The Ginger Pig Meat Book

Another day, another excellent cook book. We ignored this book when it first came out in early May because we’ve already got one or two good books that focus specifically on meat, which we don’t eat massive quantities of anyway. But in fact this book is brilliant. It’s now the one we reach for whenever we are wondering what to cook for supper. And yes, it is all about meat – The Ginger Pig is a famously good butcher just off Marylebone High Street and in Borough Market – but its recipes provide you with solid, hearty, delicious whole meals, like Navarin of lamb or Asian beef curry, The ultimate burger or Poached chicken and noodle pot, rather than the overly carnivorous cheffy fare that constitute many other meat books. The recipes are laid out simply and well month by month (meat is much more seasonal than many people realise), with each month having an introduction about life on the farm where The Ginger Pig meat is reared, and it encourages readers to use every cut of meat simply by providing appropriately mouth watering recipes. The photographs are both evocative and useful, showing pictures of the animals alive and happy as well as the finished dishes, and there are great photo-guides illustrating how to carve or joint a particular piece of meat, all of which is great of course, but finally the reason we love this book so much is because it is full of things we want to eat every day and it explains how to cook them really, really well.