A handsome brick-built building set on the edge of the Peak District, The Pack Horse is an archetypal rural village pub serving roast sirloin of beef on a Sunday. But chef and owner Luke Payne also brings a more adventurous sensibility to his modern, seasonal and sustainable gastropub menus, and to the recipes in his debut cookbook. Alongside the Sunday roasts and trimmings, there are dishes with influences from North Africa, the Middle East and India, including the pub’s popular ‘Chicken Ruby’ based on a Dishoom recipe.
Payne’s eclectic style is perhaps due to his unusual path to success. In an autobiographical introduction, he describes working as a pot wash in a chain pub near Huddersfield that served ‘awful’ food and becoming head chef of a ‘ping and sling’ pub in Sheffield. Disillusioned, Payne nearly ended up managing a supermarket before he stumbled on The Pack Horse in 2016.
Since then, and with no experience in high-end restaurants, Payne has found his culinary identity and achieved recognition from Michelin, the Good Food Guide and Harden’s, achieved 18th place in the Top 50 Gastropub list and won rave reviews from the Sunday Times and Financial Times. Some of the dishes highlighted in those reviews appear in the book including asparagus with poached egg served with a Cafe de Paris emulsion, and a vegan recipe for harissa roast carrots, pickled carrots, split pea puree, carrot top dressing and dukka.
As Payne comments in the book’s ‘Meet The Suppliers’ feature, ‘The rolling hills of the Peak District supply some of the finest outdoor grazing space in the country for cattle and sheep’ of which he makes good use in signature recipes such as rack of lamb, pressed lamb shoulder potato and pickled morels. But the book is almost as much a celebration of the Peak District’s landscape as the produce Payne sources from it, with stunning landscape photography and five illustrated walks to take from the pub.
With a highly individual culinary approach that incorporates everything from classic chicken liver pate to squirrel ragu pappardelle, Payne has produced a cookbook that takes a fresh and inspiring look at what gastropub food can be.
Cuisine: British
Suitable for: For confident cooks/Professional chefs
Cookbook Review Rating: Four stars
Buy This Book: The Pack Horse by Luke Payne (affiliate link)
£35, Meze Publishing
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This review first appeared in The Caterer