l THE INDEPENDENT THE INDEPENDENT l 36/ Food&Drink FRIDAY 14 DECEMBER 2012 FRIDAY 14 DECEMBER 2012 Food&Drink /37 The white stuff: pizza few years ago, if you’d called your is topped with wafer- LARDY CAKE restaurant Lardo you’d probably have thin slivers of lardo By Daniel Stevens been considered bonkers. Lard was a (top right) at Lardo four-letter word guaranteed to send us restaurant RICHARD 250g strong white bread flour, plus extra recoiling in MILDENHALL; GETTY for dusting horror at 150ml warm water visions of 5g powdered dried yeast clogged 5g salt arteries and playground 160g lard Afatties. If there was one food 50g sultanas reviled and derided above all 50g currants others, lard won hands down. 50g chopped candied peel Now, though, a restaurant 50g caster sugar in Hackney, east London, has 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon (ideally named itself after the wicked freshly ground in a spice mill) white stuff, arguing that lard What’s for might actually be one of the Put the flour, water, yeast and salt into a tastiest foods around. The most bowl and mix to a soft dough. Melt 10g supper? popular pizza that Lardo hatches of the lard and incorporate it into the in the igloo-shaped wood-fired dough, then turn out on to a floured Slow-roasted oven at its heart is its Lardo, surface and knead until smooth and lamb shoulder Marjoram and Rocket, a pizza elastic. Put into a clean bowl, cover draped with paper-thin slith- by Ash Mair ers of lardo, the Italian word for cured pig back-fat, and INGREDIENTS TO SERVE 4 doused with a marjoram 7 sprigs or rosemary dressing and some rocket 125ml extra virgin olive oil leaves. Also flying off the 4 garlic cloves, peeled menu is Lardy Loin – aromat- ic melt-in-the-mouth slices 500g small round golden shallots of lardo with a smidgen of 50g sugar loin, served with yummy fin- 100ml sherry vinegar gers of freshly baked focaccia. 500ml chicken stock We’re learning to love lard once 1.2kg boneless shoulder of lamb more, it seems. Coarse sea salt “The best lard comes from many 6 salted anchovy fillets in oil, chopped of the heritage-breed pigs that we’ve 30g salted butter devalued,” says Eliza Flanagan, Lardo’s 2 x 400g cans of cooked butter beans, owner. To drive home the message, the and leave to rise until doubled in size. drained and rinsed restaurant’s postcard is a close-up of the In a separate bowl, toss the dried fruit free-range pigs that provide its charcuterie: and candied peel together with the sugar To make the rosemary oil, strip the leaves Mangalitzas whose long curly locks make them and cinnamon. Cut the rest of the lard from 2 sprigs of rosemary and put in a look more like sheep than pigs. “I am not a sheep,” into small dice. blender with the olive oil and a clove of the caption helpfully informs diners. Tip the dough out on to a clean work garlic. Pulse a few times to roughly chop, Our ancestors, of course, had no trouble rec- surface and press all over with your pour into a bowl and set aside at room ognising the virtues of lard. So central was it to fingertips to deflate. Roll out to a temperature to steep. our diet that the room where we stored our food, rectangle, about 1cm thick. Scatter over Preheat the oven to 120C/gas mark the larder, was named after it. Many British half of the dried fruit mixture and lard 1/2. Peel the shallots leaving the root end households kept a family pig, so the fat you used pieces, then roll up from a short side to attached. Heat olive oil in a frying pan over winter was good old lard – as it still is in enclose the filling. Give the dough a over high heat, add the shallots and sauté many countries today. Its great strength was that quarter-turn and roll it out again to a WHAT TO USE LARD until golden all over. Add the sugar and it coaxed out the flavours of foods that it was rectangle, as before. Scatter over the AND LARDO FOR sherry vinegar and cook until the vinegar cooked with. In pig-rearing counties such as remaining fruit and lard and roll up again. has reduced and the shallots are covered Wiltshire, housewives threw the fat into scrump- Now roll out the dough to a 20cm square LARD with a shiny glaze. Pour into a deep baking tious lardy cakes, which are happily seeing a and place in a greased deep 20cm Roast potatoes, Yorkshire puddings, dish, add the remaining garlic cloves and quiet revival. square baking tin. Leave to rise for toad in the hole rosemary and pour over the stock. The loveliest lard is from fat found inside the Praise the another 30 minutes. In a clean frying pan heat a glug of olive loin and around the kidneys, known as flare or Preheat the oven to 200°C/Gas Mark In all types of pastry. Some cooks oil. Season the lamb all over with salt and leaf fat. That’s rendered then left to solidify into 6. Bake the lardy cake for 30-40 minutes combine with butter sear on all sides until well coloured. Place blocks of crystalline white fat. It’s so pure and until well risen and golden brown. Leave the lamb on top of the shallots skin side up malleable that a museum in Ukraine has used it to cool slightly in the tin for 10-15 minutes, Lardy cake (see recipe, left), and spread the chopped anchovy over the to make more than 30 lard sculptures – includ- then invert on to a wire rack to finish sponge cakes and puddings, including skin. Use a large piece of aluminium foil to ing a particularly appetising one of Marilyn cooling. Placing the lardy cake upside spotted dick wrap the tray, making sure the foil doesn’t Monroe’s ample lips and breasts. down will allow the melted lard to be touch the lamb. Scrunch the foil around Lard, with its high smoking point and reabsorbed into the dough as it cools. Confits the edges of the tray tightly so none of unobtrusive taste, was the ideal fat for roasting, Serve warm or cold, cut into slices. the liquid evaporates during cooking. Bake so our grannies roasted their potatoes in it. Today, Croutons for 4 hours 30 minutes. Fifteen minutes home cooks are cottoning on to goose and duck From ‘The River Cottage Bread Handbook’ before the end of cooking, remove the foil fat, now sold in fancy jars in delis and supermar- (Bloomsbury, £14.99) Do as the Germans and eastern and cook the lamb, uncovered, for another kets at vast expense, but they still struggle with Europeans do and enjoy dry-rendered 15 minutes. Meanwhile in a pan, melt the using our native pork fat – perhaps because it’s lard as a spread on bread or in butter. Add the beans, 200ml of water not yet packaged poshly. sandwiches and a good sprinkling of salt and, using a It’s also in short supply – and much of what’s LARD deodorising agents. One reason we can’t get pork burns off, giving it a crisp crunch that you expe- which, says Lee, makes it ideal to make a pork Customers get very grumpy if we take our Lardo potato masher, smash up the beans and around is channelled into cosmetics and soaps. It’s unbeatable in fat in Britain, says Waddington, is that pigs are rience as you eat it,” says Matthew O’Callaghan, confit whereby pork belly or shoulder is cooked LARDO pizza off the menu.” place in a serving dish. “Proper lard is difficult to find,” says charcutier now bred to have as little fat as possible. chairman of the Melton Mowbray Pork Pie in its own rendered fat which then solidifies and Eat slivers on hot toast, as an If you’re reaching for the extra-virgin olive oil Pass the rosemary oil through a fine pastry and delicious Graham Waddington whose Gloucestershire- “Our demonisation of fat has meant that in Association and a food historian. seals the meat. “Confit takes on a heavenly melt- antipasto in horror at all of this, you might not need to. sieve, discarding the solids, and pour over based company Native Breeds crafts Lardo’s with a roast. No recent decades farmers have mainly produced If you watched The Great British Bake Off you’ll ing texture which is one of the world’s best Recent research is questioning the received the butter beans. lardo. “You’d need lean, fast-growing breeds such as Hampshire and also have seen lard hailed as a must-use ingredi- things,” he enthuses. Tie over dry meats such as pheasant wisdom that animal fats are the main cause of Remove the lamb from the oven and to buy pork fat from wonder the pork fat – Duroc. They’re slaughtered at around five ent in puddings and cakes. On the series, Lee is also an aficionado of lardo – gourmet and turkey when roasting to provide obesity and that we should eat vegetable oils using a plate as a scoop, transfer to a a b u t c h e r a n d months, which doesn’t allow time for them to O’Callaghan demonstrated how to make the per- lard if you like – which he wraps around his moisture and flavour instead, and carbs rather than fats.