Dingley Dell

A little bit about our babes.

Mark — Wed, 09 May 2012 16:55:30 +0000

So how does it work and how much childcare do we provide. The sow (mum) has a gestation period of 114 days, when she ovulates she can release 20 plus eggs which can all be fertilised, then for a variety of reasons she can lose some in early pregnancy. During her pregnancy we will gradually increase her feed to get her in good condition and to increase piglet birthweight . A week before her due date she will be given her own hut to farrow ( give birth) in. Just before birth sows will make nests for themselves in the huts by neatly rearranging the straw. Birth can take from 2-4hrs and the average born alive is 11.5 although the extremes can be 1 or 20 born alive. For the first 2 days the sow will milk from all 14 teats then will only milk from those being suckled and each pig will have its own teat with the front teats being best and the back worst because her back legs are in the way. The piglet when born is around 2kg and when weaned at 5 weeks is around 11kg to achieve this growth the sow must produce huge quantities of milk for her greedy babes this is done by gradually increasing the feed from around 3-4kg a day (normal rations) to a massive 13kg a day ( like going large at Mcdonalds multiplied up) So there you have a few piglet baby facts.

Flying Visits ” The Big Smoke” menu revealed.

Mark — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 14:25:24 +0000

So with just under a week to go we can reveal the pork tasting menu for next Wednesdays Flying Visit hosted by Paul Merret at the Victoria in West Temple Sheen London. After some film and a talk about Dingley Dell Pork and Freedom Food , a butchery demo by John and Tom from Direct Meats highlighting how the cuts are arrived at, it will be down to the serious business of the pork tasting menu. The canapes are Black Pudding Sausage rolls, Crispy Manzanilla Olives in pork meat with oregano & parmesan, and smoked Ham hock croquettes with green peas. The first course by Paul Foster is Pigs trotter Carpaccio, charred broccoli, smoked garlic, peanut and burnt onion. The second course by Mark Poynton, Pork rillette, braised jowl, acorn praline, with pineapple and chickweed. Course three by Ross Pike and Madalene Bonvini-Hamel, Crispy pigs head, ham hock scotch egg, salsify & cauliflower & shallot piccalilli and nasturtium leaves. The main course by our host Paul Merret is Asian Dingley Dell pork: 12 hour belly vindaloo with coconut sambal, jungle style cheeks with soured mango noodles, and Dim sum with blood orange & fennel. To finish our pork feast dessert by William Curley, Amedei dark chocolate entremet centred with a smoked bacon caramel & served with apricot compote & lemon thyme ice cream. I am seriously excited about my evening meal next Wednesday !

Dingley Dells Flying Visits at The British Larder

Mark — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 05:22:19 +0000

: Ross, Maddy, (piggy) Mark, (chef) Mark and Paul.

What a night! A packed British Larder rocked to the tune of the first flying visit , the evening kicked off with a butchery demo from masterbutchers Jim Craig and Wayne Lemon as they both deftly cut up a side each of Dingley Dell Pork illustrating the cuts used by each of our 3 chefs. We then had 3 amazing courses each course matched with wine from James Stoddart at Enotria wines. The evening rounded off with handmade piggy chocolates from Roger Carter of Foodbizz and an auction of the butchered pig by Leslie Dolphin of BBC Radio Suffolk which raised £250 for the East Anglian Childrens Hospice. The Flying Visits farm on the road tour officially started.

The amazing pork tasting menu

Mark — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 14:51:49 +0000

Trotters down for February 29th a leap year day and the first of our Flying visits at The BritishLarder Suffolk. Hot off the press today is our chefs definitive pork tasting menu.

To Start- Slow cooked Dingley Dell pork neck with scratchings,chicory,Walberswick sea vegetables and beer pickled sweet potato. Cooked by chef Paul Foster.

Intermediate course- Spiced pulled pork shoulder,slow roast fillet,celeriac “slaw”,and pickled apple. Cooked by chef Mark Poynton.

Main- Dingley Dell Belly, swede, date puree, pigs ear and puffed Pork rice. Cooked by chef Ross Pike.

Now how about that for a pork tasting, bring it on next wednesday !

A Passion to Inspire Norwich City College

Mark — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 09:56:06 +0000

On Wednesday I had the privelidge of attending the first regional heat of ” A Passion to Inspire ” at Norwich City College where five of Norfolk’s top professional chefs guided seven teams of student chefs working in the college kitchens before judging their dishes. The teams went head to head in a Masterchef style competition as they each prepared a two course meal in just 90 minutes. To see the skill, professionalism and confidence and dedication of these young chefs as they worked was a real pleasure and I wondered where these young men and ladies would end up in their careers. For my lunch I had an amazing duck dish followed by creme brulee cooked and served by George who not only was the youngest chef but also a year 1 student so has only been learning for 4 months as opposed to the others who were year 3. Congratulations to Connor Carway and George Dack for their panfried Dingley Dell tenderloin and Tom Frost and Nathan Rackham for their sous vide chicken breast who have made it through to the final on 24th April.

Lightly chilled trotters ?

Mark — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 18:26:03 +0000

Now I realise that its all about temperatures and water baths, cooking times, steamers and smokers all of which contribute to that final nirvana the perfect dish, but how far down the process shall we go for the ultimate gastro experience, a little light chilling of the piglets feet in early February the result the perfect trotter experience in fine dining around July when our man above reaches maturity and hits the plate on a balmy restaurant terrace. Maybe this is the start of the porcine answer to massaged Kobi beef , a little frosting of the toes to begin, a little wind around the cheeks and a touch of light tanning early June, all terribly natural and enviromentally sound. Let the revolution in prepping begin.

Mr Nutter visits

Mark — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 10:29:52 +0000

Tuesday started much like any other day in early Jan fairly wet and windy, and with me thinking I knew what lay ahead. Around noon the rain turned into a sort of Sri Lankan monsoon and the call came from Mr Nutter I’m not very far away can I visit. Now this is where things get eerie its the mother of all rain storms now and no sooner do we hit the pig site and as you can see in the photo, blue sky and sunshine. After showing Andrew around we decamped to The British Larder for some dingley dell pork belly and the first drink of what turned out to be quite an evening ! Andrew it was a pleasure to meet you and a magnificent afternoon but you never did explain how you changed the weather.

Big East Anglian Skies

Mark — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 08:35:09 +0000

December breaks and we are currently moving our breeding herd onto new ground and fresh grass, this is done every two years to give the land a break and to grow vegetables on the land where the pigs were. As ever the low winter sun produces our big East Anglian skies that so evoke our part of Suffolk. The pigs nestled next to Rendlesham forest create the most panoramic of views. This photo was taken around 4pm having just moved these girls on a Saturday afternoon. We sat back in my truck, heater on ,shoved Bruce Springsteens Nebraska cd on and contemplated about why you would want to work indoors. ( maybe I will return to this theme when we go all sub zero, frozen planet like in early Jan. Can’t wait !!! )

Shanghai a true Chinese adventure

Mark — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 16:21:26 +0000

: Shanghai finance district by night.

The trip of a lifetime has just passed with a visit to the Shanghai international food exhibition where companies from all over the world were showing their food brands to a hungry Chinese food market. The sheer wealth and buildings in parts of Shanghai are in equal measure both awe inspiring and disorientating as you take in the size of China and its voracity for western style consumerism. The food was amazing and unlike Chinese food I have ever eaten with the most beautiful presentation befitting of any top UK restaurant. The menus included such items as bullfrog, jellyfish, turtle, sea anemones, sea cucumbers and abalones, hairy crabs and all kinds of cuts from pork and chicken, intestines, glands, tongues , feet and rectums, a true smorgasbord of body parts as I have ever seen. Alas I opted for somewhere to the centre of extreme Chinese dining. Try my twitter @DingleyDellPork to see loads of Chinese cuisine photos both live and dead.

The chefs of tommorrow

Mark — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 06:08:25 +0000

At Dingley Dell Pork a large part of my time is spent showing chefs and butchers what we do as a business in terms of how we breed and rear our animals and it was a great privelidge last friday to show around some of tommorrows chefs. Recently we agreed to work with ” a passion to inspire ” which is a iniatative founded by masterchef of Britain Murray Chapman and run with the catering colleges in East Anglia , it is a cookery competition designed and run to inspire students and to expose them to future employers. For us at Dingley Dell it is an opportunity to educate and inspire the students and so we took a group of catering students around from Suffolk New College. My main aim was to make the chefs see that it is their individual purchasing decisions which shape the way in which we farmers farm because it is the way in which the market is created. We covered all aspects of welfare friendly food production and how the RSPCA’s Freedom Food scheme works to improve the lives of farm animals. At the end of the tour we asked the students to write down what they had gained from their visit and the general theme was respect for the pig as an animal and the sense that in the future these students would think through the implications of where their food comes from and how they view their food and consequently how they cook with it . I look forward to returning to the college and trying some of the students recipes involving Dingley Dell Pork.