It’s fair to say Dorset food champions The Salt Pig have made a real impact since at Lighthouse since taking over its restaurant and café in September. The Artful Salt Pg at Lighthouse has become a go-to for foodies and hungry ticket holders alike. Locally produced ingredients and the inventive menu are the domain of Salt Pig executive chef Simon Lane.
Here, he tells us a bit more about what make him and The Salt Pig tick.
Simon, what is the food at The Salt Pig all about?
It’s all in the flavour, the colour, the texture, and the creativity of the chefs. We don’t necessarily hold them to our recipes, we encourage them to be a little bit creative as well, so there’s a little bit of everybody’s ideas into the dishes.
For instance, one of the guys here, he’s done a pulled beef and Blue Vinny lasagne and it’s absolutely outstanding. He just came to me and said: ‘Can I do this?’ And the answer is, yes you can. Obviously we need to try it, make sure it’s costed right, and conforms with The Salt Pig values. It does and you’ll find it on the menu.
There are some Salt Pig signature dishes though, aren’t there?
Yes, our sausage rolls are really important and our quiches. They’re not a quiche that you’d find anywhere else, they’re really thick, they take like three and a half hours to cook! James [Warren, Salt Pig founder] them 18 years ago when he first started The Salt Pig from a butcher’s block selling cuts of meat and local veg.
I have say to a lot of the chefs when I first interview them that our quiches not like quiches they’ve cooked before. We use really good ingredients in there – top end cheese, it’s Coastal Cheddar and Dorset Red. We make our own pastry, we use free range eggs, double cream, and well, the proof’s in the quiche, literally.
And it’s the same with our sausage rolls.
That creativity sits very well in Lighthouse.
Yes, very much so. It keeps our chefs interested, which I think is a big thing in a kitchen. It’s pressured environment and if the chef has actually created a dish and someone says that was one of the best things they’ve eaten, all of a sudden they’re uplifted and the service becomes better and it gets passed down from there.
And how’s it working out so far?
The reaction’s generally really good, which I’m so pleased about because The Artful Salt Pig is a completely different entity to any other Salt Pig site. We’re used to people coming in all nice and relaxed, wanting to spend a couple of hours over a meal; whereas here, they’re coming for their show, they’ve got a time limit, they’ve got to be out.
But we’ve ironed those creases out, the kitchen’s happy and it all just kind of fits together nicely.
What’s your proudest moment for you so far?
I’m really pleased with how the Sundays have gone here. The Salt Pig has never done a carvery before, but it’s working really well and going down a storm. We started off with kind of 20-30 covers on Sunday lunch and we’re now up in the nineties and we’re getting some really good feedback on it. It’s really good.
And the comments when people come up and they see the meat, they see the veg, but it’s not your usual carvery. There’s eight different vegetables, all done in a different way that you wouldn’t see anywhere else necessarily.
Again, it comes back to, colour, flavour, texture. Like the cauliflower cheese, it’s roasted in smoked paprika and turmeric and then we use all the greens so there’s less wastage and fry those with onion and garlic and then use Coastal Cheddar and Dorset Red and create this cauliflower cheese that is just incredible.
And what would be your meal of choice?
Well, my favourite thing to cook is fish, but unfortunately I can’t eat it – or even touch it – as a developed an allergy to it when I was working down in Cornwall. So, my favourite thing to eat is definitely the Mangalitsa pork we sell here at Salt Pig. It’s just outstanding – the fat content, it just melts in your mouth, and it’s just slightly sweet. It’s delicious.
James does a fantastic job of breeding the Mangalitsa pigs and crossing them with the right breeds to get a better meat yield while retaining the flavour. It’s cool going out to the farm and seeing the animals – the Mangalitsa is a woolly pig – but wait till you taste it.
Is there something that you ask chefs to cook when you interview them?
No, not really. I tend to get a general gist of how they’ve been working just by their excitement. When we start talking about food and flavours and where the food’s from, I’m a big believer in taking any new chef over to the farm.
I think that’s a massive thing for the chefs to come and see where the animals are from. Then you get a feel from how they react to that whether they’re going to be part of a Salt Pig team or not really.
Who would you most like to cook for?
Now, this is quite a difficult one. We’ve done things for Stella McCartney, we’ve done things for Paul Ainsworth, various celebs, but I think I’d really like to cook for David Attenborough. Just because, well, if he gives it the OK, it’s going to be OK. What that guy hasn’t done in 100 years… amazing. Yes, I’d love to cook for David Attenborough.
Finally, what’s the secret of perfect crackling?
I could tell you, but…
Here it is. What I do is steam the joint first to get some moisture in there, whether that be a tray of water just sat in the bottom of the oven, or whether you have an all-singing, all-dancing oven that controls the moisture in there. And then, right at the last minute, whack the heat up, and then it will blister lovely.
It’s about getting that little bit of moisture into the joint so the crackling doesn’t cook too quickly. At home, if you’ve got a smaller joint, you can actually plunge it into a pan of boiling water. Just leave it for a couple of minutes, take it out, pat it dry, put a bit salt on it and into the oven, and the meat should have really good crackling.
Thanks Simon.
:: The Artful Salt Pig at Lighthouse is open 9am-4pm (Sun, Mon with extended hours when there are evening performances) and 9am-9pm (Tue-Sat).
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