Who are your food heroes? Meet Peter Lane - more than just pork pies

What is a ‘food hero’? There are of course the Hughs, the Jamies of this world, not only cooking great food but using their status to highlight issues such as school dinners, hospital food, the catastrophe that is the fishing industry. I think this is fantastic work, and these high profile individuals are worthy of the title ‘food hero’.  However, for me, there is another category of ‘food hero’ - those who get on with the business of producing and promoting great, honest food. 

I was introduced to Peter Lane through his pork pies:

 Pies to dream about: meaty, well-seasoned, amazing pastry:
 

They form part of the Hampshire Tapas that I wrote about a few months ago.

 

 Peter falls fairly and squarely into my ‘food hero’ box: he’s all about fantastic food, honestly made, whether he’s filling a freezer for a busy family or preparing curry for 80. His business is ‘I Cook - You Eat’ - I think the name sums up what he does impeccably. 





In cooking so his clients can indeed eat, he is fuelled by the desire to cook fantastic food using locally sourced ingredients. 

“I believe in good hearty, wholesome food.  Food that is not simply there to feed you, but engages, nourishes and brings family and friends together around a table.  Food that encourages and then satisfies your hunger.”

Chicken & Tarragon Pie - I can smell it from here...

He grew up eating his mother’s good but traditional food. What really sparked his interest was his father returning from travelling to places like Italy and China, bringing back new and interesting flavours and dishes. Despite “playing hard and eating hard” (his words!) while he was growing up, and cooking from an early age, Peter’s journey to making a living from food has been an interesting and unusual one via music college, the organ at St Giles Cripplegate in London, Oddbins and the Civil Service. Already running I Cook You Eat on a part time basis, he took voluntary redundancy from the Civil Service in 2011 to concentrate on food full time. The influences of the food his father introduced to the family is much evident in the food he offers. As comfortable with the exotic as he is with the traditional: from freezer filling for busy families, to preparing canapés or dinner parties, he draws on global food inspiration, revisiting dishes to recreate them with top quality ingredients sourced as locally as possible to his north west Hampshire home: veg from the garden, local meat. He’s planning chickens and pigs of his own, but until then, most of his meat comes from a local farm:

“I get to drive a few miles to a beautiful farm in a stunning area where I can see the pigs, chickens and beef steers that will all go into my cooking. Everything is properly hung…I use very simple ingredients to make really fantastic food”  

Not that it’s easy running a food business from home: “I have to be really organised, and sometimes I just have to get out of the kitchen. It can be madness preparing 5 dishes, or cooking dinner for the children at the same time as some baba ganoush”, but he clearly practises what he preaches at home as well as in his business.

“At my son’s first birthday party, we had 24 people sat at a big long table in the garden. We ate broad beans and chorizo, home shot pigeon breast salad, courgette souffles and our own home made pizzas. All the ingredients came from the garden or nearby. … The children love hearty tasty food – Mediterranean based or traditional English food. Of course they have fish fingers, but often we’ll cook them something like smoked mackerel kedgeree, pasta they love, cottage pie, spag bol. Recently they surprised me by eating a sardine and leek gratin. We’ll have a fry up on a Sunday – but the children don’t consider it to be a proper fry up unless there’s black pudding involved.”

Clients of ‘I Cook You Eat’ can expect fantastically tasty home cooked food which Peter can provide fresh or frozen. He marks his meals with a ‘made on’ date and takes a pragmatic approach, in conjunction with the environmental health officer, to food safety. Take his pies 

“The whole point is to preserve the meat, and a properly made pie should last 10-14 days. There’s not much advice on the internet, but a big pie is simply too large to cool down in a fridge. I explained to the EHO that I left the big pies to cool out in the kitchen, and she agreed with the common sense approach I was taking.” 

It seems that his clients agree with this approach. “I often get very effusive feedback, but occasionally I won’t hear from a client, and I will worry if that happens, but then very often, a few weeks or months later, they will get back in touch to arrange a repeat order. There have been no complaints yet.” 

In these days of food confusion, where we are reeling from what feels like daily revelations about the gruesome nature of our food industry, it is reassuring to meet people like Peter who are prepared to quite literally put their money where their mouth is, using local, traceable produce from producers he trusts. In terms of a food manifesto (if it could be called that) Peter suggests that if we all took a little more time – may be half an hour a week to look for a local producer, to go to one place and buy one thing, we could all feel better about the food we eat. Personally, I know I don't always get the chance - or make the time - to do this, but I definitely agree with him, and it's my aim to be better at doing this. And who knows where that could lead to?

Peter’s website, I Cook You Eat has more details about the food he cooks and the service he can provide. He provides private catering, but can also be found at the food markets in the North West Hampshire area. You can find him in the twittersphere at @petesporkpies and on Facebook .

Important blog disclaimer thing: Just so we're clear, although Peter agreed to talk to me about his business, and let me use his photos, I wasn't paid to write this post; you'll understand that when a girl gets to eat a pork pie that good, she has to shout about it - that's all!

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Friday night's gonna be alright - at The Wellington Arms

It's exciting times here. Exciting but busy. For various little reasons, I have been up early and going to bed later than usual. Come Friday evening, I was just about ready to sink onto the sofa and stick my head in a bottle of wine, but it was not to be.

'Dinner with the boss' - the Husband's boss and his new wife, to be precise, has been on the cards for a few months. A 'thank you' to the Husband for his hard work, and to me for putting up with the travelling, the last minute changes of plan, the general embuggerance factor that his work adds to our lives. There are plenty of bosses who wouldn't even recognise this, let alone do something about it, and, let's face it, it makes a change to be appreciated.

Various dates for this happening had been selected then discarded for various reasons, but 8th of February suited him and us. Sorted.

A couple of weeks earlier, the Husband brings the subject up. "We have to book somewhere". That's him using the 'royal we' to mean ME. I have never met the Husband's Boss. I have formed a picture of him in my mind based on snippets from the Husband. I am not quite sure what picture he might have had of me in his mind, but it is to him that I served, via the Husband, the nipple cakes.

Hard to know, then, what sort of place to book. The Husband gave me vague parameters, which basically set me somewhere between Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons (not so far away from us) and Nandos in Basingstoke.

Let me tell you that last night, there was not enough Origins GinZing in the world to make my tired eyes look instantly alive. The Husband and I were both shattered, but we girded ourselves and headed out. 

We got a little bit waylaid by the twisty lanes in the dark and didn't make it quite as early as we'd hoped. The Husband's Boss was already there by the time we arrived - they'd had been there for some time, as the delights of the Premier Inn, Basingstoke (where they were staying the night) had not held them enthralled. We were all tired - on a Friday night, I don't think any of us were at our best - but if the conversation flagged occasionally, we need not have feared, for the venue and the food - my goodness: AMAZING.

The Wellington Arms in Baughurst, on the Hampshire/Berkshire border, has been on my secret list of places I'd like to have dinner for quite some time. It has been voted No.2 in The Times 'Best Places to Eat in the Countryside', and Jason the 'Best Pub Chef' by the Good Food Guide. The accolades that drift gently across their website come from people such as Giles Coren and Diana Henry. A couple of friends have recommended it, and they make the chutneys that accompany the Hampshire tapas served at our friendly local wine merchants.

Having discarded both Le Manoir and Nandos as options (for very different reasons), I don't think I could have picked a better place. Physically, it's a very pretty pub (oak beams, Farrow & Ball, crackling fires). They keep bees and chickens, sheep and pigs and most of the veg comes out of their own kitchen garden. Ingredients that they don't produce themselves are sourced as locally as possible (local farms, local produce, fish driven up from Brixham). Totally fabulous. The atmosphere was relaxed, so when our own conversation faltered, the chatter and sounds of other people enjoying their evening carried us on. Having been unable to resist the lure of a couple of quick tweets before the evening, when we arrived, Simon, one of the owners, discreetly enquired who was the Recipe Junkie. I like that. I like that someone has taken the trouble to put 2 and 2 together. Wonderful, gentle hospitality.

You'll appreciate that taking photos of the food would not have been appropriate, so I didn't and you'll have to conjure up some mental pictures here. What I can say, in no uncertain terms, is that is that it is utterly to die for.

I had an amazing twice baked cheese souffle (a friend who's eaten there before had recommended it, and the waitress said that it had been on the menu since the place had opened) followed by mussels in coconut milk and yellow curry with fantastic thick cut chips. Not perhaps taking advantage of the locally sourced meat, but I had a real hankering for the mussels and I wasn't disappointed.They were creamy and the soup was fresh and full of chilli and coriander. The souffle was filled with leeks and was creamy and cheesy but not at all heavy or stodgy.  I had a brief flashback to a cheese souffle I once served up at a dinner party, and cringed. The Husband had an Ox tongue terrine which I didn't try because I just can't do tongue, but I have it on his good authority that it was delicious, followed by a steak. Both the Husband and Boss had the steak. One was rare, and the other was medium, as requested. I tried the Husband's rare steak and it was that 'melt in the mouth' thing that people talk about. Really really luscious. The puddings looked fantastic, but I couldn't fit one in. I was contemplating trying, but then I saw that they did handmade truffles as an option. So a really good hot cup of coffee and a heavenly dark chocolate truffle and I was more than happy. Husband's Boss had a treacle tart which was so amazing that he bought another one to take home with him.

It was truly fantastic. Didn't stop me being as tired as a dog, but I was thoroughly cheered by the time we left. Thank you Simon, and Jason, for a wonderful meal. We'll be back.

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Hampshire Tapas at Caviste - food & wine heaven (a review)

As you know, I am a big fan of good food (aren’t we all). I am also, you may have noticed, a fan of ‘local’ food, be that veg from the back garden or the Farmers’ Market, locally reared pork or blackberries foraged from the hedgerows round and about the village. 

Where we live we have some great independent shops, one of which is a wine merchant, Caviste. I should say now that I don’t pretend to buy all my wine here, or, in fact, that I know much about wine at all. On the other hand, I do like a good glass or two, and Caviste is where I sourced the Prosecco for my 40^th birthday party earlier in the year. If we are having people for dinner, I will head there with my menu in hand and a budget in my head and come away with bottles of loveliness and delight . When I have done this in the past, the wine that I have been recommended has always complimented the meal beautifully.

If you’d asked me before we moved here whether I would have bought wine from an independent wine merchant, I would have probably explained that it would be far too expensive. However, the reality is that it isn’t. They can, or course, sell you a bottle of wine costing £30, £50 or even (I believe) £500, but they also sell a fantastic range of ‘everyday drinking wines’ starting at £5 a bottle. Again, I can’t pretend to have tried them all – partly because the stock changes, but I have always enjoyed what I have come away with.

Now. What does all this have to do with local food? Well, I’d been aware that the shop had been refurbished and that a couple of tables had appeared in the windows, and thought nothing of it. Imagine, then, my excitement, when I walked passed a few days ago on the way back from a particularly muddy dog walk and spied a big sign outside announcing: Hampshire Tapas. I had to find out more, and deciding that there was no time like the present, I told the dog in no uncertain terms to be on his best behaviour, and went in.

Well, she who dares, wins, and as a result of that, I was delighted to be invited back (without the dog) on Friday lunchtime to have chat with Graham Devereux, the General Manager, over a platter of said tapas and a glass of extremely delicious red wine, which I can tell you was a 2012 Meerlust red from the Stellenbosch region of South Africa.

Hampshire Tapas is, I think, a totally genius idea. The tapas concerned are locally sourced, from independent producers in the county. The idea is that the intentionally limited selection will change according to the seasons and as Caviste discover more producers. When I had originally seen ‘tapas’, I had imagined the Spanish version made from local ingredients, but how much better to serve up the best of Hampshire in this form:  a slice of pork pie, Scotch egg, mozzarella made from a buffalo herd grazing the fields around Overton itself, and Tunworth cheese, all served with slices of rosemary and sea salt loaf and a lovely chutney.  

The pork pie is hand raised by Peter Lane whose business name  ‘I Cook You Eat’ says it all. The pie was meaty and well seasoned, a gorgeous pink, the jelly and pastry just right. I also got a sneaky sample of his game pie filling – now the Husband makes a pretty good game pie, but this is in a different league altogether. The Scotch Egg is from Newlyns Farm, made with their own pork and eggs. The egg was perfectly cooked and the ‘scotch’ (the sausage meat casing) was meaty and not too peppery, firm and not at all greasy – if you thought you didn’t like Scotch egg, the time might have come to change your mind. 2 cheeses: The Tunworth cheese is just a mouthful of heaven – honestly, if you ever come across it you must try it – it’s a soft brie type cheese with a subtle, nutty flavour. Not surprising that it is considered one of the best British cheeses, but what is amazing is that Stacey Hedges and Charlotte Bruce have only been making it since 2005. Finally, ‘Hampshire Tapas’ in Overton wouldn’t have been complete without something from the brilliant Laverstoke Park. I often encounter the Laverstoke herd of buffalo while walking the dog, so very appropriate that the platter included 2 little balls of creamy, smooth mozzarella, produced just outside the village.

2 of Jody Scheckter's Laverstoke Park herd of Buffalo

 

You can imagine what heaven I was in – amazing food and delicious wine in great surroundings. I have always loved the feel of Caviste – very calm and measured (and quite unlike the frantic pace of my usual day to day) and that hasn’t changed with the refurbishment – only now, you can sit down and drink it all in. I also love the idea that the selection of tapas on offer will change so you never quite know what will be available, only that it will be of exceptional quality. And I should say that while the food isn’t yet available for online purchase, the wine most definitely is...

As you’ll probably have gathered, I was lucky enough to have been invited to try the tapas, but I can tell you that the platter I ate was their ‘Vineyard Platter’, for which I would have gladly paid £7. You can also choose to have the individual dishes. In addition, while I wasn’t required to provide a positive review, you will appreciate that it would be hard not to, given everything I have described. I can’t for an opportunity to get a babysitter sorted and head up there with the Husband for an early evening aperitif, as a great kick start to an evening.

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