Читать книгу Eating for England: The Delights and Eccentricities of the British at Table - Nigel Slater - Страница 22

A well-made faggot is a gorgeous thing, tender as mince, but with a defined shape and delicate spicing. But you need a reliable recipe.

I have minced the requisite dark pig’s liver, the pork scraps, the bacon and the pig’s heart as instructed. I have stirred in the fresh breadcrumbs, the thyme and the sage, the ground mace and the allspice. I have rolled the mixture into tennis balls and wrapped each in a webbing of lacy caul fat specially ordered from the butcher. Laid in an enamel tin like fat dumplings (‘faggot’, at least in this instance, means bundle) snuggled up together to await the oven and their puddle of onion gravy, they look as hearty as a supper could ever be. The sort of meal you might want to eat on an oilrig, or after a long trek up Scafell.

But my attempts have never matched those of a good local butcher, being just too butch, with too strong a flavour and excessively liverish. The last were coarse and chewy, and weighed on the stomach like lead. Call me a wimpish urbanite, but home-made faggots are obviously for someone who is more of a man than me.

The ones you buy in a deep foil tray from a Black Country market or a Welsh butcher are probably the best bet. The Welsh version can contain oats or apples. Those big-name brands that are no bigger than a scallop and swimming in sweet, rather commercial-tasting gravy, are quite passable on a winter’s night. It is almost unthinkable to eat them with anything other than mashed potato and peas, though being a winter dish tradition may have it that it should be a purée of dried peas, known as pease pudding, rather than fresh.

Pros: The glorious gravy and extreme flavour; the frugality of making entrails into something so delicious; few suppers will ward off the cold like faggots and peas.

Con: You are eating pigs’ intestines wrapped up in the lining of their stomachs.