Like pretty much anyone with taste buds and a working nose, I love bacon, and having a stab at curing my own is something I’ve wanted to do for a while, in fact ever since I read this article by Tim Hayward a few years ago.

Despite what you think, it’s actually really easy. In fact I’d say anyone blessed with a pair of arms could do it. It requires no culinary skill what so ever, just a very few ingredients and a bit of time. In fact less than a week. Just think, a week after reading this you could be tucking into a sarnie made with your own bacon. Excited? You should be.

I substituted the maple syrup in Tim’s cure for black treacle, as I wanted to try something a bit different, and I used a smaller joint, but the rest of the method is pretty much as described in the link above. The only other thing you’ll need is a tupperware box big enough to accommodate the joint.

Ingredients

1kg loin of pork, skin removed and boned

400ml black treacle

300g unrefined sea salt

Method

Day 1: Go to a decent butcher and ask him / her for a boned loin of pork with a finished weight of around a kilo. Also ask them to remove the skin, but leave the fat on. Take the joint home, pop it into your tupperware box, and then cover in 200ml of the black treacle. Give the joint a good rub all over, making sure it’s nicely coated, and then pop on the lid and stick it in the fridge.

Day 2: 24 hours later, take out the box and then sprinkle 150g of the unrefined sea salt over the joint. The salt I used was ‘Gros Sel’ which I found in a local Turkish shop. It’s grey in colour, contains no chemicals, and is pretty chunky, so I broke it down a bit in a pestle and mortar. If you can’t get your hands on it, use something like this, but avoid using refined table salt. Rub the salt all over the joint, and re-coat with the treacle, before returning to the fridge covered. Before you go to bed, turn the joint once.

Day 3: In the morning, turn the joint again. You’ll notice that bacon transformation has started. The salt has begun to draw the moisture out of the meat, firming it up, and the treacle has stained it a dark brown colour. Tim Hayward comments that the texture of his joint at this stage reminds him of Gordon Ramsay, but mine is definitely more Ray Winstone from Sexy Beast. When the pork has been marinating for 24 hours, its time to change the cure. Rinse the joint and the tupperware clean, and then pat the meat dry. Return to the box and then re-salt and treacle (at the same time this time) with the remaining quantities, again making sure to rub the joint all over. return to the fridge and turn the meat before bed.

Day 4 and 5: Over the next 48 hours, as often as you care to, turn and rub the meat with the salty treacle. As time goes on, you’ll feel the joint become firmer still as the meat continues to cure and more water leeches out of it.

Day 6: You’re almost there. Remove the joint from the cure, and once again rinse the meat and tupperware with cold water and pat the meat dry. At this stage you could start carving slices and eating. Like Tim, my excitement got the better of me, and I tried it, but it was way too salty to be truly delicious, so I decided to soak it to alleviate the problem. Immerse the joint in cold water for around four hours, changing the water after two. Now take out the bacon, pat it dry and then put it back in the box, uncovered this time, and return to the fridge until morning.

Day 7: Triumphantly take out your bacon, cut a few thin rashers (this is the only hard bit of the process – even with a good sharp knife, cutting an even, thin slice of bacon is tricky), fire up your frying pan and get ready to grin like a Cheshire cat.

And thats it. It really is that easy. I’ve already got my second joint on the go, and this time I think I’m going to take the results to the butcher I bought the joint from and see if they’ll slice it on their machine for me.

I got back from class today to find a nice surprise gift from the wife, a copy of the brand spanking new food quarterly, Lucky Peach.

Created by Momofuku’s David Chang (Monofuku means lucky peach in Japanese), Lucky Peach was initially going to be a TV show and then iPad app, but after a chance encounter with the ever hip crew at Dave Eggers’ McSweeney’s, it became a magazine.

The launch issue is loosely themed around ramen, which is unsurprising given Chang’s culinary roots (he cut his teeth in Tokyo), and this celebration of one of Japan’s national dishes at a time when the country is in such turmoil seems somehow apt.

Anyway, I’ve not really got stuck into it properly yet, but my first impressions are that it looks very promising. A highly suitable replacement for Fire & Knives which I can’t seem to find out here.

Right, now I need to go and find me a bowl of soupy noodles. Sayonara.

What. A. Week.

Despite the past two weeks at SFBI being fantastic, one of the things I’ve been most excited about getting stuck into is making sourdoughs and science behind the rise. I’ve done a fair few sourdough experiments at home in the past, but never really nailed it, so the past week really ticked some major boxes for me.

We started our foray into the world of sour by looking into it’s history and mythology, and of course touching on the famous San Francisco Sourdough. It’s interesting stuff (at least to me), and as a few readers have expressed an interest in knowing more, here’s a potted version.

Sourdough was discovered / invented by accident in ancient Egypt at around 1500 BC. The story goes that some women making loaves on the banks of the Nile left a couple out in the humid, sunny conditions. They discovered their omission, and added the dough that had started to leaven to the rest of their batch. They liked the resulting lighter bread and it’s flavour, and kick started a great bread making tradition.

We then went on to de-bunk some of the myths that surround the art of making bread with natural yeast. There’s quite a bit of romanticism surrounding sourdough cultures. You’ll hear of ones that have been passed down from some German monastery in the middle ages, but the truth of the matter is that a starter’s life-cycle and feeding schedule means that every few weeks or so it’s a totally new beast. Any traces of ancient flours or yeasts would be long gone after a few months. Sad but true.

The same is true of cultures that use stuff other than flour and water to kick start them. Some people swear by using fruit like grapes or rhubarb to get things started, but any natural yeasts that exist on the skin of such fruit will most likely not be that happy in their new habitat, and again will die off and be replaced pretty quickly. Although, fruit may contribute some sugars that will help kick start the fermentation process, so it does have it’s uses.

We then went on to talk specifically about San Francisco sourdough. I was under the impression that the starter would have a specific formula, but no. What makes an SF sourdough is Lactobacillus Sanfranciscensis, the natural yeast that’s in the air out here. Traditionally the starter is made with just flour and water and can be either stiff or liquid, but people have been known to add fruit, yoghurt, apple juice and probably all sorts of other things.

But the starter is only part of the story of that trademark tang. The other factor is the way the bread is made. The bread’s dough picks up these additional flavour profiles by retarding it overnight, which slows down fermentation and develops that taste and tang. Obviously, you can do this anywhere in the Word and create a near perfect facsimile of this kind of sourdough, but you wouldn’t really be able to call it a San Francisco sourdough as it wouldn’t contain that specific yeast. So hopefully that’s put that one to bed.

The majority of the rest of the week, we got busy in the lab. We kicked things off by starting our own culture that we managed to coax into life in time to be used in a starter on Thursday. And then be baked bread. LOTS of bread. Across the week we made SF sourdoughs, bulk and shape retarded sourdough baguettes, ciabattas, olive bead, walnut and raisin batards, sour wholewheat boules, braided challah and a chocolate bread.

I’ve probably missed a couple, but I think my favourite bread of the week was a ‘hand mix’ we did. Simple and easy, but a bit time consuming. We mixed the flour, water and starter by hand until properly combined and then bulk fermented it for around 3 hours, folding it every 45 minutes to build up it’s strength. We then divided the dough, roughly shaped it into 1.5 kilo rounds and set aside for half an hour or so. It was then shaped, popped into floured baskets and retarded over night to be baked first thing the following morning. The results were fantastic. Great crust, great crumb, great flavour, and very little effort. Time did most of the work. Probably not that practical from a big production point of view, but proper artisan stuff.

So that was the week that was. This week we’re doing whole grains. Until then…

In no particular order, my top ten Christmas picks that I’d love to find under my tree or in my stocking.

1.Le Creuset Casserole Dish – Le Creuset’s stuff is heavy, in both senses of the word. Cast iron, classic, and they seem to improve with age. I’ll take this shallow casserole dish in white, thanks.

2.Fire & Knives Subscription – Mine has run out, so I’d definitely like someone somewhere to renew my subscription to this excellent, and refreshingly different, food publication.

3.Global Vegetable Chopper – Global knives are probably not as fashionable as they used to be, but for my money (and they aren’t cheap) they are the best knives I’ve used. This veg chopper is like a mini cleaver, and would be a welcome addition to my collection.

4.Sipsmith’s Sloe Gin – I love a drop of Sloe Gin, and this stuff is produced by artisan distillers in Hammersmith, London, so it’s also means supporting a local, independent business. Win, win.

5.Ripailles – I’ve flicked through this French cookery bible a bunch of times in book shops, and everything in it looks amazing. The photography alone had my mouth watering within seconds.

6.Wesco Bread Bin – classic American style bread bin. I’ve wanted one for a while, but we really don’t have room for one in our already crowded kitchen.

7. Sausage Making Course – I did the Ginger Pig beef butchery class earlier in the year, which was ace, and I rather fancy a return visit to learn a bit about making bangers.

8. Dinner & Foraging at the Foxhunter – I’ve been wanting to go to Matt Tebbutt’s pub in Monmouthshire for ages, and combining a quality meal with an afternoon’s foraging sounds like my idea of a good day out.

9.Dualit Coffee Grinder – getting my coffee fix at Kaffiene at the weekends is tricky, so this burr grinder would get Square Mile or Monmouth coffee beans perfectly ground for my morning cup.

10. Neal’s Year Cheese – Christmas and cheese go hand in hand, and although this New Traditionals selection doesn’t have a Stilton, it would be a welcome, if not slightly smelly, addition under the tree.

The blurb on the back does it much more justice than I ever could, so I’ve transcribed it for you lucky people. “Stargazey pie, Cheshire cheese, toffee apples, fish and chips, Sussex pond pudding, Cumberland sausages, pasties, gingerbread, dumplings and Cox’s orange pippins are just some of the edible delights in this gorgeous celebration of English food from across the country and its history. From the etiquette of afternoon tea to the origins of mince pies, from the best way to eat Stilton to how to cook a proper Yorkshire pudding, here are both well-loved favourites and unsung heroes from the nation’s mouth-watering heritage”.

Well worth a look if you come across it.

The Great British Fry Up is a thing of beauty when done right, and probably one of the most disappointing food experiences when it’s cocked up. These days the classic fry up at a ‘greasy spoon’ has increasingly been replaced by the ‘posh’, expensive version served in gastro pubs and the like, and many of the old school cafés have gone with it. Earlier in the year, an old favourite caff of mine, Rossi’s in Spitalfields, closed its doors after 50 plus years of serving happy punters. A sad day.

So when you find a cafe that nails the classic British Fry Up, it’s something to be cherished. And The Regency Cafe in Pimlico / Victoria is one of those places. It’s definately in the mould of a ‘greasy spoon’, but it’s much more than that, and there’s not a deep fried sausage in sight.

Even from the outside you can tell The Regency is a special place. It’s has a really classic deco look to it, decked inside and out in original Edwardian tiles, gingham half curtains in the window, and according to the date above the door it’s been going since 1946. You have to place your order before you sit down, don’t test the regulars by taking a seat when you arrive, and there’s plenty to choose from on the menu from egg and chips to liver and bacon.

We opted for the breakfast special with a side of the much neglected bubble & squeak and a typical British caff ‘frothy coffee’. The breakfast came with egg, bacon, sausage, tomatoes, two toast and the bubble. The egg was fried to perfection, the bacon thickly sliced and delicious, and the meaty, herby sausage (Lincolnshire I think) was one of the best I’ve had at breakfast. The bubble was great too, especially when drenched in egg yolk. In fact the only thing I regret was getting tinned tomatoes instead of grilled / fried. But you live and learn.

In terms of atmosphere, the place is more like an American diner than a traditional British caff. It’s got a real buzz about it, and the guy who bosses the till calls out the orders in this great, booming voice. We arrived at about a quarter past ten on Saturday morning, and pretty much as soon as we’d placed our orders and sat down, there was a queue out of the door.

The regency is a real gem, and I hope it keeps going strong for years to come. They also serve a dinner menu from 4 till 7pm, but I’ve never been there after breakfast time. Go and check it out.

As mentioned in a previous post, I’ve been looking at new features to add to Hand To Mouth. My friend Dazzler suggested I try re-creating recipes from weird and wonderful books, which I thought was a great idea. This first ‘Tried & Tested’ post fits more into the latter category, as it comes from a rather lovely new cookery book called ‘Great British Food‘.

Put together by the guys behind the brilliant Canteen mini chain of restaurants, this Lancashire Hot Pot stays true to their ethos of cooking gutsy, tasty, good quality, British grub. The recipe calls for leg mutton, which I couldn’t get hold of at the time of cooking, so instead I used shoulder of lamb.

The recipe takes a bit of prep, but once you get going it’s pretty easy, and it tastes reet good.

Ingredients (serves 6)

50g butter

250g onions, sliced

1kg boned leg of mutton, 3-4cm dice

150g carrots, sliced

10g fresh thyme, leaves picked

3 bay leaves

700g floury potatoes (Maris Piper), peeled ad thinly sliced

500ml meat stock

100ml meat stock

Salt and black pepper

Method

Preheat the oven to 135 degrees, and then heat up half the butter in a saucepan. Add the onions and sweat over a low heat for around 15 minutes or until soft and translucent, but not browned.

Next place the meat in an oven proof dish and add the onions, carrots, thyme and bay leaves. Season well with salt and pepper, and then mix together.

Arrange the potato slices on top of the meat and vegetable mix, overlapping the slices slightly, and then pour the stock and ale into the dish.

Now melt the remaining butter and brush over the potatoes, season with salt, cover with a lid and then pop in the oven to cook for 2 hours.

After two hours, remove the lid from the dish, increase the oven temperature to 150 degrees and continue cooking for a further 30-45 minutes until the potatoes are nicely browned.

Serve in big bowls, making sure you get a good mix of the meat, vegetables and the tasty stock.

It’s been around for a while, but I first read about Jim Lahey’s ‘no knead bread‘ in a Saveur magazine when I was in New York last year. I’d already got the bread baking bug, and the idea of a loaf that required no kneading seemed a bit odd, even a bit sacrilegious. I did a bit of research on line, and found out that everyone raves about the loaf, and it basically put Lahey’s Sullivan Street Bakery on the map.

Anyway, it definitely got me interested. How could a loaf requiring so little work be so good? Life just isn’t like that. So I gave it a go. The loaf is cooked in a cast iron pot, a bit like an Australian damper, so you’ll need a Le Creuset or something similar for it to work.

Ingredients

3 cups (430g) flour
1½ cups (345g or 12oz) water
¼ teaspoon (1g) yeast
1¼ teaspoon (8g) salt
Olive oil
Rye flour (for dusting)

Method

Mix all of the dry ingredients in a bowl and mix together for a minute or so to form a ’shaggy’ dough. Transfer the dough to a larger bowl oiled with some olive oil. NB. the dough will expand to around 4 times the size, so make sure your bowl is big enough. Cover with clingfilm and let the dough develop for 12-18 hours at room temperature.

After this time the dough will be aerated. Remove it from the bowl and fold on itself once or twice. The dough is stickier than with regular bread, a bit like when making a sourdough, so be prepared to get a bit messy. Using dough scrapers is a good idea. Let the dough rest 15 minutes in the bowl or on the work surface, then try and shape into a ball. Generously coat a tea towel with rye flour, place the dough on the left hand side, scatter the dough with more flour, and then fold the towel over the top to cover it. Let rise for around 2 hours at room temperature, until more than doubled in size.

Preheat your oven to 230°C. Place a cast iron pot in it at least 30 minutes prior to baking to preheat. Once the dough has more than doubled in volume, remove the pot from the oven and put the dough in it. Shake from side to side so it fills the base. Cover with the lid and bake for 30 minutes, then remove the lid and bake for another 20 minutes or so uncovered, until the loaf is nicely browned. Take the loaf out and place on a wire rack to cool. I know this is going to sound a bit sad, but the loaf’s crust crackles as it cools, which is pretty exciting.

When you cut into the loaf, you won’t be disappointed. The crust is crisp, crunchy and satisfying, and the dough inside a cross between really good French bread and a Ciabatta. Honestly, its great. And for so little work. There is such a thing as a free lunch.

Two final notes. I cooked mine in an oval 27 cm pot, but think it would have worked better in the round 24 cm version. Secondly, I tried this recipe again at the weekend substituting the strong white flour with a ‘Farine Bise‘ that I bought in Paris, but it was much less successful. The crust was less impressive, and the dough much heavier. I guess it rises better with the plain white.

UPDATE: Tried the loaf again at the weekend in a smaller pot, with great results. Check out photos on my Flickr page here.

The final course of our valentines meal was a lemon posset with heart shaped shortbread biscuits (forgive the cheese).

The Posset is pretty much as old school as it gets with roots in 12th century England where it was drunk for it’s medicinal properties. I’m not sure this recipe could ever be described as good for you, cream and sugar tend to be frowned upon these days, but it is delicious, and very easy to make.

Ingredients

For the Posset

300ml double cream

75g caster sugar

1 lemon zested and juiced

For the shortbread

45g icing sugar

90g plain flour

30g cornflour

15g ground almonds

125g butter

Lemon zest

Golden caster sugar

Method

First up, put the cream and sugar in a pan and bring to the boil. Simmer for 3 minutes, making sure it doesn’t boil over, and then take off the heat. Allow to cool to room temperature, add the lemon juice and then whisk. Divide the mixture by pouring into two glasses and then put in the fridge to set.

Now make the shortbread biscuits. Sift the flour, cornflour and icing sugar into a food processor and then add the ground almonds. Cut the butter into cubes, add to the processor bowl, and then pulse until the butter has been blitzed, leaving you with a breadcrumb like mixture.

Tip the mixture out onto lightly floured surface, and bring it all together to form a smooth dough. Wrap in clingfilm, put in the fridge and set your oven to 180 degrees C.

When the oven is up to temperature, remove the dough, and using a lightly floured rolling pin, roll it out to around half a centimetre thick. Using a pastry cutter, cut out the dough and place on grease proof paper on a flat baking tray. Grate a little lemon zest and sprinkle each biscuit with a little golden caster sugar before popping in the oven for around 10 minutes.

The biscuits are ready when they are a pale yellow in colour and golden brown around the edges. Remove from the baking tray and cool on a rack. The biscuits will be soft and brittle, so be careful.

Remove the posset from the fridge to warm it up a little, and then serve with a couple of the cooled shortbread biscuits.A class act.

So, catching up, the second course of our valentine’s dinner was baked cod and baby leeks straight from the pages of Jamie at home, which if you don’t have it is a brilliant book (IMHO). The cod is marinaded in a lemon and herb mix before cooking. We had ours served with garlic mash.

Ingredients

10 baby leeks, trimmed

2 x 200g fillets of cod (with skin and sustainable if possible)

4 rashers of smoked streaky bacon

Juice of 1/2 a small lemon

Olive oil

1 large clove garlic finely chopped

2 sprigs rosemary

2 sprigs thyme

2 bay leaves

Salt & pepper

For the mash

400g potatoes

1 large clove garlic

Butter, milk salt & pepper to taste

Method

First, make the marinade for the fish. Bash up the thyme, rosemary and bay in a pestle and mortar with a good pinch of sea salt. Add a couple of glugs of olive oil, a few grinds of black pepper and the lemon juice. Chop a large clove of garlic finely, then add to the herby mixture and stir. Pour the marinade over the cod fillets in a bowl, rubbing it in and making sure it’s well coated.

Bring a pan of mildly salted water to the boil and then parboil the leeks for 3 minutes, pull out and then pat dry. Add them to the bowl the fish is marinading in, and toss.

Now put on your oven to 200 degrees C with a baking dish inside. At the same time, add your spuds to the same pan you cooked the leeks in with a clove of garlic and simmer gently. After 15 minutes, your oven should be up to temperature. Remove the dish, and remove the two cod fillets from the marinade and place them skin side down in the pre-heated dish, you should hear a nice sizzle. Then pour in the leeks and the remaining marinade. Finally place the rashers of bacon on top of the fillets before placing the dish back in the oven; it’s going to cook for 15 minutes.

After 10 minutes, the potatoes should be cooked, remove from the heat, drain, mash and add butter, milk, salt and pepper to taste. Beat with a spoon until nice and smooth.

The fish should now be ready. Remove from the oven and serve with the leeks and some of the marinade and cooking juices, and a good dollop of mash. Quite a tough dish to make look really attractive, but very tasty. Thanks Mr Oliver.

It’s called Selleck Waterfall Sandwich and does exactly what it says on the tin. It features pictures of actor Tom Selleck and sandwiches badly photoshopped onto waterfall scenes. My favourite is the little animation of Magnum blowing away a ham bagel with a shotgun.

This is what the internet was invented for

The long and short of it is that Starbucks is going to pick a few select outlets and un-brand them in order to create coffee shops with a more old fashioned and local feel. If this test is successful, they will then roll it out to other sites. Some people have described this move as a demonstration of a business being mindful of what their consumers want, but in my mind is proves what a cynical and aggressive brand Starbucks has become, and to be frank it pisses me off.

How Starbucks started as a business is a million miles away from where they are now. Originally a one off shop in Seattle’s Pike Place Market that sold artisan coffees and equipment, it didn’t become the phenomenon that it is today until it was sold to an entrepreneur called Howard Schultz in 1987. Famously in the 90s, Starbucks opened a new store every working weekday, and this pace was maintained well into the noughties.

As a result, for many Starbucks has become the ugly face of globalisation, and the site of protesters camped outside whenever they roll out yet another identical, anodyne store, a familiar one. This, along with the proliferation of all the other high street coffee chains all vying for our business, seems to have kick started a healthy trend for more traditional, independent coffee shops.

Unlike their chain gang counterparts, these shops place the emphasis on quality and ambiance over quantity and branding. A couple of great examples of the sort of place I’m talking about are The Scandinavian Kitchen and the recently opened Kaffiene that are down the road from where I work. These cafes are different, have a personality all of their own, and are a nice place to spend time. You don’t feel like you’re having a ‘vision’ thrust down your throat when you’re in there, and shock horror, they also serve up a decent cup of coffee. Not a hazelnut syrup or ’squirty’ cream canister in site.

Not surprisingly, disillusioned people have begun to migrate from the chains to seek refuge and good coffee in these independent shops. After all, if you’ve got half a brain and some taste buds why wouldn’t you? This has obviously been noted by the business bods and money grubbing analysts over at Starbucks, and they now want to get a slice of the ’slow coffee’ action. Their plan? To open ’stealth stores’ that imitate the increasingly popular indie coffee shops that have been set up as an antidote and alternative to their own brand.

With the buying power, financial backing and clout of a company like Starbucks, these fucks (I’m sorry, but in my opinion they are) will be able to open a raft of these imitation indies much faster than any start up business, either by turning existing stores or buying up prime real estate. They will no doubt clumsily flood the market with their interpretation, and in the process fool thousands of consumers into believeing that they’re having an experience that they’re not.

So how long before the idea of an indie coffee shop becomes as ubiquitous as your friendly neigbourhood Starbucks and the real indies are forced out of the marketplace? Who knows. And you never know, maybe consumers will smell the fat corporate rat and vote with their feet. I certainly hope so.

Rant over.

It’s arrived. The inaugural edition of ‘Fire & Knives’. I’ve been excited about this new ‘Food Quarterly’ since Tom at Nation told me about it a couple of months ago. The way it was described to me was a food magazine written by and intended for enthusiastic amateurs, and despite contributions by undoubted professionals like Matthew Fort and Ton Parker Bowles, the magazine sets out it’s editorial stall very clearly.

”Fire & Knives’ has to be about love of, enthusiasm for and fascination with food, in all its aspects. It could never be about being a connoisseur – literally ‘one who knows’ – it has to be about being an amateur – ‘one who loves’. Everybody eats. And a fundamentally elitist ‘connoisseurship’ is no longer appropriate in a country that’s finally maturing into a proper relationship with it’s food culture.”

I’ve yet to get properly stuck in, but the articles look really interesting and refreshingly unexpected. From cooking with Vincent Price to what defines English food, the magazine could only be the product of independent publishers with a real love for their subject matter. The magazine has been lovingly put together by the guys over at Present Joys, giving it an old fashioned quality feel, and making it even more of an attractive proposition. I hope it’s a huge success.

Enough of the typing, I’ve got some reading to do.

A couple of years ago whilst planning a trip to the apple, a friend told me that I had to check out this guy called Kenny Shopsin’s place in the Lower East Side. I’d never heard of him, but after a bit of digging I discovered that he’s a bit of a local hero. The best way I can think of describing Kenny is that he’s a kind of gutter Heston Blumenthal. He’s become ‘famous’ for his innovative combinations of foods, but not in a molecular gastronomy way. More thinking laterally about whats really tasty. His menu lists over 900 items, which he creatively names; dishes include ‘Slutty Cakes’ and ‘Blisters On My Sisters’. He’s also well known for his slightly unpredicatable temprament and strict house rules that are supposed to have partly inspired the ‘Soup Nazi’ character from Seinfeld.

Needless to say, I HAD to pay him a visit, and I wasn’t disappointed. The man himself took out order, and luckily seemed to like the cut of our jib. I can’t remember what everyone else had, but I ate a pretty atomic plate of huevos rancheros, which were very tasty, and we shared a plate of the slightly random, but totally delicious mac & cheese pancakes. I know. They sound a bit rank, but trust me. Drenched in maple syrup, they are ridiculous. So in honour of them, here’s the recipe:

Ingredients

Peanut oil for the griddle

Butter for the griddle and for serving

3 cups of pancake batter (American style)

1 heaped copy of cooked macaroni – tossed with olive oil and warmed before using

1 heaped cup of grated mild cheddar cheese

Warm maple syrup

Method

Prepare the griddle of frying pan and drop on the batter. When bubbles appear on the surface (after about 2 minutes) drop a tablespoon of macaroni onto each pancake and sprinkle with a thin layer of cheese. Use a thin spatula and flip the pancakes over. Turn the heat down to medium, and press the cakes down with the spatula. When the underside is golden (another two minutes), remove them from the pan and place on a plate, macaroni side up. Smother with maple syrup and devour.

I’ve just finished reading Kenny’s book, where I stole the recipe from, which is part philosophy part cookery book, and is an interesting read. As well as including a small selection of the hundreds of recipes on offer at his place, he charts the progress of his restaurant from a bodega in Greenwich Village to his new-ish home in the Essex Street Market, and how along the way he developed his own style, pallet and attitude to his customers.

Shopsin’s General Store is in the Essex Street Market, New York. His website is here, and you can see Kenny cooking those famous mac & cheese pancakes here.