Now, to get thiss wee food blog started I thought I might reprint here an article I wrote several years ago. My thanks to Article Magazine, Sheffield who published this initially in May 2008. Read the rest of the magazine and see this article in situ at http://www.impursuit.com/article/article1.pdf
-->The Bath Chap
Suffering from the same unfortunate
stigma as tongue, trotters, kidneys and
the like, the Bath Chap is a delicacy to
which the unadventurous masses will
usually turn up their noses in disgust and
ask you to pass the turkey twizzlers. It
is an attitude which I cannot understand:
avoid anything which is recognisable as
a part of an animal and opt, instead, for
unidentifiable, homogenised meaty matter
reformed into uniform drummers, nuggets
or whatever the shape-du-jour happens
to be. I am happier eating something
which I know to be a single part of a
single animal,that I know precisely which
piece of the animal it is and that I can see
plainly has not been too interfered with
on its journey from the farm to my plate,
rather than the lips-and-arseholes mush
scraped from the abattoir floor at the end
of the day and extruded into the shape of
a dinosaur.
But enough of my food-snobbery and
gastro-vitriol; on to the Chap itself.
This glorious, soft, rich, hammy
creation is, in simple terms, most of
a pig’s face wrapped around its own
tongue. The pig’s head is cleft in two
and the resulting halves follow a process
similar to the curing of ham – a day or
so in brine, a week to dry-cure and a
light smoking. These are then boiled for
several hours until the meat is tender and
falls easily away from the skull and the
skin can be removed from the flesh. The
meat then is rolled, pressed and chilled,
with the final product resembling a pale
cone with one side flattened; 8 inches
long and 4 inches across the widest part.
They were traditionally served with the
snout still attached, although concessions
to squeamishness mean that this is usually
no longer the case.
It is usually eaten as a lunch meat:
served cold, thickly sliced, with mustard
and pickles. Dark pink tongue surrounded
by alternate rings of pale pink meat
and quivering white fat, it is a rich dish
and demands a good portion of buttery
mashed potatoes to soak it up and proper,
hot yellow mustard to cut through the
fattiness.
A well dressed salad on the side
and a glass of not-too-cold brown beer
completes this summer luncheon.
If you prefer your fare a little less
rustic and a little more ‘gastro’, fry thick
slices until they crisp up and serve with
irony greens and a piquant salsa verde.
Pick a bottle of red with plenty of body
– this is not a subtle dish.
Alternatively, slice thinly and use as
a superior version of ham (cold) or bacon
(fried) in sandwiches, salads, breakfasts
and suchlike.
Sadly though, despite the many
glories of this much-forgotten cold-cut,
it is extremely difficult to find outside of
Bath and Somerset. Nonetheless, should
you ever find yourself day-tripping that
fair city, head to the butcher-deli counter
of the Guildhall Covered Market and try a
Chap for yourself.<--
Written some three years ago, but it all holds true and it still makes me salivate to think of a good chap and some hot English mustard. I sincerely hope everyone who readds this will do their best to try and track down a chap at some point in their lives. It will be well worth it!
Much Love
GK x
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