The Ginger Pig One Pot authors Rebecca Seal and Tim Wilson. Photo: Sam A Harris
It’s one of the most respected sustainable butchery businesses in the UK, with multiple London branches, a nationwide delivery service and a series of cookery books, but for many The Ginger Pig will always be best known as the purveyors of “*those* sausage rolls”, as the company so wittily puts it on their social media accounts.
The Ginger Pig story did begin with sausages. Back in the mid-90s, Tim Wilson bought three Tamworth pigs for £60 after becoming interested in farming rare and native breeds and traditional butchery and, fairly soon after, began selling his produce at Borough Market. Today the queues for those huge sausage rolls covered in buttery pastry snake around the block at that market and other Ginger Pig shops, especially at lunchtime. But, despite the name, they sell all kinds of other meat and deli produce, not just pork.
Tim published the first Ginger Pig cookbook back in 2011 and his fourth, Ginger Pig One Pot, co-written with Rebecca Seal, came out earlier this year, packed with over 140 recipes – from lamb and potato stew with whipped feta to shawarma-style chicken and roasted veg – designed to save time and washing-up. “One-pot cooking is the kind of cooking I’ve always done,” says Tim, “ever since I left home and was living on my own for the first time. Back then, unlike today, energy was cheap, but it still made sense to cook efficiently, with as little waste as possible.” For him, “the trick is combining ingredients in a way that is joyful”.
Today’s recipe for stilton, walnut and bacon tart combines ready-rolled shop pastry and the bold flavours of blue cheese and salty bacon with the crunchiness of nuts, for something super-easy – whether you’re needing to prepare a sharing dish for a festive soiree or, post-Christmas, wanting to use up the remnants of the stilton when the hordes have gone home.
Words by Imogen Carter
Photo: Sam A Harris
Stilton, walnut and bacon tart
This recipe is inspired by Yvonne Hunter, our former head chef. In Tim’s opinion, if you want to improve a dish, add bacon, prunes or stilton cheese. (Probably not the prunes in this case, but let Tim know if you try it.)
Serves 4
Ingredients
1 sheet of ready-rolled puff pastry, ideally all-butter
1 egg, beaten
2 sticks of celery, cut into thirds lengthwise, then finely chopped
1 shallot, halved and finely sliced
Splash of extra virgin olive oil
4 rashers of unsmoked streaky bacon, cut into thin strips
85g stilton cheese, crumbled
25g walnut pieces, crumbled or chopped
125ml double cream
Handful of spinach, stalks discarded, leaves roughly chopped
Pinch of freshly grated nutmeg
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Method
1. Preheat the oven to 200C (400F), Gas Mark 6. Unroll the pastry and place it on its paper on a baking sheet. Brush the pastry all over with egg, then use the tip of a sharp knife to mark a line 2cm in from the edge, all the way round, taking care not to cut all the way through. Fold the edges of the pastry in to meet that line, creating a rim for the tart.
2. Brush the rim with egg and then press along the edges with the tines of a fork to ensure the folded pastry doesn’t open up during cooking. Gently tap the pastry in the centre of the tart all over with the tines of the fork to help prevent it rising too much in the oven.
3. Cut a square of foil big enough to enclose the celery and shallot. Place the celery and shallot on to the foil, add a pinch of salt and a splash of olive oil and then wrap to form a loose but airtight pouch. Place the pastry and the foil pouch into the oven for 15 mins.
4. Meanwhile, gently stir together the bacon and the remaining beaten egg with the blue cheese, walnuts, double cream, spinach, nutmeg and a twist of black pepper.
5. When the 15 mins are up, remove the tray and the foil pouch from the oven. If the centre of the pastry has puffed up, rest a small baking sheet on top for a minute or so to flatten it.
6. Add the celery and shallots to the mixture in the bowl. Mix once and then arrange this filling over the tart shell, spreading it out gently using a spatula, avoiding the pastry rim. Return to the oven for 15-20 mins until the pastry is a deep golden brown. Check that the base is crisp and give the tart another 3–5 mins if not. Eat hot or warm.
Ginger Pig One Pot by Tim Wilson and Rebecca Seal is published by Mitchell Beazley (£30)