The Christmas Box from The Small Holding and The Pure Meat Company
A collaboration between The Small Holding and The Pure Meat Company
This Christmas order a restaurant quality dinner box from The Small Holding, Kent. Chef Will Devlin from The Small Holding and farmer Tom Cunningham from The Pure Meat Company have created The Christmas Box, filled with everything needed for the main eating event on Christmas Day. This unique partnership sees Kent’s best farm-to-table chef collaborate with a first-generation farmer, who is committed to rearing meat that is ethical and sustainable.
Filled with farm-fresh and restaurant quality ingredients, The Christmas Box centerpiece is a fully free-range bronze turkey, naturally reared on Tom’s farm in Shadoxhurst, Kent, alongside pigs in blankets and stuffing balls from the farm’s free-range Tamworth pigs.
The Christmas Box starts at £130 serving 2-3 people with a boned turkey breast and a boned and stuffed turkey leg, sausage stuffing balls, pigs in blankets, roast potatoes, honey roast parsnips, glazed butter and thyme carrots, braised red cabbage, buttered leeks, redcurrant sauce, bread sauce and roast turkey gravy. All the vegetables are home-grown on the farm at The Small Holding. Diners can choose a larger turkey (up to 8-9 kg) and the option of the bird being whole or having the legs taken off the crown and stuffed and rolled. The medium Christmas Box serves 4-5 people and costs £200 and the large box, serving 6-8 people costs £250.
Each Christmas Box, whether small, medium or large also includes a bottle of award-winning Squerryes Brut 2016 Vintage Reserve, with spiced baked pears on the nose and on the palette an abundance of rich, ripe fruit and a hint of brioche. A perfect bottle of English sparkling wine from Kent to start the Christmas celebrations.
The Christmas Box collaboration between The Small Holding and The Pure Meat Company began in May, when 180 bronze turkey poults were hatched at the farm. From the moment they were born they were nurtured. For the first six weeks of their lives they were nestled up in a warm cosy barn under heaters. Once they have feathered up and can face the weather at around 6 weeks old, they are ready to be properly free-range out in the wildflower meadows. The birds spent their days running, flapping, chasing bugs and pecking grass, slowly growing to full natural maturity at about 7 months. They were fed on a locally milled grain feed with no antibiotics, exactly as nature intended.
The Christmas Box is available to order online from www.exploretock.com/thesmallholding and is to be collected from The Small Holding on Tuesday 22nd or Wednesday 23rd December.
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For more information, images or interview please contact Hannah Blake hannah@thediningroompr.co.uk | 07730 039361
About The Small Holding
Will Devlin, 32, is the chef owner of The Small Holding, a kitchen and farm on a country lane in the village of Kilndown on the Kent and East Sussex borders. The 26-cover restaurant was voted the best restaurant in Kent at the Taste of Kent Awards and is set in one acre of land, permitting a unique connection between farm and table. Growing, foraging and cooking the best ingredients is at the core of The Small Holding, with daily changing menus, using home-reared and home-grown ingredients from the farm, which is less than 10ft from the kitchen.
Praise for The Small Holding
“A group of folk growing amazing things, then pulling them out of the ground, sometimes knobbly and lumpy, then cooking and serving them. It’s perfectly imperfect and I wouldn’t change a thing.” Grace Dent, The Guardian
About The Pure Meat Company
The Pure Meat Company is a first-generation family farm run by two brothers, Tom and Sam Cunningham with a clear purpose; to tread a little more lightly upon the planet.
Tom, aged 22, founded the farm in 2017, with a passionate belief that farming could - and should - be done differently. Frustrated by the fast-and-forced farming methods widely employed by the industry, the brothers knew that there is a better way to produce meat.
The Pure Meat Company farms three hundred acres across the Weald of Kent stitched together by dense hedgerows, deep-rooted trees and a network of pure water courses for properly free-range, native breed cows, pigs and sheep to graze, root and forage. The farmland is made up of permanent pasture, 100 acres of wildflower meadows and ancient woodlands, most of which have never been ploughed. Tom and Sam farm ethically and sustainably and the result is slow-raised meat, reared gently and sustainably in the heart of Kent. www.puremeatcompany.co.uk/shop