Book review: The Pack Horse by Luke Payne

The Pack Horse, a handsome brick building on the edge of the Peak District, is an archetypal village pub serving roast sirloin 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, with dishes influenced by 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 Café de Paris emulsion, and a vegan recipe for harissa roast carrots, pickled carrots, split pea purée, 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 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 approach incorporating everything from classic chicken liver pâté to squirrel ragu pappardelle, Payne has produced a cookbook that takes a fresh and inspiring look at what gastropub food can be.

The Pack Horse by Luke Payne (£35, Meze Publishing)