The Pig: Tales and Recipes from the Kitchen Garden and Beyond is not, strictly speaking, a cookbook, although it does contain a lot of great recipes. It’s more a lifestyle book (complete with decorating advice) touting a contemporary update of English country house living. It does, of course, obsess about food and the marvels that can be extracted from the kitchen garden. And the kitchen pigpen. And the kitchen barn. The book is distributed in Canada ($44) and the U.S. ($40) by Hachette Book Group. Here’s a link to Amazon.

Robin Hutson, wife Judy Hutson, and David Elton opened The Pig in New Forest, Hampshire, in 2011. That was the first of the country house hotels. Now a whole litter of them are sprinkled around every county of England’s south coast. The Hutsons call the establishments “restaurants with rooms.” And each restaurant is built on British garden food, whether it’s grown on premises or bought from small artisanal producers. In essence, this is English country cooking at its best.

The book is a charmer that ought to appeal to every foodie who has harbored self-sufficiency dreams or romanticized a back-to-the-land ethos. Think of it as Wendell Berry in tweed meets Martha Stewart in a thatched cottage. It’s all a bit ruddy-cheeked for us city folk, but disarmingly ambitious and earnest. The Hutsons keep bees and collect honey, build smokehouses, and infuse more things in gin than you can shake a walking stick at. In short, it’s great to read the tales, be transported to a bucolic idyll, and come back home to make some of the recipes.

So what’s to eat?

We were taken with the savory pies, which seem quintessentially British to us. The authors write “Who doesn’t love a good pie with lots of gravy and a few greens? We switch our pies regularly at The Pigs. In fact, sometimes the fillings change day-to-day, as it all depends on what we get from our local suppliers.”

A few notes on the following recipe. “Scrumpy” is a British style of apple cider made from random cider apples. Substitute any fresh cider, the less sweet the better. The term “diced” covers a lot of ground. We found that 3/8-inch dice for the vegetables and 5/8-inch for the meat work well. The recipe calls for a package of shortcrust pastry. That’s British for pie dough. Use your favorite savory crust recipe or the one we use for cock-a-leekie pie.

PORK & CIDER PIE

Makes 4 individual pies

600g (1 lb 5 oz) pork, diced
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
80g (2 3/4 oz) butter
80g (2 3/4 oz) flour, plus extra for dusting
200ml (7 fl oz) medium/dry scrumpy (we use New Forest Cider)
500g (1 lb 2 oz) chicken stock
2 celery sticks, peeled and diced
2 onions, diced
2 leeks, slit open lengthways, then washed and sliced
3 carrots, diced
2 garlic cloves, chopped
2 sprigs of thyme
2 sprigs of rosemary
2 tablespoons wholegrain mustard
1 pack shortcrust pastry
1 egg, beaten
salt and pepper

To serve
boiled new potatoes
braised cabbage

Preheat the oven to 160°C, 140°C fan (325°F), Gas Mark 3. You’ll need an ovenproof casserole dish with a lid to braise the meat. All the veg should be diced. The pieces don’t have to be exactly equal but it helps if they’re chopped to roughly the same size so they’ll cook evenly.

Season the diced pork with salt. Heat the oil in a large frying pan, add the diced pork and seal until golden brown.

In the casserole dish, melt the butter, then add the flour and cook for 2 minutes. Deglaze the pan with the cider. Add the chicken stock and bring to a simmer. You just want it to thicken up and cook out the flour. Place the pork in the sauce and add the prepared veg, the garlic, herbs, mustard and seasoning. Cover with a lid – if you don’t have one, use a double layer of foil. Cook in the oven for 3 hours until the pork is tender, then spoon into 4 pie dishes. Leave about 1 cm (1/2 inch) space at the top of the dish.

Turn the oven up to 200°C, 180°C fan (400°F), Gas Mark 6.

On a lightly floured surface, roll out the pastry to 5 mm (1/4 inch) thickness and cut it out so it’s around 1 cm (1/2 inch) larger than the top of the pie dish. With a pastry brush, coat the rim of the dish with the beaten egg. Gently lift the pastry over the pie mixture, pressing down onto the egg brushed around the edge. Any spare pastry can be used for decoration. We, of course, do pigs!

Once the pie lid is on, make a small hole in the middle to let the steam out, then bake for 25 minutes, until the pastry is golden brown and cooked through.

Serve with boiled new potatoes and braised cabbage.