Some of you may recognise the Mangalitza as the curly haired pig sometimes mistaken for a sheep. In the UK purebreds are very, very rare, numbers seem to  be inaccurate, but happy to be enlightened, anyone ? Ours is crossed with a Berkshire. 
Mangalitza Blondes which ours is are thought to be similar to the now extinct Lincolnshire Curly Coated pig. 
A large framed breed with excellent quality fat often used for Lardo and with wild boar heritage a great rich piggy flavour.
We had chops tonight and they were very tasty, looking forward to what everyone else thinks if they get a chance to try some of this rare occurrence, though fingers crossed we can get our hands and knives on some more. 
Our Mangalitza was slowly raised to 11 months (seems young but UK average age for pork animals is 6 months and even the native breeds we noramlly have are 9 months at slaughter) in a free range environment, rooting around and munching on many an apple, on a very small holding near Chipping Norton. This beast arrived special delivery by Max the small holder himself.

Also in the counter this week lovely Llanwenog lamb, Fosse Meadows Farm' s Cotswold White and Gold Chicken both as featured in the latest Jamie Magazine and Belted Galloway beef.

Talking about what is going to be in the counter I am rather pleased with my current beef rail line up, all aging nicely ready to go into the counter at Spa Terminus on Saturdays we have coming up over the next few weeks Whitepark, Belted Galloway, Shorthorn & Dexter. I can also say those of you with Beef Cartel tickets are in for treat as the beef is also in my coolroom and is covered in unctuous yellow fat.

And lastly if your interested in all meat cuts I thought I might leave you with a little more meat porn courtesy of a little project I have been working on with the very talented and food passionate Toby Allen. Though i am sure he will tell you the piece hasn't been finished properly yet I like it !

One of the farmers I buy from through the Traditional Breeds Market have a small herd of Llanwenog Lambs raised on a hill in Gloucestershire, overlooking 6 counties.

Sue from Walkers Farm explains how they farm their lovely award winning Llanwenog rare breed lambs. 

   “James and I live on the Welsh borders on a small 50 acre farm perched at the top of a 1000ft hill. The local saying is that you need an extra jumper to live up here… so we wanted a native breed of sheep, which would be able to cope (with added virtues of being very easy to manage, pumps out the twins and has a decent carcase). The Llanwenog was just what we where looking for and positively thrives on our meadows above the Wye Valley. Our lamb is home bred & reared in a small (30 breeding ewes) well-tended flock. I tend not to stuff them full of concentrates but let them mature slowly on our wildflower meadow grass, which helps with flavour.”

Some pictures courtesy of Sue that do tell the story well 

This is the type of farmer that I love to use. This is as far from mass production as possible. A commercial breeder that is in it mostly for the money would have a breeding stock of 3000 ewes. I know which sheep would be getting the most love and attention.

Llanwenog are one of those hard to come by breeds that are equally revered for great meat and wool. They lamb well; have hardy mountain genes allowing them to prosper on any pastures. For more info try www.llanwenog-sheep.co.uk and www. rbst.org.uk or come visit me to eat one.

"The llanwenog lamb is a quality lamb regularly praised by rare breed butchers for carcass quality, the meat having a softer grain with good marbling and therefore sweeter texture" - Maggie Wilson.

Here is something I prepared earlier...............

These are the lambs that I will be using for Sundays Learn the Lamb, Love the Lamb Butchery class.

My favourite cut is something with a few fun descriptive names, Pope’s eye in Oz or Spider in the States and Italy due to the network of fine marbling that runs out like a spiders web within the meat 
I call it the Pope’s eye as it’s a better definition of it’s location on the beast (essentially the sphincter muscle).
Small, well marbled piece of meat that sits in the aitch bone making up part of the pelvis, it has loads of flavour and I find it as tender as any other more popular cut on the whole animal, fillet I am talking about you! When a carcass is hung for dry aging this cut is very exposed and can sometimes be unusable. Best, flash fried, season well just before throwing on a super hot grill/griddle/pan and cook to your liking as this cut can handle it. Out of a whole animal weighing in around 300kg dead weight you are lucky to get 300grms of this meat. 

The tri-tip which you are more likely to have heard about but most people still have no idea where on the cow it comes from.
The tri-tip is an extension of the point end of the rump and is not to be confused with the picanha which is the cap of the rump and connects with the silverside. Instead this muscle runs from the point of the rump and up and over the knee. In the States commonly called the sirloin fillet due to its tenderness. The tri-tip has similar flavours and characteristics to rump, but loads more marbling running through it which helps to keep the meat succulent in cooking. This cut is great for the BBQ or grilling, but as it is thick I find it best charred on the outside then finished in a oven if you like your beef cooked anymore than medium. I often use it in a rare beef salad. Out of a whole carcass you will only get about 1.5 to 2kgs 

A small muscle about the size of a fist, found deep within the shoulder of a beef carcass. It is equivalent to the human bicep and is a ball of delicious, gelatinous goo. Grab this cut for all your slow cooking needs, whole or diced for stews and curries it is hard to beat. Two large tendons on each end that are sticky when cooked but ever so soft. In Asian cooking the tendons  by themselves are added to soups and used in warm beef salads.  Generally treat the same as a shin cut then when eating appreciate twice the amount of connective tissues that have broken down with slow cooking into a fabulously rich texture. From a whole carcass you get about 1.2kg.

For those of you that are doing Turkey, Nick and Jacob from Fosse Meadows have been slaving over producing delicious and ethically raised ones for you. The Butchery also has all the trimmings options to spice things up. Still time to order if you need. If a Turkey was on my table this year I think it might be brined American style just like the boys are doing.  But for us this year will be duck as it is a longtime since we have had a cripsy home roasted duck. If we have the energy to go fancy the inspiration will come from Loose Birds and Other Game, by Andrew Pern, but I think things will be hearty and simple if my record from the last few years is anything to go by, Christmas eve has found me exhausted and asleep in the bath !

Nick from Fosse Meadows took a few minutes away from their hectic schedule between Thanksgiving and Christmas to answer a few questions for us and you.

The Butchery : So what made you move from Peckham to start a poultry farm ?
Nick from Fosse Meadows :The possibility of our own business doing something we loved, and we both enjoyed food, cooking and wanted the outdoor lifestyle farming could give us and I wanted to continue on the family farm.  So it helped that my dad was a farmer to get us started.

TB : Why did you choose the Cotswold White and Gold breeds ?  
NFM : We chose these breeds because they are a traditional breed (longer in the breast unlike the football shaped supermarket breeds) they grow slower so they don't reach the dinner plate until they get to 77 - 91 days the older the bird the better the flavour and more flavour in the bones afterwards........ DON'T FORGET THE BONES!

TB :Do the different birds have different personalities ?
NFM : Erm not really, boys are more feisty and girls are more 'whatever, I'm in the hedge eating grass don't bother me with your alpha male antics'

TB : What's your cooking tips for a Cockerel ?
NFM: LONG & SLOW ROAST max 150 C we use bay, garlic, lemon and butter/oil for flavour and salt and pepper rubbed into the skin - its simple but delicious

Then the all important Christmas controversy Questions............

TB : What will be on your families table this year for Christmas ?
NFM : I think we're going to try a brined turkey!! One lady took it another stage further by deep frying after brining - sounds wrong but apparently delicious so maybe next year.

TB :Are you a leg or a breast man ? 
NFM: leg leg leg

TB : Yes or no to the Parson's nose ?
NFM :only crispy and a recently discovered treat

TB : Stuffing inside or outside ?
NFM : Officially outside, secretly inside...... remember the temperature probe.... yawn

TB:Do you have pigs in blankets with your Turkey ?
NFM: Absolutely

So here is wishing you all a fabulously tasty meat filled, stress free festive season and hope to see you down at Maltby St this Saturday or we are doing three days next week 22nd, 23rd and 24th as are most of the other traders.  

In the late 60’s White Park in the UK had declined to only 60 animals, the Rare Breed Survival Trust, hard working farmers and breeders have brought this back up to approximately 3500 animals, taking the breed off the critical list. Few people have had the chance to eat real White Park beef over the last 100 years as they were so close to being totally wiped out by industrial farming. I have been lucky enough to get my hands on a whole beast from an amazing farmer, John Lean in Devon. John’s farm is truly beautiful, on our visit we drove down a drive so long and steep we worried we wouldn’t make it back out.  Catching glimpses of white in the fields we arrived at a setting that made us wish we hadn’t been able to make it back out. The farm sits in a deep valley surrounded with forest protecting the “closed” herd. Steers Winter in the Pine forest, whilst cows and calves Winter in an open barn close to the farm house.

John has been farming White Park for 15 years now and has a totally closed herd with all the animals born on his land coming from his pedigree registered live stock. Each year when the new calves are born they name each and every animal with that years letter of the alphabet, this year all the new borns names start with N (yes I did ask for a Nathan). We will be serving Kestrel, a steer born September 12th 2008, living a happy life grazing with his family before heading a short distance to the slaughterhouse on 4th November 2011 at 37 months of age (twice as long as your commercial supermarket beast)to then be dry aged 29 days ready for you to enjoy. 

White Park raised slowly and pasture fed makes a rich and tasty meat with a beautiful light marbling. Having a whole beast, “Kestrel” come into The Butchery Ltd from the Bickleigh herd is a rare treat that I am really looking forward to sharing with you on Saturday.

Mutton - the foggy weather has definlty meant it is time to pull out ther Le Creuset, slow cooker or whatever is your prefered method of creating comfort food and we have Sullolk Mutton for you also fromTom. Not always avaible and very often neglected by all, come and see hat you have been missing, fabulous for full depth of flavour mutton is lamb that is more than 24mths old when it goes to the slaughter house (or AltonTowers as Farmer Tom puts it). We love our cattle slowly raised (30months at least) on good pasture lets savour our sheep this way too. If its good enough for the Hairy Bikers, Hugh, Matt Tebbutt and Prince Charles maybe its good enough for you?

Pork is Tamworth this week - The good old Ginger just like the butcher, originally a Midlander ours is from Herefordhsire this week. The Tamworth was bought back to the UK for it's revival from Australian breeding stock. Pork from the Tamworth is renowned in pig cirlces for coming first by a full pig length in a ‘taste test” by Bristol University.  

Bacon -  for a first the first appearance this week week, we have of some Gloucester Old Spot bacon,  green and smoked, streaky and back so come and get it sliced to order for you on our very ancient big old Berkel Slicer. Is it bad that owning one of these has been a long time fantasy? Eventually we will be doing our own bacon from start to finish but in t he meantime we have sourced this great rare breed bacon as it’s not really a butcher shop unless we stock the secret vegetarian conversion weapon is it ?

Sausages from Gloucester Old Spot - this is a tough one (not the actual sausages I hope) We are making our own from scratch using meat from the same rare breed pork we are serving in the cabinet each week, a standard if you are going to be able to do proper whole carcass nose to tail butchery. But we also dont want to add rusk and all the “E” numbers and anti-caking agents that invloves. Most sausages have small to large amounts of rusk in them - this binds the meat together and soaks up the fat as you cook creating texture and keeping the moistness of the fat within the sausage.  Whilst our sausages are bulging with fab pork (a little beef too in the Kilebasa), fresh herbs and spices they do not have rusk, and so we are still tweaking the recipe each week a little to we find perfection for you. Kielbasa and Zingy Herb and Garlic up for grabs this week.

Chicken and one lonely Cockerel - So far our Fosse Meadows chickens have had many great comments and even repeat customers (pretty good we thought after only 2 weeks) so they will be happlily in the cabinet again alongside soemthing a bit special. For Christmas we plan on stocking Cockerel, also from Fosse Meadows, so those of you still debating what to put on the Christmas table you might find a cockerel the perfect answer. An uncastrated male chicken, tradionally used to make Coq Au Vin or for long slow roasting. A great alternative to the turkey, just a touch smaller msking it easier to cook and with serious flavour. 

Hope to see you Saturday and thanks to everyone that has dropped by already. Christmas orders will be taken from next week.

I often get asked why, or how, I became a butcher.

My life has never been sheltered when it comes to the ins and outs of meat. 

From as far back as I can remember my parents have been involved in the meat industry.

When I was of a very young age, my stepfather met my mother and the story of my introduction to meat stems from there. My stepfather was, and still is, a butcher by trade along with his father and brother. Earlier his grandfather was the founder of the slaughter-house (abattoir) in Canberra, Australia. By the time I entered school, my extended family of mother, father, sister and brothers, 7 in total, were in some way involved in the meat trade and mostly at the slaughter-house in Canberra.
Mother was working in the canteen supplying all the meat workers with lunch. Stepfather was grading beef, two stepbrothers working on the slaughter floor, my sister supported mum and my brother was working in the boning hall. So my family where likened to the Mafia at the slaughter-house. 
Most of my school holidays were spent walking every inch of the Canberra slaughter-house which is not the way most 5 to 13 years olds spend their school holidays.
There were unexpected benefits.  If a pregnant ewe came in and lambed overnight we would take the lamb home to raise in the backyard. I remember at one stage having 8 young lambs running around which meant coming home from school on lunch breaks to bottle-feed the little blighters.
When I was 15 my parents went back into retail butchery. It was a husband and wife operation with a little help from me making sausages and minced meats. After leaving school this is where I began to learn real skills as a butcher. Father was a very good teacher, but sometimes lacked patience.  If something wasn’t right, or up to his high standards he would make you do it over and over again till it was perfected. A habit I have now picked up when training my new butchers.
Straight after leaving school I had no interest in butchery at all. The thought of long hours, little pay and hard work put me off. My challenge was getting to the beach every day to go surfing. It slowly dawned on me that I needed money to do the things that I wanted. So I returned to my hometown to follow the family tradition of working in the Canberra slaughter-house. I worked packing meat for a year before it closed it's doors for the final time. 
From Canberra I returned to the family butcher shop near the coast to start my 4 year apprenticeship as a butcher, which meant working closely with my stepfather on all aspects of butchery. He always gave you the impression that what you were doing was not up to his standards which was good in a way. This always made me try that little bit harder. I think now he is very happy with my achievements as a butcher. It was great working side by side with my mother.  It still amazes me how quick she was with a knife. Dear old mum could debone a chicken quicker then I could. 
After the completion of my trade apprenticeship, I moved to an export boning hall some 200 km commute away, living on a farm in the company of 4 other meat workers. Here I learnt the art of getting a knife razor sharp. Your knife was your best weapon in keeping your wrist in good working order and every night I would ask different people how they sharpened their knives. The answers were many and varied, but the common thread was keeping the sharpening angles exactly the same all the time. I quickly worked my way up from just a laborer to a slicer, which was close to a portion controller, de-fatting meat and trimming correctly for mince or other specified cuts. The next step was one of the hardest challenges in my butchery life, learning to bone out beef hindquarters suspended on a moving conveyor belt. I had been doing this with my dad but this was a whole different game. The carcass was always moving and you had only 4 minutes to do it in. I remember I had 6 weeks to get up to the speed of the other boners some of whom had been there for years. I think for the best part of those 6 weeks I could hardly open a packet of crisps as my hands were so sore from holding a knife and meat hook. But some great times were had. Picture a warehouse full of suspended beef carcasses, with 60 men dressed in full food safety whites, including hat and wellies (gumboots in Australian) singing and dancing along to Sophie Ellis Bextors, Murder on the Dancefloor, Her producer should have come to us for her video clips !
Not long after I made the progression to a fully qualified boner there was a family illness that saw my return back to the family butcher shop. My favourite part of being back in the shop was the customers and the chance to show off my new found knowledge and skills. I worked for my parents for the next 2 years before my girlfriend offered me a chance to run her modern pizza restaurant. Which happened to be right next to a pub, so how could I decline.
Upon moving to London I found that butchers were in high demand and had 3 jobs to choose from in my first week, in London.  My choice was to work at the Smithfield Meat Market for Butcher & Edmonds who used to be in the old Leadenhall market. Trading out of Smithfield, Butcher & Edmonds became one of the biggest catering butchers in London. Both the managers were ex-Allen’s of Mayfair so they really knew their stuff. I learnt some very fine knife skills here, the importance of presentation, speed and timing. All orders were done during the night and after no contact with the general public, I found myself looking elsewhere for work after a year.
After a brief stint with Daylesford Organics, I joined the Ginger Pig @ Borough market. Under the watchful eye of Paul Greatorex, I built my knowledge of meat, breeds and the importance of animal husbandry more than I had in my entire butchery career so far. It was great working with Paul listening to all his stories about the way London butchers used to be. Murray’s meat market and their massive meat displays was often a topic. Paul still carries the photos around with him. They show massive meat displays that were created for competions, every thing from top displays to whole sides of pork hanging above the meat counter. Paul is a very talented butcher; one of London’s best and most passionate. When he left The Ginger Pig I had the chance to become manager and work a little closer with the farm. This involved a couple of trips and over night stays at Ginger Pig HQ in lovely North Yorkshire. Whilst working at “The Pig”, I met some very nice customers who I still love to catch up with and a lot of great chefs like Nuno Mendes, Ben Greeno and Adam Perry Lang of Daisy May’s fame in the States.  Adam eventually asked me to join him and Jamie Oliver in the opening of Barbecoa Restaurant and Butchery. An amazing experience and a real eye opener to just how differently meat is treated across the pond, lots of BBQ, brining, different cuts like short rib (Jacobs Ladder), Denver and especially interesting were the South American influences, like pulled pork or picanhana (the ‘cap’ or top muscle from the rump), more popular in Brazil than Rib eye or Fillet, get yourself some if you haven’t already. I recommend a BBQ or very hot griddle and only cooking to medium rare.
I was in awe of Adams meat ageing room in the Las Vegas restaurant, CarneVino, some 1000 square feet of meat love. And at Barbecoa we really enjoyed having the space to age beef well beyond the UK standard of 28 days – to watch the process week by week and taste the results. As well as fun things like BrawnOff - great food bloggers Meemalee, Aaron Davies, Paul and Danny Kingston invited to make their own brawn and us lucky butchers to taste test and pick a winner.
And currently I am learning about animal welfare as Meat Team Leader at Wholefoods High Street Kensington, come by and say hi.