There are many rare breed farms across NI that need our support

We feel a sense of inadequacy if we don’t serve a feast of royal Tudor proportions on Christmas Day and have party food for 789 people at hand in case a cavalcade of people arrive. Now that their work is done on the festivities they now turn to New Year. Firstly the holiday advertising starts and if you don’t plan to take your children to Barbados/Disneyland/ on safari in 2025 then you have failed as a parent. Forcing food on us has now been replaced with shaming for us for our gluttony over the festive period. According to advertisers we should now be embracing a sober Veganuary until Valentine’s Day when they will ramp up the selling of chocolate/Champagne and roses.

The build up to Christmas and all the festivities shouldn’t be followed with such stark abstinence. January is bleak enough and really not the time for depriving ourselves of things that make us happy. This January I’m committed to supporting small food businesses. Just before Christmas Mike Thompson who makes the iconic Young Buck cheese had a disaster with the temperature in his storage room and lost most of his future stock. Mike has a lovely shop in Little Donegall Street in Belfast and would love people to come along and support him by buying the cheese he has left. Mike is a great supporter of other cheesemakers and his shop stocks many cheeses from across Ireland and the UK. Rather than eating tofu wouldn’t it be a lot more kind and productive to take a trip to the big smoke and buy a lot of delicious cheese?

In many cultures eating pork at New Year is considered lucky. Pigs strut forward signifying progress for the year ahead. Before Christmas I stocked up on some great rare breed pork from Robbie Neill’s farm shop at Stonebridge Farm outside Crossgar. His pork is a little bit more expensive than mass produced varieties but it has so much flavour meaning you need less on the plate. When you fry one of his chops it releases beautiful golden fat. While the cooked chop rests use the leftover to fry potatoes, that have been boiled and slice, until crisp and perfect. The taste will be sensational and you’ll be supporting a local farmer to boot. There are many rare breed farms across NI that need our support. Like cheesemaking farming these rare breeds is a labour of love. The Rare Breeds Survival Trust has a saying “eat them to keep them”. If we don’t eat them the breeds will die out leaving us to resort to eating insipid meat or, perish the thought, tofu…

My last recipe for 2024 is for good old fashioned sausage rolls made with buttery flaky pastry and good sausage meat – what could be better? Happy New Year!