The Campaign for Real Ale’s National Pub of the year, the Salutation Inn, in Ham, Gloucestershire, is proud to announce that it will be serving plates of 100% home-grown ham, egg and chips in the finale to its “Ham, Egg and Chips Project”.
Each ingredient on the plate has been grown and produced by the pub and travelled only a matter of food metres rather than miles. To wash down the meal, customers can also enjoy a pint of Tiley’s Pale Ale brewed at the pub’s on-site microbrewery.
The Salutation, which was declared the best pub in Britain by the Campaign for Real Ale in February 2015, has kept its own pure-bred, Gloucestershire Old Spot pigs in a Victorian walled garden just 100 metres from the pub. Alongside the pigs are the pub’s chickens which provide fresh eggs for the pub every day and in the pub’s back garden, 60kg of maris piper potatoes have been grown and harvested ready for chipping.
In keeping with the traditions of the area, the Gloucestershire Old Spot pigs, which originated in the Berkeley Vale, were fed on windfall apples donated by customers, and whey from local cheesemakers Liz and Bryan Godsell at Leonard Stanley. (The pub uses Godsell’s cheese in its ploughman’s lunch). In addition the rare breed pigs were also fed spent grain from the pub’s own on-site brewery. As the nearby town of Berkeley itself was famous for its cider orchards and cheesemakers, this was a diet which the Old Spot pigs would have been fed on many years ago. The resulting meat from the pigs takes on a unique “Gloucestershire flavour” with a noticeable flavour from the apples and a juicy sweetness from the whey.
The pigs were purchased from rare breed specialist and Gloucestershire cheesemaker Jonathan Crump in Standish, near Gloucester, before being raised as piglets in the pub’s half-acre, wild-wooded, walled garden. As well as rare breed pigs, the pub’s chickens include a wide range of breeds including Buff Orpingtons, Light Sussex’s, Cream Legbars and Silver Spangled Hamburgs.
The local butchers at Tortworth Farm Shop jointed the pigs for the pub but all the hams are being cured in-house by the pub’s Chef Dan Ashford. Dan will be preparing the hams in a number of ways including cider-cured, beer-cured, honey-glazed and hot smoked. All other cuts of meat from the pigs will be served up in the pub’s daily specials which include cider-soaked pork belly and stuffed loin chops.
The dishes will be sold only at lunchtimes between 12noon and 2pm from Tuesday 26th January onwards until the home-grown components run out. The pub does not reserve tables so the food will be available on a first come, first serve basis. More information is available on the Salutation’s website www.sallyatham.com, its Facebook page www.facebook.com/sallyatham or via its Twitter feed @sallyatham
