there was much protestation when we tried to leave a couple of Euros on top of an 18 euro bill for 2 pizzas and a bottle of wine in the local place in the village where we stay.

I'll throw The Square into the pot. I haven't been to any of the others mentioned though, but this is at least as good as any other 2 or 3 * places I have been to.

As for loading, I just shake a bucket of feed and pour into a trough in the trailer. Usually move the pigs into a field I know I'll be able to get the trailer out of the day before. Fill trailer with straw and feed in there. Pigs are usually asleep in the trailer in the morning. But they must suffer some stress being transported, I'm very much pro your method. Have you scalded the hair off before? How did that go? I've seen descriptions of either immersing - looks tricky, or just pouring the hot water over and scraping. Good tip about hair at tis time of year, I hadn't heard that before. Seems unfrotunate since early winter would be pig killing time in Northern Europe. 10" of back fat is some going :-) My latest bunch had about 3-4" and I thought that was a lot. Been away with work this week and picking vegetarian options at every meal trying to give my arteries a break from pork fat. I must get the charcuteire book. Gets mentioned a lot here, and only good stuff.

Farming sheep and pigs means I generally have 2 x 6' chest freezers full of meat. My vegetable gardening skills aren't good, and I never allocate enough time to doing it. In my head I'm going to cook like Michel Bras. It never really happens. We always cook on the bone - where there is a bone in the area, and never trim off fat. Cleave lamb chops for curry, similar for a chicken for a chinese style stew. Sausage and bacon breakfasts 2 or 3 times a week. What I crave are vegetables. Raw salads. And lentil curry. My work colleagues are always surprised I try to order everything vegetarian if ever we are out and eating. For me it's m chance to eat less meat.

Sorry, I've never really sat back to take pics. That one was my wife creating a file of evidence in case I damaged the table. Won't be having any more slaughtered until late next year now. I tend to process 2 pigs at a time which is a good 1.5 days of hard work, by the time you've made sausages, salami, etc. This guide is very good and shows how to cut into primals, and much more. Really for proper butchers, not hackers like me, but it's a great free resource. http://www.qmscotland.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=112&Itemid=65 Simpler is the River Cottage Pig in a Day DVD, pitched more at the occasional cutter. Recommended recipes. Farmhouse Stir-Fried Pork with Green Peppers from the Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook. Sweet and Sour Pork, and Pork Slivers with Sweet Fermented Paste from the Sichuan Cookery Book. I'd use any part of the leg for those. Loin would arguably be even better, bet it's better still again as back bacon so long as you have a good band of backfat attached. Special mention to Stir Fried Pigs Liver from the same book - although no lean pork. For fatty minced pork the Zhong Crescent Dumplings are another favourite from that book. I make fatty mince from any part at all. Often leg and backfat because I prize shoulder and belly too much for other uses.

Breakfast at The Angel at Hetton, apparently.

Very interesting, particularly the kill, and decision to skin. That's the bit I subcontract out. I'm lucky that the abattoir is only 10 miles away, but I do aspire to keep the whole process in house soon. The cured jowl looks good. What is your cure? Is it then air dried for long? My butchery is pretty basic. This is me hacking up one of last years 3 Welsh pigs. Too lean for me really. This year I had 4 Tamworths. Much nicer character pigs than the Welsh. Probably got too fat. I was feeding noticeably more to make sure I had the back fat I wanted. I cut them into primals. Most of the shoulder and about half the legs went into sausages, no shortage of fat this year and they're beautifully succulent. I boned out the loins and made back bacon. Cured in what looked like very small amounts of salt, sugar and saltpetre. Cured for two weeks then hung for 3 days. This has worked really well. I still want to build a smoker but this would be hard to beat, very happy. About half the belly I packed in salt and sugar to make more of a pancetta. I tend to cube this for lardons. Didn't make any hams this year. We don't entertain en masse often enough to get through the size of brine cured or salted and dried hams these pigs would have made. Packed lots of bags of 250g of lean pork from the legs to use mainly in Chinese influenced dishes - mostly from Fuschia Dunlop's books. Left with a few loins and shoulder cuts for roasting, plus sausage meat for pies and dumplings. I did make quite a lot of salami and chorizo. This was another reason to lay on the back fat this year. Hung it all up from the roof of our barn, and went to France for a week. Came home and all but one piece was gone! Very upsetting. I think the skins may have split and fallen, the strings were still attached to the joists. Have left sausage and hams hanging before and no issue so I don't think it's rats. Finally got some lardo curing in brine, which I believe takes about 3 months so not got round to sampling that yet.

Personally I coat in seasoned flour before frying. They're so delicate I wouldn't want the crunchy crumbs detracting from that. But I'm sure they'd still be delicious that way!

How much meat would one reasonably expect to be on a trotter? I ask because Mrs Sheepish thought she'd treat me to trotter cakes, a recipe from Pascal Aussignac's "Cuisinier Gascon". This calls for two slow cooked trotters. Check. It goes on to say strip the meat from the trotters. Right, there's about 50g here. The recipe is for a 1kg cake having added another 250g of ingredients - flour, butter, eggs and Parmesan mainly. So what to chefs mean by trotter? Must be more than the foot. Up into the hock perhaps? Got some hocks to hand too, having butchered 4 pigs in the last month, so will probably dig those out to add to this, but would like to know what the "proper" method should be. Ta

Any offal. This is fine for brains and kidneys - more for me. It's a lot of lungs and liver to get through having had 4 pigs slaughtered in the last month. Cooked mushrooms, raw are OK. Anchovies, although I sneak those into ragu. Hare. Lentils. Octopus. All shell fish except scallops. Laverbread. Sashimi. Foie gras. And fried eggs. I have managed to convert her to the joys of blue cheese, raw beef, and, I'm sure there's something else, but I forget.

I usually buy a couple a year from blackface.co.uk as my special treat - about a tenner a pop - and then there's the cost of a half decent Burgundy to factor in! I had an email from Blackface this week saying as there were so many available at the moment that this week a box of 8 was *about* 60 quid.

Got people coming for dinner in a few weeks. Want to do something swanky. But it'll be a Sunday night. I find it hard to envision a menu without at least one fish course. So my plan is to hit my fishmonger on Friday morning (I'm pretty sure nothing new comes in on Saturday morning, but I will check). Ask what's freshest, and not oily (that spoils quickly, right?), and work with that. But, anything to avoid? Anything keep particularly well? What are shellfish like? Any tips on best way to store? Freezing just seems wrong. Doesn't it? TIA

Looking for somewhere not too smart and stuffy (will have a 1 and 2 yr old with us - well behaved, but well, they're 1 and 2). Would like somewhere that thinks steak and kidney rather than thai fish cakes. Pub setting ideal, but not vital. Any recommendations within about 30 miles of Burton on Trent? I have had a search. Apologies if this has been done before. TIA

I'm going to guess he means Grace Brothers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Are_You_Being_Served%3F I like BBR's online presence. The shop is an oak panelled gentleman's club. If you're a city trader after a bottle of '82 Haut Brion I'm sure it's lovely.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-10941178 I've only been to 50% of the list, but of the ones I know this wouldn't be my order. One of the top 3 in particular - come on, no way! OK, the one at number 3.

Just curious to know if anyone has sampled one of these? http://hobbshousebakery.co.uk/shop_online/our_breads/shepherds_loaf/ I never considered where we live to be a foodie hotbed, but Mrs Sheepish bumped into someone to day who has eaten said loaf, and says it's fantastic. I'm always up for trying something so glowingly thought of, and Mrs Sheepish is a dab hand at sourdough bread baking so strongly considering an order. But really, £21? For a loaf of bread? Any eGullet experience?

The paprikash is very good. I didn't check the linked recipe, but the one in HFW's "Meat" book also includes liver which I think gets overcooked in the time the hearts cook. I make it with hearts alone for preference. They are also good cubed and barbequed which is what I do with most of ours, because my wife won't touch them so are easy to include in a mixed barbeque. I like a mixed offal (heart, liver and lung) kebab. Kidneys are just too god devilled for me to consider anything else with those :-) Also stuffed and braised works well. Nice recipe in Fergus Henderson's "Noise to Tail Eating".

If I find myself with a few hours, or a day, unexpectedly free I like to cook. And I like to cook fiddly, la-di-dah stuff. Think French Laundry, Alinea, Gordon Ramsay, Fat Duck (OK, I haven't managed anything from there yet!), etc, etc. But my spare time usually comes at very short notice. It pours with rain all day so I can't (don't want to) get out and get on with my farm chores. So generally I don't have hand dived scallops, live lobster, truffles (ever), and so on. I do have Sainsburys (a fairly ordinary supermarket, in my location) and that's about it. So what are your successful dishes where ingredients are hard to come by but the faffing around is worth it. Substituting ingredients is very much allowed. I'm quite happy to go completely free-style but I like following recipes at least once a week because it helps me learn new techniques, approaches and flavour combinations. My favourites in the above category so far are the veal breast on polenta dish from TFL with lamb breast substituted. And pork belly with Madeira sauce from Gordon Ramsay. Neither of these are *that* fiddly really, no problem wasting my time with something a fair bit more involved. Any inspirational ideas?

When I cure air dried hams, prior to air drying, I pack them in salt and don't worry too much about the temperature, although typically I'm doing that in the cooler months which probably equates to somewhere between 5 and 14C here. With brines I try and keep them cool. For large brined hams I drop cool-box freezer blocks into the brine where the brine bucket won't fit into a fridge. So 12C does sound warm for a brine based on what I've been used to doing Curing salt contains nitrite and nitrite is used to prevent the formation of the bacteria that causes botulism - although I think a big part of adding it is always that it keeps the meat pink, rather than letting it go grey. So without this I think you are correct to keep the brine refrigerated. I certainly wouldn't throw it away from where you are. Just had a skim through the brining section in Jane Grigson's "Charcuterie and French Pork Cookery" and it doesn't mention keeping brine particularly cool, but it is old enough to use saltpetre (nitrite) in the brine recipes. I'd like to know how you get on because I've spotted it in Under Pressure too and like the idea of it. I have the vac-packer and the saltpetre, still working on a water bath I can leave for 12 hours :-)

Another voice of thanks for the review and the pictures. My excuse is I don't get out much, but I have managed 1.5 reviews for my 3 proper meals out this year :-) Personally I feel uncomfortable taking pictures at all in restaurants, but I'm glad that doesn't apply to everyone.