50 • The Sunday Times Magazine
M
y signature dish is a pork
and pepper pasta. Though
when I say “signature dish”, what
I mean is “the only thing I can
cook”. Here’s the recipe. Coat
some diced pork tenderloin in
flour, fry it in my own vegetable oilMy pigs keep making a bid for freedom — like Steve McQueen’s
Cooler King. Their heroics might just save them from the frying pan
The sty’s not the limit for
my great escape geniuses
Jeremy Clarkson
Farming
with some chillies, green peppers,
onions and mushrooms, and then,
after adding stock, a splash of
cream and seasoning, serve it on a
bed of fusilli pasta. It’s nice.
And it’s not the only pig-based
food I enjoy. I’m very partial to
crackling and sausages, and I love
ham with broad beans in a parsley
sauce nearly as much as I enjoy
seeing a suckling pig spinning
slowly over an open fire with an
apple in its mouth.
In a restaurant, I’ll happily order
pig’s cheeks, unless it has trotters
on the menu, in which case, I’ll
have those instead. And as weknow, a bacon sandwich made
with sliced white bread and Heinz
tomato ketchup can cure
hangovers, vegetarianism and
even the common cold. Never in
the field has so much been given
to so many by one animal. And as
a result, I’m thinking of becoming
a pig farmer.
There are other reasons too. Pig
foraging disturbs and invigorates
the soil, causing roots, bulbs and
seeds to germinate. And their
manure is teeming with goodness,
which means I’d spend less time
driving about in my eight-litre
tractor, showering the farm with