This is a bit of a beg, steal and borrow recipe. The burger is inspired by Fred Smith’s recent double cheese at the Ad Cod. The patty is very much in the style of Lucky Chip / Meatwagon / Mother Flipper. And the bun recipe, which is kind of a demi-brioche, is based on (believe it or not) a Dan Lepard hot cross bun recipe.

The burger patties are pure meat, so don’t buy the stuff you get in the supermarket. Go and see your butcher and either get him to grind a bit of what you fancy, or if their own mince is good quality, get some of that. I used a combination of chuck and shin (I think around 75% to 25%). Great flavour.

This recipe will make either 2 doubles with a few buns to spare, or 4 singles. The choice is yours. I serve mine with lettuce, red onion, a cheeky sauce made with home made mayo and Tabasco, and some of that lovely plastic burger cheese. I didn’t have the time or the inclination to make my own, but you can. There’s a good recipe for it here on Luc Martin’s blog.

Finally, As these burgers don’t have a binding agent, they are a bit more fragile, which can make barbecuing them slightly harder. The ‘cue I used had flat bars so I was safe, but they’re equally good fried off in a hot pan or on a griddle plate in true diner style.

Ingredients

For the buns (makes 5)

135 g white bread flour

135 g plain flour

7 g fresh yeast / 4 g dried yeast

90 ml warm water

40 ml milk

40 g butter

40 g sugar

1 large egg (half for the dough, half for glazing the buns)

1/2 tsp salt

For the patties

500 g ground beef – chuck and shin

Salt and pepper

Method

First the buns. Mix the yeast and the warm water together and set aside to activate for a few minutes while you prep the rest of your ingredients. Bring the milk to the boil, take it off the heat and add the butter, stirring until it melts. Next take the egg, beat it, and add half to the buttery milk.

Sift the flours, sugar and salt together into a bowl, and then add the yeasty water and milk mixture. Mix with your hands, and bring together to form a sticky, shaggy dough and then leave for 10 minutes. After this time, remove from the bowl and knead for around half a minute, and then  form it into a ball. Put the dough in a lightly oiled bowl, and leave it somewhere warm for 45 minutes.

After this time, divide the dough into 5 equal pieces or around 100g each. Flatten the dough, and then shape each piece into a round, smooth ball. Place the balls seam side down on a baking tray lined with greaseproof paper about an inch or so apart. Cover with a tea towel, and return them to the warm place for around an hour and a half to prove, until they have risen by half. Around half an hour before they are ready, pre-heat your oven to 190c.

When the buns are ready, brush them with the remaining egg mixture and then pop in the oven to bake for 20 to 25 minutes, until beautifully shiny and golden brown. Remove from the oven, peel them off the baking tray, and place them on a rack to cool.

The patties are easy, but make sure your mince is at room temperature and not cold before you cook them off. Divide your mince into 4 equal portions of around 125g each, and then form each into a tight ball. Then flatten each one to around 1.5 cm thick, making an impression in the centre of each one with your thumb (this helps the burger maintain an equal thickness as the meat contracts during cooking).

Once the patties are done, you’re ready to go. Get your pan / barbie / plate good and hot, and season the meat with salt and pepper just before they go on the grill. You want to caremelise each side, and keep cooking for as long as you need depending on how you like your burgers. When you’re ready, pop the cheese on top and let it melt a bit before taking off the grill.

And that is it. Serve them how you like and with what ever side you like. We had sweet potato fries, but onion rings would have probably been better.

The more observant amongst you will notice that it’s technically week 5, but we took last week off in Cornwall (very nice seeing as you’re asking) so it’s not on the clock. More importantly last week was a BIG one for Brick House, and some major pieces of the puzzle were slotted into place.

We got back from the West Country on Saturday night, and spent the bank holiday weekend tearing about the space like a Voltron style Kim, Aggie and Handy Andy. Deep cleaning, removing old pipe-work, painting, sawing, power hosing, de-greasing and paint stripping. I think I may have mentioned it on Twitter, but if god is looking for a new purgatory punishment, then I reckon removing paint from textured glass could be a solid contender. What. An. Effing. Shag. Anyway, by Monday evening our hands were shredded and we were shattered, but quietly pleased with ourselves.

Tuesday bought with it a HUGE delivery from Nisbets. Fair play to them, they were on time and everything I ordered turned up. Sinks, tea towels, aprons, tubs, scales, thermometers, a peel, tables, even a pair of rather medieval looking oven gloves, all piled up in the middle of the room like a successful run on a catering version of The Generation Game.

But on Wednesday the big guns arrived on a massive flat bed truck. I’d had a couple of sleepless nights over how the truck was going to get down the rather narrow driveway to the estate, but after what can only be described as some genius driving by Mike (who was the spit of Louie Spence, but Northern and portly), my Mono oven and Baker Perkins mixer were winched down and manouvered into Number 9. I’ve got to be honest with you, the oven was a lot bigger than I remembered it. A lot bigger. But it means that I shouldn’t need to buy a new one for quite some time. Or at least f**king I hope so. It’s not been fully tested yet.

Whilst we on the subject of the oven, it needs a name. My buddy Darren has already christened the mixer Mr Perkins, but none of the suggestions for the Mono have stuck yet, so any suggestions would be welcome.

I’d arranged the electrical and plumbing work to be done on the same day, and I’ve got to say the crew did a grand job. Especially as the electrics in the space needed to be upgraded to accommodate the oven (the cause a minor heart attack whilst down in Cornwall and yet more sleepless nights). But by Thursday afternoon everything was wired up and plumbed in, and the final big bit of kit, the cold room, was delivered and installed. You’ll see that the layout is a bit different from the plan in the previous post which was the result of some debate with the missus, but as much as I hate to admit it, she was right and it’s beginning to look a lot like a bakery.

Finally, if the week wasn’t momentous enough, I found out that I’d been shortlisted as one of the final three for the bakery category of the YBF awards. Christ, I sound like that smug prick from The Fast Show. I better sign off.

Until next time…

Photo: Terry Richardson

I think it has pissed with rain every day this week. Depressing. But for us at least there was a silver lining. We found out that there was a leak in the roof of our unit. Now, that may not sound much like a good thing to you, but far better to find out now than when we’ve installed all our kit, and if the rest of the roof can hold up to weather this shitty, then the structure must be sound. You’ve got to take the positives where you can get them, people.

Anyway, our landlord is going to sort out the leak along with a few other snags, which has left me more time to spend money. I know I’m not playing with the kinds of budgets necessary to set up even a modest restaurant or cafe, but  if there was a gold medal for spending cash at the Olympics later this year, I feel like I could be in the running.

I took my one man Supermarket Sweep on the road to Ikea and Homebase, stopping only for meatballs and asking confused staff if they stocked brooms with softer bristles and wider heads (they didn’t), and then battered my plastic on line with Nisbets. Finally, I bought a walk in fridge. Anyway, after a couple of cock ups and battling with unhelpful call centre staff, I think I’ve managed to orchestrate all of our kit to arrive the week after next to coincide with the required plumbing and electrical work. I’m sure it’ll all work out smoothly, right?

I’ve also been doing some work on the layout of the bakery, trying to sort out how the flow of the place will pan out during a working day. Again it’s one of those things that I’ll only find out whether its right or not once I’m in there baking, but I think it’s in a pretty good place.

We also got some excellent ink stamps made (see above) which are going to save us a bunch of cash on printing etc. A few people on twitter have asked where we got them, and the answer is the rather excellently named Blade Rubber. Great, efficient service. I would highly recommend them.

Finally, we decided to take next week off and go down to Cornwall. I think we’ve realised that it’s probably our last chance to have a bit of a break before it all kicks off in earnest. The calm before the storm, if you will. I just hope the weather down there is a bit brighter than it is here.

Until next time…

Up and about early waiting around for deliveries, so I figured I’d try and bash out a couple of blog posts,.

Skate may not be at the top of everyone’s list at the fishmongers, but I’m going to give you three reasons why you should give it a go. 1. It’s easy and fast to cook; from prep to plate in less than 20 minutes. 2. Skate flesh is really satisfying; meaty and buttery in equal measure. 3. It’s a much more sustainable choice of white fish. Sold?

If you can get them, use salted capers. They are less mushy, and taste better, just rinse off the salt before you use them.

Ingredients (serves 2)

2 skate wings

Handful of flat leaf parsley, roughly chopped

1tbs small capers

50g unsalted butter

1 lemon, juice only

Groundnut oil

Flour

Salt & pepper

Method

Set your oven to 200c, and then dust your skate wings with seasoned flour, patting off the excess.

Get a frying pan on the hob on a medium high heat, add whichever flavourless cooking oil you want to use, and then fry the wings on either side until golden brown. This should take one or two minutes. The wings can be pretty big, so if there’s not room in your pan, just do one at a time.

When done, remove the wings from the pan, and put them on a baking tray in your pre-heated oven to cook for a further 5 or 6 minutes.

Whilst this is going on, turn up the heat on your hob and dump the butter the same pan you fried the fish in. You want the butter to foam and start to turn brown, and when this is beginning to happen add the lemon juice and capers and stir vigorously. Remove from the heat after a few seconds, and then mix in the roughly chopped parsley.

When ready, take the skate out of the oven, and generously spoon the sharp, salty, nutty brown butter over each wing.

Serve with a watercress salad and some new potatoes.

I’m going to keep this Local Hero short as I’ve got a shed load to do, but I’ve been meaning to pay homage to Lahore in Whitechapel for ages, and now is the time. I know a lot of people prefer Tayyabs around the corner, but I’m not one of those people. I’m not going to deny that Tayyabs is good, but its just not one hour queuing good.

I first, rather nervously, went to Lahore when it was just a ramshackle upstairs dining room, complete with loos that didn’t flush properly around I guess five or six years ago. It’s a very different place now. Three big, blinging dining rooms bedecked in marble, tile and flat screen TVs. It may not be to everyone’s taste, but the food is still as good as it ever was, if not better.

I’m not going to beat around the bush, the thing that keeps me coming back to Lahore is the chops. Yes, they are smaller and thinner than the ones at Taayabs, but to me they just taste better. Big hits of cumin, chilli and that fantastic barbecue flavour the chefs conjure up from that grill. I’m not kidding, I’m literally salivating whilst I write this. The rest of their mixed grill items are also great. The sheek kebabs, lamb and chicken tikka are all tasty (the fish less so), but those chops are some next level shizzle.

My other go to dish is their tarka daal. Having been playing around with daal a bit myself of late, I’m baffled how they make theirs taste so damn good. It has a deep orange colour, and even deeper flavour. Again it has a cumin smokeyness to it, as well as ginger and coriander, and a really feisty chilli kick, but there’s something else in there that I’ve been unable to put my finger on. It really is amazing.

There’s plenty of other good stuff on the menu too. They do a special lamb shank curry a few nights a week called (from memory) Nihari, and the methi and karahi curries are also winners, but they unfortunately don’t do the aubergine curry that most Pakistani places do around the area. I tend not to bother with rice, opting instead for a few roti and paratha which are also excellent.

So next time you’re bored in the queue at Tayyabs, do yourself a favour and walk down towards Commercial Road and go to Lahore instead.

I’d go so far to say that it’s one of my favourite restaurants in London, and a plate of chops, daal and a couple of rotis would be a very close contender for my death row meal.

But before I get busy, I just wanted to say a huge thanks once again to all the people who have shown interest and encouragement for Brick House opening, particularly the folks and businesses of SE22 and the surrounding area. Whilst we may not have sold a single loaf yet, they have show a tremendous amount of passion for all things local, and for us that’s hugely encouraging.

The week started on a bit of a downer as we were supposed to pick up our keys on the Monday, but the previous occupants of our unit had amassed so much stuff that it took them considerably longer to extract themselves from the building than expected. To call them hoarders would be an understatement. But to be honest, we’ve got so much other stuff to do that getting into the space right away isn’t exactly critical.

So the early part of the week was all about getting stuff sorted. Setting up bank accounts, registering the business with the council, investigating accountants, sourcing equipment, revising budgets, and writing lists. Lots of lists. I’ve never written so many effing lists.

I’ve also spent an inordinate amount of time on-line looking at reconditioned equipment. In an ideal world we’d be able to buy the kind of oven that I used whilst out in California, but these cost in the region of £40k, so the two biggest expenses on our purchase list, the oven and mixer, are going to be ‘pre-loved’. So after much research I headed up to Nottinghamshire to go and look at a couple of places that had been recommended to me.

Have gone back and forth on what brand of oven to go for, I eventually settled on a Mono. Tom Chandley ovens are by far the most popular for craft bakers, but this means that a) they are harder to come by, and b) the cost of them is, in my mind, artificially high. So I reached out on twitter to a few bakers to canvas opinion, and most, including Aidan from The Phoenix, gave me positive feedback on the Mono. Plus it has steam on all decks, which was one of the must haves for me.

The slightly scary thing is that won’t be 100% sure how I’ll get on with the Mono until I’m baking with it. I say slightly scary. This fact caused a bit of a mid week meltdown. Parting with the cash for a key piece of equipment that I wouldn’t be able to properly try before it was installed in the bakery totally scrambled my brain. Compounded with the wife being away on business, I spent a good 24 hours and a sleepless night dithering. In the end, I had to make a leap of faith. Hopefully its one I won’t live to regret. At the same place I found the oven, I also found a mixer. Its a bit of an ugly old Italian beast, but it should get the job done nicely. So that was two massive boxes ticked.

By the end of the week, we finally got the keys to our unit, which also felt like a real milestone. The owner has cleaned it up a bit, but it still needs a fair amount of work to get it how we want it. But the important thing is that it’s ours.

Right, I’m off to Ikea and B&Q to spend yet more money.

We had such a lovely response from lots of people wanting to know more and offering words of encouragement, and whilst there’s still a HUGE mountain to climb and lots of questions we don’t have all the answers to, there’s a bunch of stuff that we do know.

Brick House is going to be a small artisan sourdough bakery based on an industrial estate just off Peckham Rye Common in SE22. We’ll be specialising in slow fermentation sourdoughs combing old school methods, with new school techniques that I picked up whilst studying out in San Francisco. All our bread will be shaped, scored and baked by hand, and where possible will use organic ingredients.

Our dream initially was to have some kind of retail location, but despite all the government’s talk of re-generating high streets and backing small businesses, actually getting a loan seems to be about as easy as getting laid in a nunnery, if you’ll pardon the analogy. So to start with Brick House will be a wholesale and delivery business, supplying local cafes, restaurants, shops and pubs.

But we’re also looking at other options of getting our bread into your hands including weekly farmers markets, having a pitch at a train station selling to people on their way home, milkman style door to door to door deliveries, and so on. If any of the above tickle your fancy, or you’ve got any other suggestions, or if you’re a business owner who’s potentially interested in using or stocking Brick House bread, drop us a line.

We’ll hopefully be picking up the keys to our unit on Monday the 16th of April, and at the moment it’s a blank space. There’s lots of work to in terms of buying equipment, plumbing, electrics and getting the space compliant from a health and safety point of view, but we’re hoping to be open for business some time from around mid to late May. Time permitting, I’ll be documenting the process in a diary of sorts here on Hand To Mouth.

So it’s with a bit of a heavy heart that I’ll be saying goodbye to the guys at E5 Bakehouse when I finish work there at the end of this week. I’ve really enjoyed the 5 or 6 months that I’ve spent with the crew down on Mentmore Terrace, but the plan has always been to open up something up ourselves, so it has to be done.

Last but not least, I need to say a BIG thank you to my good friend Tom H of Nation for doing such a sterling job on The Brick House branding and identity. Yet again he’s done me proud.

I know it’s not very  de rigueur as the food world seems to be obsessed with all things meaty at the moment, but over the past month or so, the wife and I have been making a bit of a concerted effort to eat less of the stuff. More for health reasons than anything ethical. Anyway, I’d been wanting to do a baked egg dish of some kind for a while, and then I came across this recipe for Chachouka from the excellent River Cottage Veg book (no this isn’t a plug).

Unless we’re super greedy, I’m not sure how Hugh thinks this will serve 4 people, so I’d read it at serving two. I also added a chilli to spice it up a bit. Finally, whilst this is a great veggie dish, I think it could be converted into something equally excellent with the addition of some minced lamb.

Ingredients

1 tsp cumin seeds

1 large onion, halved & finely sliced

1 garlic clove, finely chopped

1 red pepper, cored, de-seeded and finely sliced

1 yellow pepper, cored, de-seeded and finely sliced

1/2 tsp hot smoked paprika

1 red chilli, de-seeded and finely sliced

1 pinch of saffron strands

400g tin of chopped tomatoes

2 eggs

Salt & pepper to taste

Olive oil for frying

Method

Before starting, it’s worth mentioning that the final stage of this dish is to bake it in the oven, so if you’ve got an ovenproof frying pan use this, if not you’ll need something to transfer the Chachouka in to.

Heat some olive oil in a pan over a medium heat, and then add the cumin seeds. Let them sizzle away for a minute or so, and then add the onion, and cook gently for 10 minutes or so until soft and golden.

Next add the thinly sliced peppers, chilli and garlic, and continue to cook for around 20 minutes or so until the peppers are really soft and wilted. Then add the saffron, paprika, can of tomatoes, and a pinch of salt and black pepper, and cook gently for a further 10 to 15 minutes. Whilst this is going on, set your oven to 180c.

By now, your mixture should be a deep reddy orange colour and pretty thick. Give it a taste for seasoning and adjust as necessary. Now either transfer to an oven proof dish, or keep it in your frying pan. Make 2 hollows in the mixture’s surface with the back of a large spoon, crack an egg into each of them, and then slide into your oven for as long as it takes for the white to set and the yolk to remain runny (8-10 minutes).

And that’s it. Serve with some good bread and salad.

One of the great things about working at the E5 Bakehouse has been hanging out with people from other parts of the food world. One of the crew who I’ve particularly enjoyed getting to know is Ruth. She’s one of those types who seems to have led an incredibly full life, and has been everything from a chef at (arguably) London’s first gastro pub, The Eagle, to a tattoo artist, and a bunch of other stuff in between.

Luckily for us, she’s landed at E5 after a 10 year stint as a private chef in Ibiza, and we’ve all been enjoying her cooking immensely. For me, amongst my favourite stuff that she cooks are her daals. They are never quite the same, but she riffs around a basic formula and then tweaks it depending on whats on offer. Anyway,  she’s now got me craving daal at home, so I asked her for the recipe, and this is it. Or rather an approximation of it. I’ve tweaked it myself a few times, and whilst I’ve not quite reached Ruth’s pinnacle of daal domination, I’ve been pretty pleased with this version.

Ingredients

250g Chana Daal

3 cloves of garlic

2 green finger chillies

1 inch piece of fresh ginger, peeled

1 bay leaf

1 tsp cumin seeds

1/2 tsp ground cumin

1/4 tsp red chilli powder

1/4 tsp smoked paprika

3 or 4 tomatoes

1 handful of chopped coriander leaves

1 large onion

Salt

Ghee, butter or vegetable oil

Bundle of coriander stalks

Method

Wash the daal thoroughly in cold water, until its no longer cloudy, and then soak the split peas for 30 minutes to an hour. After this time, drain them off and then simmer in 500ml of water in a pan with the lid on for around 20 minutes until the daal becomes tender. Take off the heat and add a generous pinch of salt.

Next, get a frying pan on a medium high heat and dollop in some ghee, or vegetable oil. Blitz or very finely chop the green chillies (seeds and all), peeled garlic cloves and ginger. Fry this off in the pan for a couple of minutes along with the bay leaf, and then add the dry spices. Keep the mixture moving around the pan so as not to burn it.

Now blitz the tomatoes, and add these to the pan and cook down for a couple of minutes. Season to taste with some salt, and then add this mixture to the partly cooked daal, along with a bundle of coriander stalks. Return the pot to the heat, and simmer the mixture until the split peas soften further and are just beginning to fall apart. This should take around another 30 minutes or so.

Whilst this is going on, chop up a big onion, and fry it in ghee or butter until golden brown. You want to get the onion nicely caramelised. You can then add this to the pot along with the daal.

When it’s all looking and tasting ready, remove the bay leaf and coriander stalks, and then stir through a good handful of chopped coriander leaves. Serve with rice, a simple red onion and tomato salad, cucumber and mint raita, and some of these ace buttery flat breads.

Perfect for a meat free Monday.

I was making some daal yesterday (recipe to follow), and had a hankering for something bready to go with it, and then I remembered this recipe for these paratha-esque buttery flat breads from the excellent Mission Street Food book.

As fans / stalkers of the guys behind MSF, we went to the launch of the book whilst we were in San Francisco, but until now I’m a bit ashamed to say I’d not attempted anything from it.

Whats cool about these breads is that they combine different styles of cooking. In this case, probably the simplest kind of bread you can make, with basic lamination techniques more commonly found in pastry work.

I’ve amended the recipe slightly by scaling it down, converting it into grams, and adding some whole wheat flour to the dough. One thing to note is that the butter you use has to be VERY soft. You’ll be spreading it on a thin sheet of dough, so if it’s firm, the dough will tear and screw up all your hard work.

Ingredients (makes 6)

50g White bread flour

50g Pastry flour

20g whole wheat flour

30g Grits / cornmeal / polenta

60ml Buttermilk

60ml Boiling water

Very soft butter

4g Salt

Method

Sift and then mix all of the dry ingredients together into a bowl, then boil your kettle. Mix the boiling water with the buttermilk, and the add to the dry. Using a fork initially, and then your hands, work the mixture together until you have a soft, sticky, shaggy dough. Cover and set aside for at least 1 hour.

Once this time has elapsed, divide the dough into 6 equal portions of around 45g each, and then form these portions into balls. You’ll need some extra flour for this, as the dough is still pretty sticky. Next, take each of these and roll them out to form 6 inch circles. Again dusting as you go so as the dough doesn’t stick to the pin or your work surface.

Once you’ve got all 6 rolled, spread each of them with a thin layer of butter. Remember, your butter must be super soft or it’s not going to work. You can use your fingers, or I find a small silicone spatula does the job well.

OK. Now roll each of these up as tightly as you can to form cigar-like shapes, then take each one and gently roll them and stretch them out until they are about 16 inches long.

When you’ve done this, coil each one onto itself like a Catherine wheel or Chelsea Bun, tucking the loose end underneath the coil once you’re done.

Flatten each one of these with the palm of your hand to help it stick together, and then roll out again to form 6 inch circles. Again, be generous (but not too generous) with your use of flour to prevent sticking. As you complete each one, place it on a piece of greaseproof paper and stack them one on top of each other as you go.

Now the easy bit, cooking them. Get a dry frying pan on a high heat, and then toss them in one at a time. When they’re golden and bubbling up a bit on the underside, flip them over. Cover in foil and keep them warm in the oven as you do the rest of the batch. If you want to be more indulgent, you can fry them in a bit of butter, or brush them with a bit of oil before frying.

When they’re done you should see some remnants of the Catherine wheel shape you created during the process, and when you tear one open you should see it split along the layers of butter. Hmmmmmmmm.

And that’s it. Obviously they are perfect to be eaten with curries, but would work well as a wrap too

Believe your eyes. It’s a big cornbread muffin, encasing a boiled egg, shards of maple candied bacon, chilli and topped with more of that sweet, sweet bacon.

This recipe is totally inspired by a cornbread and egg muffin I had at a place called Sweetcakes in Chicago a few years ago. It’s an idea that’s been knocking around in my brain ever since, but in my mind, there were two major problems with their version of this inspired bit of breakfast madness. 1: The ratio of cornbread to filling. Too much egg, not enough bread. 2: No bacon. What a mistake-a to make-a.

This recipe rectifies both problems, but as a result, you can’t bake them in regular muffin tins as they’re just not big enough. So I use small aluminium pudding molds. The kind of thing you’d make a chocolate fondant in. Also, make sure you buy medium sized eggs, not the bigger ones you can get these days.

Ingredients (makes 6)

150 g yellow grits / cornmeal / polenta

150 g white bread flour

1 large red chilli, de-seeded & finely chopped

8 medium sized eggs (6 for the inside, 2 for the batter)

300 ml buttermilk (or plain yoghurt)

100 ml whole milk

45 g caster sugar

Big pinch of salt

6 rashers streaky bacon

Maple syrup

Method

First up, you want to hard boil the eggs you’ll be putting inside the muffins, so get a pan of water on your hob, place in 6 of the eggs, and bring to the boil. Simmer for 6-7 minutes, and then drain and immediately cool off the eggs using cold water. peel, and then set aside for later.

Next up, candy your bacon. In a hot frying pan with a bit of oil, fry your bacon until nice and crispy. Remove the rashers from the pan, pour off the excess fat, and then return them with a good couple of glugs of maple syrup. Toss the rashers in the bubbling syrup until it has reduced and nicely coated the bacon. Remove the rashers and place them on a piece of greaseproof paper, and then cut them up into small pieces with a pair of kitchen scissors.

Pre-heat your oven to 180 c, and then prepare your molds. Grease the inside of each with some butter, fill with your grits or polenta, and then tip off the excess. You should end up with a golden coating of the golden corn meal. Now pop these into your fridge.

Making the batter is very simple. Take two bowls. In one, whisk together the milk, buttercream, 2 remaining eggs, chilli and 80% of the bacon shards. In the other mix together the grits, flour, baking powder, sugar and a good pinch of salt. There’s no need to sift these, just make sure they are well incorporated. Then add the dry to the wet in two stages. As always, don’t over mix the batter.

Right, you’re ready to go. Fill each mold around a third full and then drop an egg onto the top of the mixture. Spoon over the remaining mixture until each egg is covered and the molds are almost full. Scatter the remaining bacon on top, and then put in the oven for around 25 minutes.

They’re ready when the domed surface of the muffins are a lovely golden brown colour, and an inserted skewer knife comes out clean. After taking them out of the oven, leave them in their molds for around 5 minutes before liberating them and placing on a wire rack to cool.

They are best eaten warm with a bit of Tabasco, but they are still delicious when cold.

Enjoy.

I’ve got a lot of love for the humble falafel. I think I first tried them in Egypt when traveling with a mate during university holidays, and I’ve been hooked ever since. I used to make a weekly, sometimes twice weekly, pilgrimage to a place called Just Falafs when I worked in Soho, but it sadly closed a couple of years ago as their landlord jacked up the rent and they couldn’t afford to stay. For a while, I was in a bit of a felafel wilderness, until I discovered that making your own is pretty easy.

These have a good hit of garlic in them, so if you’re not in to that, just tone down the quantities a bit. I like to serve them in pittas with a crunchy red cabbage salad (recipe below), a tzatziki of sorts (recipe from an earlier post here), some salad leaves and hummus, which I buy (sorry).

One final note, don’t be tempted to leave out the flour as it helps bind the mixture. If you leave it out your balls will disintegrate when you fry them.

Ingredients (makes around 10)

For the felafel

1 200g can of chickpeas (drained weight)

1 small onion, finely chopped

3 cloves garlic, finely chopped

1 tsp ground cumin

1 tsp ground coriander

A good handful of both fresh flat leaf parsley and coriander

25g all purpose flour

Squeeze of lemon juice

Salt to taste

Vegetable / ground nut / rapeseed oil for frying

For the red cabbage salad

1/4 head of red cabbage, finely slice

1/2 red onion, finely sliced

Olive oil

Lemon juice

Salt & pepper to taste

Method

I like to let my felafel mixture rest a bit before I use it as it seems to help making the balls easier, so thats the first order of business. Chop your onion as fine as you can, and then fry it in some olive oil. You want to ever so slightly brown them. When you’ve done this, scrape them into the bowl of your food processor.

Add the chick peas, spices, fresh herbs, roughly chopped garlic, a good squeeze of lemon juice, the flour and some salt, and then blitz until you have an even, thick paste (you might need to scrape down the sides of your bowl and then give it a final pulse).

Taste the mixture. If you’re happy with it, Put it into a bowl, cover and then refrigerate for a couple of hours. If not, adjust it until you are. If you don’t have a food processor, you can get a similar result with a bit more chopping, a potato masher, and a bit of elbow grease.

Next make the salad. Thinly slice the red cabbage and red onion, drizzle with a few glugs of olive oil, squeeze over some lemon juice and season with salt and pepper. Toss together, and again check you’re happy with the seasoning. Like the felafel mix, this salad benefits from an hour or so to do it’s own thing, so cover and pop in the fridge.

When you’re getting hungry, take the felafel mixture and salad out of the fridge. Roll the mixture into balls, making them a shade smaller than a ping-pong ball. Get a pan on your hob and fill it with at least two inches of oil, and then turn the heat to high. After four or five minutes, drop a cube of bread into the oil. If it fries and turns golden brown after a minute or so, you’re ready to go.

Turn the heat down a touch to medium high, and then gently lower your felafel balls into the oil with a slotted spoon. I fry four at a time, but if you’ve got a big pan of oil on the go, you could do more. They will take around 5 minutes to get a deep golden brown colour, at which point they’re ready. Take them out and place them on a plate lined with kitchen paper, and pop in an oven to keep them warm. Continue to fry in batches until you’re done.

When you’re ready to eat, heat up your pittas and then cut them open. Spread a generous layer of hummus on the inside, slide in a couple of felafel, crushing them a bit so they spread out, and then top with the red cabbage salad, greens and a generous dollop of the tzatziki.

And that, as they say, is that.

I’ve got a lot of love for Wales. Most of my family holidays in the 80s were spent in Snowdonia, and whilst I’d love to be able to tell you about some formative experience of eating Welsh Cakes fresh from a village bakery, the truth of the matter is my family were more likely to be found destroying a pack of Mr Kipling country slices. But I’ve moved on from the UK’s favourite fictional baker, and in honour of St David’s day yesterday, I’m celebrating with Wales’ answer to the scone.

The Welsh Cakes you get in the shops tend to be rather rubbery, but in my mind the  key to a good one is a crunchy crust and a fluffy, crumbly inside. Usually they are made with currants, but I prefer bigger and juicer raisins, soaked over night in a wee bit of booze. Not exactly traditional, but there you go.

Ingredients (makes around 25)

500 g Self-raising flour / 500 g flour with 2.5 tsp baking powder

250 cold, unsalted butter

90g caster sugar

1.5 tsp of allspice

100g raisins

20 ml dark rum

Zest of 1/2 an orange

1 large egg

40ml milk

Pinch of salt

Method

The night before you make your cakes, pour 20 ml of dark rum (or the booze of your choice) over the raisins and then stir them a few times. They should soak up all the rum by the next day.

Sift the flour, salt, sugar and spice together into the bowl of your mixer (or mixing bowl) and then cube up cold butter into the dry ingredients. Either blitz this or work in the butter by hand until you have achieved a breadcrumb-like consistency. Add the raisins and toss them through the mixture.

Crack the egg into a separate bowl and then add the milk. Whisk these together and then add to the dry ingredients. Combine everything by hand, until you have a crumbly dough. Turn this out onto a work surface, and knead a few times. Be careful not to over-work the dough, you just want to bring it together a bit better and make it more consistent.

Next flour your work surface, and roll out the dough so it’s about a cm thick. Using a round 8cm / 3″ pastry cutter, cut out as many cakes as you can from the dough. Collect the scraps, and then roll out one more time, repeating the process (you don’t really want to do this more than once as this will make the cakes tough).

Right, now the hard bit. Cooking them. Get a dry frying pan or flat griddle on a medium heat and let it warm up. The cakes will take around 6 to 8 minutes to cook. You’re looking for a golden crust that’s not too dark, so I’d recommend carefully turning them every 2 minutes to make sure you’re not burning them. If you like, you can test your pans heat with some of the discarded scraps.

As they cook, the rising agents in the flour kick in, and the cakes begin to puff up by around a third. When they’re done, transfer to a wire rack to cool, and then serve with orange marmalade or golden syrup, and a mug of strong tea. Proper lush.

Cheap cuts and slow cooking are very much de rigueur at the moment, so this recipe should be bang ‘on trend’. Or something.

Whilst making this yesterday, I was wondering if anyone has actually calculated the cost of energy used during slow cooking and whether that means cheap cuts are still worth it (Aga and Rayburn users aside). I don’t know what the answer is, but when you taste this slow cooked ox cheek ragu, you’ll soon forget about all that. It’s worth it.

Like the filling for my Ox Tail Sliders, you’re going to need a fair amount of time (4-5 hours) to cook the ragu, so this is weekend biznizz. Serve with a wider pasta, from Tagliatele up, to give the sauce plenty of surface area to cling to.

Ingredients (serves 2 hungry people)

500 g Ox Cheek

1 onion, finely chopped

1 carrot, finely chopped

1 large stick celery, finely chopped

2 cloves garlic, finely chopped

2 sprigs rosemary

2 bay leaves

250 ml red wine (Chianti would be good)

250 ml beef stock

250 ml water

1 tin chopped tomatoes

1 tbsp tomato puree

Seasoned flour

Salt and pepper to taste

Olive oil and unsalted butter

Method

Set your oven to 150 / 160c and get a heavy casserole dish (one which you have a lid for) on a high heat on your hob. Cut your ox cheek into 3 or 4 pieces, and then dust with seasoned flour. Pour a good glug of olive oil and a nob of butter into your pan, and when it’s foaming, brown the cheeks on all sides. Remove from the pan and set aside.

Turn down the heat, and then gently fry off the onion, celery, carrot and garlic for a few minutes. Add the tomato puree and cook off for a minute or so, and then add the herbs along with the red wine. De-glaze the pan, then add the tinned tomatoes, stock and water. Return the cheeks to the pan. The liquid should just about cover the meat.

Bring to simmering point and then check for seasoning. Add freshly ground black pepper and salt to taste. The colour of the liquid will be ox blood red at this point, which is apt. Take a large piece of tin foil, fold it in half and then secure it over the casserole dish. Place the lid on top, forming a tight seal, and then put it in the oven.

The cheeks will probably take 4 hours, but about half way through, take a look at the meat. Turn it if any part is protruding too far from the surface of the liquid, and if it’s looking a little dry, add more water.

After the full four hours, take out the casserole dish and give the meat a prod with a fork. If it falls apart and flakes easily, it’s ready. If it still feels tough, return to the oven until it is soft enough. Using a fork, or indeed any utensil you like (a potato masher works well)  shred the meat into the sauce. You should be left with a deep, rusty colored, glossy sauce.

As mentioned above, serve with a ribbon pasta, and a good sprinkling of parsley. A gremolata would be kick ass with it too.

Last Sunday I was invited to take part in Big Apple Hot Dogs food blogger meet up / competition Blog Eat Blog. The brainchild of BAHDman Abiye, the idea is simple. Food bloggers create their own topping for his dogs, they bring them down to the Vibe Bar, eat dogs, drink beer and somehow a winner is chosen. Having played a small part in Abiye’s story, and a as a lover of dogs and bit of a challenge, I couldn’t resist.

Now, you’ll think I’m bragging when I say that I SMASHED it and won my heat, but I should probably mention that the other three competitors didn’t show up, which is a bit of a shame (lazy buggers whoever you are ). This being the case, it was a bit of a hollow victory. But a wins a win, right? Right??

Anyway, it was a good afternoon of dogging and boozing, and my Turkish inspired slaw seemed to go down pretty well with the punters. There are three more heats over the next few Sundays, so why not get yourself down to Brick Lane and beat off the Sunday blues with a Pimp Steak.

I’m not 100% sure when the final is, but I’ll be there with my Turkish Slaw, and if you want to make some of your own, here’s how its done (NB. this makes a pretty large quantity, so scale back as required).

Ingredients

2 red onions

1.5 heads of spring cabbage

0.5 head red cabbage

4 medium carrots

3 cloves of garlic

250g low fat Turkish or Greek yoghurt

100g hummus

3tsp of Maras Biberi (or pul biber)

30g Dijon mustard

Juice of 2 lemons

100ml good olive oil

15g freshly chopped mint

15g freshly chopped flat leaf parsley

Salt and pepper to taste

More fresh herbs to serve

Method

Make the ‘dressing’ first by mixing together all the wet ingredients along with the garlic, Maras Biberi, salt & pepper, and fresh herbs, and then set aside.

Next take a big bowl, and get to work on the veg. Peel the onions, cut them in half and then thinly slice. Do the same with the cabbage, making sure to remove most of the thick core, and then grate the carrots.

Toss these all together, and then pour over the dressing and mix well. Your hands will probably do the best job. Have a taste and then season with salt and pepper to taste.

And that’s kind of it it. The slaw improves with a bit of time, around 24 hours being ideal, as the acids in the dressing soften the veg a bit, and the flavour develops. Before you serve, stir through another handful of fresh mind and parsley.

Whilst road tripping in the Deep South of the US last year, we got pretty excited about the Southern food. And when you look at the evidence, there’s a lot to like. Barbecue, shrimp & grits, shrimp boils, fried pickles and green tomatoes, boiled peanuts, fried chicken, corn bread. Not the kind of thing to be writing about when you’re hungry like I am now.

Anyway, one of the many memorable meals we had was at a place called Dante’s in New Orleans. I mentioned it before in this post, but as an ‘amuse bouche‘ we were given something called a spoon bread. A close relative to corn bread, it had a softer, spongier texture, was deeper in colour due to the inclusion of molasses and as the name suggests, was eaten with a spoon. It was totally sweet and delicious, a bit like eating a desert before you’ve even started your meal, and I thought it was great. I asked our waitress if I could have the recipe, and before we left the chef handed it over, of which this is a slightly re-worked version.

Like they did at Dante’s, I baked mine in cast iron corn bread skillets (16 x 3 cm) that we picked up from the Lodge factory store whilst we were over there. But you could bake them in any oven proof dish, or do mini ones in a muffin tins.

A couple of notes before we begin, I’ve switch the molasses in the recipe for black treacle for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I find that molasses has a slightly bitter aftertaste which I personally don’t like, and secondly black treacle is easier to get hold of. Similarly, if you can’t get your hands on stone ground grits, just use polenta. Finally, the original recipe also calls for buttermilk. Again, this isn’t that readily available in the UK, but you can just switch this up for plain low fat yoghurt.

Ingredients (makes 2)

1 large egg

250ml butter milk / low fat plain yoghurt

40ml sour cream

30g molasses / black treacle

65g plain flour

65g grits / cornmeal / polenta

75g caster sugar

4g baking powder

4g baking soda

Method

The method is pretty quick, so set your oven to 180c, and then grease whatever you’re going to bake the breads in.

Once your oven is up to temperature, take two large bowls. Combine all your wet ingredients in one (eggs. buttermilk, sour cream, molasses) and then sift all your dry ingredients (flour, grits, sugar, baking powder, baking soda) together in to the other.

Mix the wet ingredients together until well combined, and then fold in the dry in three stages until fully incorporated. Divide the mixture across the two skillets, and then bake in the oven for 20 minutes until the the mixture is set and a knife comes out clean.

Serve as part of a brunch with some honeycomb butter, or as we had them, as a desert with some cream and stewed plums.

We are pretty much slap bang in the middle of Vacherin season, which runs from late September to early April. This creamy, smooth, slightly nutty and super runny cows milk cheese is an Alpine speciality traditionally sold in round wooden boxes, cinched with a piece of spruce bark.

Vacherin is great eaten at room temperature with some bread, but a killer way of serving it is baked. Particularly when it’s been snowing. It’s like a fondue without the hassle and the Abigail’s Party baggage, and is great lunch for two.

Pre-heat your over to 180 – 200c, then remove all the plastic wrapping from the cheese, but leave it in it’s box. Slice a fat clove of garlic, and then using a sharp knife, pierce the Vacherin’s rind and slide in the slices. Pour over around 50ml of white wine, and then put the cheese into the oven to bake until it’s golden brown and bubbling (15minutes or so).

Serve it with whatever you like, but I like a good mix of raw veg like raddishes and carrots, some hunks of good sourdough, a few boiled potatoes (pink fir are particularly good), a pear and a bit of salad.

Then just dunk in your vehicle of choice, and get cheesy.

Its as cold as a witches tit here in London at the moment. The kind of cold that gets into your bones, and wont shift until it’s made to. Which is where this chorizo and chickpea stew comes in. A bit of a riff on the Spicy Spanish Stew I do, this is hotter, spicier, smokier and has all the ingredients to give you that Ready Brek glow, but without having to shovel some unpleasant gruel down your neck.

I use Brindisa’s picante chorizo, as I like it the best, but you can use whichever cooking chorizo floats your boat. Don’t use the salami like cured stuff, as it doesn’t really work for this recipe. Lets crack on.

Ingredients (serves 3-4)

6 cooking chorizo

1 onion, finely chopped

3 cloves garlic, finely chopped

1 medium hot red chilli, de-seeded and finely chopped

1 tsp smoked paprika

1 tsp maras biberi

1 tin of chopped tomatoes (400g)

1 tbs tomato puree

1 tin chick peas (400g)

200ml white wine

500 ml chicken stock

Fresh thyme

Salt & black pepper to taste

Chopped flat leaf parsley to finish

Method

Step one is to skin the chorizo. Run your knife along each sausage and peel off the skin, before chopping each one into 5 or 6 pieces. Next get a heavy based casserole dish or sauce pan good and hot on your hob, and then chuck in the chorizo pieces. Your fry these dry, and after a minute or so you’ll see why. The chorizo gives out lots of lovely paprika infused fat, so there’s no need to add any to the pan. Nicely brown the chorizo all over, and then remove from the pan with a slotted spoon and set aside.

Using the chorizo oil left behind, fry off your onion, garlic and pepper. Tear off the leaves of a few sprigs of thyme and add these too. Once your onions are slightly browned, add the tomato puree, paprika and maras biberi to the pan. Give it all a good stir for 10 seconds or so, and then add the white wine.

Return the chorizo, stirring it into the veg and wine, and once the alcohol has had a chance to burn off, add the chopped tomatoes and chicken stock. Bring this all up to a simmer, and then add the chick peas. Give the sauce a taste, and season with salt and pepper if you feel it’s needed. Once you’re happy, cover the pot and let it gently bubble away for 20 minutes or so.

After this time, remove the lid and continue to simmer for another quarter of an hour. You want to reduce the sauce by around a quarter, so it gets a bit thicker, and the flavors intensify. Once you’ve got the desired consistency, you’re ready to eat. Sprinkle with a generous handful of chopped flat leaf parsley, and serve with griddled sourdough rubbed with garlic and olive oil.

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.

We moved to South East London a few weeks ago, and last weekend finally made it down to Brockley Market.

It’s only been going for a few months, but the organisers have pulled together a really nice selection of stalls including organic fruit, veg, meat, as well as a few street food style vendors and some great coffee. Special mention should go out to Mike & Ollie for their delicious mackerel wrap, and the Mother Flipper burger I sampled. Brunch of champions.

In general I have a bit of a problem with the prices of farmers markets in and around London, particularly when it comes to meat, so I decided to set myself a challenge. Spend a tenner or less to put together some decent grub. After spying a nice slab of chuck steak at Jacob’s ladder, I hit on the idea of making pasties. I cheated a bit as the flour and butter I already had at home, but including the cost of store cupboard ingredients I probably still only spent £8 or £9, which is pretty decent for 4 chunky pasties.

Ingredients

For the filling

450g chuck steak

1 medium carrot

1 medium potato

1 small swede

1 medium onion

Olive oil

A few sprigs of fresh thyme

White pepper

Salt

For the pastry

500g strong bread flour

250 butter (or you could go half and half with lard if you have it)

5g salt

Approx. 100ml cold water

Egg wash to finish

Method

You want to make your pastry at least an hour before you’re going to get busy constructing your pasties, so sift your flour and salt into your food processor, cube up your butter (making sure its cold), add to the flour, and pulse in a blender until you have a breadcrumby consistency (you can obviously also do this by hand or with a mixer). Add your cold water and continue to process until your dough forms a ball. Pat together any scraps, then wrap it clingfilm to rest in the fridge.

Whilst the dough is resting, prep the veg. Peel the potato, swede and carrot and slice them up. In general you want all the pieces to be roughly the same size which is a couple of millimeters thick and about the size of an old postage stamp. Then chop up your onion relatively finely, and put everything in a large bowl. Tear the leaves off your sprigs of thyme (really as much as you fancy), and then add salt and a very generous quantity of white pepper. Again this depends on taste, but the pasties I know and love from Cornwall have a good peppery punch, so I recon around 7 or 8 grams for this quantity. Add a good glug of olive oil, and then get your hands in there and give everything a good mix around. Give the veg a taste, and then either adjust the seasoning, or set aside.

Now to the meat. Take your chuck, and cut it into dice sized cubes, trimming off anything that looks or feels a bit sinewy, and then place in a separate bowl and give the meat a little sprinkle with salt.

After the pastry has had a chance to relax, take it out of the fridge and divide into four equal quantities. Flour your work surface, and then carefully roll each piece out, as round as you can, until it’s about 25cm wide by 3-4mm thick. You can trim the edges using something like a side plate if you want neater results.

Next place a good quantity of the veg mix on one half of your pastry, and then top this with some of the meat. You roughly want two or three times as much veg as you have meat. Then using a brush (or your fingers) moisten the circumference of the pastry with egg wash. This is going to help seal the edges when you get to the next stage; crimping. I’m not going to lie to you, my crimping needs a whole lot of work, but using your fingers, a fork or however you roll, seal the edge of your pasty as neatly as you can.

Finally give each one a good egg washing all over and pierce with a knife so the steam can escape, before popping in a preheated oven to bake at 190c for 50 minutes until they are lovely and golden brown. And that’s it. You’re ready to eat…well almost. A small word of warning. The insides of these fellas are going to be as hot as Hades, so let them cool off for a few minutes before you get stuck in.

It would have been Elvis’ birthday on Monday (8th Jan), so in honour of The King I knocked up this version of his his favourite grubs, the peanut butter, bacon and banana sandwich.

I first heard about his ’snack’ of choice some years ago whilst watching a documentary about his eating habits. He was a man with a legendary appetite, even persuading his cook to smuggle bag loads of hot dogs into the hospital where he was being treated for the kind of things that a bunch of dogs would really not have helped.

Based around the Fools Gold Loaf created by the Colorado Mine Company that Elvis famously traveled cross the country to get his hands on, there seem to be lots of different versions of this sandwich out there, but the one I recall from the doc is this one based around the four Bs. Baguette, Bacon, (peanut) Butter and Banana.

The King was known to wolf down piles of these in one sitting, but for those of us with a more moderate constitution, this recipe serves two. Oh, and I candied the bacon in maple syrup, as I figure he would have liked that.

Ingredients

1/2 a baguette

2 tbs smooth peanut butter

4 rashers of bacon

1 ripe banana, sliced

1 tbs maple syrup

Butter for frying

Method

First up, get your frying pan on the heat and drop in a large nob of butter. Once it’s sizzling, get your bacon in there. Elvis reputedly liked his bacon crisp, so give it plenty of time in the pan.

Whilst the bacon is cooking, take your fresh half baguette, cut it in half and then spread half the peanut butter on the top, and the other half on the bottom. Next slice the banana, and arrange the pieces on the bottom half.

Now back to the bacon. When it’s good and crispy, pour in the maple syrup. This will bubble away and reduce pretty quickly, so make sure you turn and move the bacon around in the pan so it’s well coated.

As soon as this has happened you’re ready. Take the bacon out of the pan, pop it on the sliced banana, replace the top of the baguette, and then eat like The King.

Happy Birthday Mr Presley.

TCB. RIP.

BUT turkey is a much underused meat in this country, it’s low in fat, and if cooked right is pretty tasty too. So hopefully, this recipe will enable some of you to get your burger fix whilst being a bit healthier in January. Oh yeah, and sweet potatoes are officially a superfood now too. Think I turned that one around…

The long-ish ingredient list suggests that this is quite an involved recipe, but it really isn’t. Once you’ve got everything together, it’s pretty easy. The red pepper relish works really well with the burgers, as does a bit of creamed horseradish instead of ketchup or mayo. I like the robust sponginess of ciabatta with these, but feel free to use whatever bread tickles your fancy.

Ingredients (serves 2)

For the patties

400 g turkey mince

2 spring onions, finely chopped

1 clove garlic, finely chopped

1 tsp fresh thyme, finely chopped

1 tbs parsley, finely chopped

1/2 tsp dried chilli flakes

1 tbs grated parmesan

Salt & pepper to taste

For the relish

1 red pepper, de-seeded & cut in to strips

1/2 large onion, sliced

Salt & pepper to taste

Pinch of brown sugar

Nob of butter

For the fries

2 medium sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into batons

Olive oil

Salt & pepper to taste

Tabasco

To serve

Ciabatta

Creamed horseradish

Gruyère cheese

Rocket

Method

So first up, make the patties. There’s no added binding ingredients in the recipe, and I find that the burgers stay together better once they’ve had a bit of a chance to rest in the fridge after making. So finely chop all your veg, herbs, garlic etc and stick them in a bowl along with the turkey mince and Parmesan. Get your hands in there and mix everything together until evenly distributed. If you want to check your seasoning, fry a small amount in a pan and give it a taste. Form the mix in to two equal sized patties (don’t compress them too hard, just give them enough pressure so that they form together nicely) and then cover and pop in the fridge.

Whilst the burgers are chilling, prep the rest of the veg for the relish and fries, and set your oven to 200c. When you’re done doing this, get the fries going. Pop your batons of sweet potato into a roasting tray and slosh over some olive oil, sprinkle over salt and pepper and then add a few dashes of Tabasco. You can add more or less depending on how hot you like it. Give everything a good mix until all the sweet potato is coated and then pop in the oven. The fries will cook for about half an hour, or until they are soft and nicely coloured.

Now turn your attention to the relish. In a frying pan / skillet with a lid (more on this in a bit) melt a nob of butter over a medium high heat, and then add your onion and red pepper along with salt, pepper and a pinch of brown sugar. You want to slowly fry and caremelise the veg until they’ve got good colour and a nice sticky consistency.

When the relish is close to being done, move it over to one side of the pan, take the burgers out of the fridge, and add them to the pan. Initially what you want to do is brown them nicely, around 1 or 2 minutes on each side until they have a good golden crust. Once you’ve got this, add a couple of tablespoons of water to the pan and then pop on the lid and continue to cook them for a further 6 minutes, turning once (NB. when you turn the burgers, stir the relish to make sure its not burning). Putting the lid on with a bit of water will help keep the turkey moist, which is as we know a bit of a problem with the big bird.

Just before the burgers are done, stick a slice of Gruyère on top of each one and then replace the lid. As soon as the cheese is melted, you’re ready to go. Take out the burgers and the fries. Stick a handful of rocket on the bottom of each ciabatta, place the burger on top of this and then top with the red pepper relish. Spread some creamed horseradish on the top half of the bread and then get busy.

Day two of me pulling my finger out is another local hero from our stay in New York late last year, and trades the buttery crusts of pies for another American obsession. Barbecue.

I’ve wanted to visit Fette Sau since I read about it three or four years ago. Last time I was in New York, I failed to get my ‘cue on, so this time I vowed not to fly home without coating my face in barbecue sauce.

Tucked away down a side alley in Williamburgh, Brooklyn, Fette Sau is a temple to meat. The walls are adorned with scrawlings of different cuts of various four legged beasts, knives hang behind the bar, the white tiled walls are all butcher shop, and they sell their wares by weight as opposed to portion, which is great from a trying everything point of view. It also exposed the tactical eaters we overheard rejecting anything on the bone as it’s “…dead weight, man…”, which means no ribs, which is crazy right??

I wanted to try as much as I could, so after much deliberation I pulled together what I figured would be a killer selecta. Black Angus Brisket, Spicy Berkshire Pork Sausage, Pulled Berkshire Pork Shoulder, Duroc baby Back Ribs, Burnt-End Baked Beans and some green stuff to keep my digestive system alive. Now I was pretty pleased with the ribs that I made earlier in the year, but this was some next level business. The words that follow are not going to do what I ate justice, because I loved every friggin’ mouthful so much, but here’s a taster.

Brisket. Dense, smoky, tender with a wicked spiced and charred crust. Spicy Berkshire Pork Sausage. Almost like a Polish smoked sausage, porky, moist with a kick at the end. Pulled Berkshire Pork Shoulder. Just how I like it; not drenched in vinegary liquor, slightly sticky, smokey and nicely spiced. Duroc baby Back Ribs. Sweet, sticky, meaty, again nicely spiced with a great barbecue crust, just like a good rib should be. Burnt-End Baked Beans. Wow. Possibly the best thing I ate. Sweet, tangy, with flavour deeper than the San Andreas Fault, enhanced with a bit of a chilli kick and little hunks of pork. I’d go back just for the beans alone. Insane. You know what broccoli, chilli and garlic tastes like, and you’ll be going for the meat, so I’m not even going to bother.

I’ve made myself really hungry by reminiscing about that meal, so I need to go and eat something before I start dousing my laptop in Tabasco, but needless to say, I can’t recommend Fette Sau highly enough. It won’t be to everybody’s taste, and in my mind barbecue is something that you’ve got to be in the mood for, bit if you have got a hankering for it, and you’re in New York, or indeed North America, get yourself down there.

The first of these is Four & Twenty Blackbirds in Gwanus, Brooklyn. Now, as I’m sure you know, ‘pie’ is an American institution. It’s an old school love affair that has outlived cupcakes, macarons, whoopie pies and whatever sweet thang is currently de rigueur. The Yanks love it, and the queue outside Four & Twenty proves the legend above the door, ‘this must be where pies go when they die’.

Run by two sisters who cut their teeth working at their family’s restaurant in South Dakota, before slinging pies from their apartment in Crown Heights, NY, they set up Four & Twenty almost two years ago, and have been rammed ever since. There’s nothing particularly unusual about the place itself. It’s got all the trademarks of your typical hipster cafe. Bare brick walls, stripped back wood, tattooed serving staff etc, but it has a really welcoming, homely vibe. I guess you could describe it as pie in atmosphere form.

The pie on the other hand is unusual. And in a good way. We tried a selection including the plum crumble, brown butter pumpkin and the salty honey. All the pies are hand made, and come with the same crust, which is totally the right combination of tenderness and crumble, with a great buttery flavour. The plum crumble was amazing. Sweet and crunchy with a tart punch of local plums, all smoothed out with some lightly sweetened whipped cream. The pumpkin was everything a pumpkin pie should be. Dense, deep, moist, pumpkin-ey custard filling spiked with cinnamon and the surprise addition of a nutty richness supplied by the brown butter. And finally, and I have to be honest my least favourite, the salty honey. Richer than Daddy Warbucks, the custard filling was packed with butter and honey, set off with a generous sprinkling of salt crystals on the surface. It wasn’t in any way bad, but just too much for me.

I’m not going to lie to you, Four & Twenty isn’t exactly in what you’d describe as a ‘handy mid-town location’ but Gwanus and neighbouring Red Hook are areas on the up and up and well worth a look around, and I’m telling you, the pie alone makes the trek a no brainer. Special Agent Dale Cooper would be a very happy man.

You may or may not have noticed that things have been a bit quiet round here of late. I’ve been trying my hardest to keep on top of it all, but life has rather been getting in the way. With two jobs, baking lots of these for the guys at Percival, and moving house, I’ve basically had my work cut out, and have been totally shattered. I honestly think my arms may be in the process of falling off.

But I’ve got a week or so off now, so just wanted to say a HUGE thanks to everyone who’s been part of Hand To Mouth over the past year. All the readers, commenters, supporters, lovers and haters. I love you all in a very wholesome way. Nothing dirty. OK maybe I have impure thoughts about a couple of you, but I digress.

So here’s to wishing you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

See you on the flip side, and stay hungry.

F

So in the spirit of giving, here’s Handtomouth’s Yearly Christmas wish list should you be struggling to find the food lover in your life something to buy, or if any readers out there are feeling generous.

1. I totally fell in love with Lodge cast iron cookwear whilst in the states, and this double sided griddle is on the top of my Christmas list. Heavy in both senses of the word.

2. Penguin’s ‘Great Food’ box set. A collection of 20 of so titles celebrating food writing from the past 400 years. From David to Roden, Dumas to Waters this would be a handsome collection for any food lovers book shelves.

3. Sigg Heritage water bottle. I love Sigg’s precision engineered aluminium water bottles, but have never actually owned one. This one could change all that.

4. Labour & Wait Bib Apron. Going into one of Labour & Wait’s shops is like going back in time. In a good way. They have a really nicely curated selection of stuff with a practical, utilitarian bent, of which this apron is a perfect example.

5. Dan Lepard’s ‘Short & Sweet’. What Dan the man doesn’t know about baking, isn’t worth knowing (probably). As I’m sure you know, this is his latest book, and by all accounts it’s a winner.

6. I found these Cheese Making Kits in a similar post on Mrs Marmite Lover’s blog and thought that they were a great gift idea. I love the idea of making m own cheese, now all I need is a cave to age it in.

7. I really want one of these Opinel Bread Knives. I’m a big fan of all their stuff, and if they’re good enough for Richard Bertinet, they’re good enough for me.

8. Hahn Fish Corkscrew. I came across one of these recently having not seen one since I was a nipper. They actually work really well, and I’m pretty sure could be described as a design classic.

9. Sipsmith’s Damson Vodka. Their sloe gin was on my Christmas list last year, and I got a bottle from my old dear. So maybe I’ll have the same luck this year. With tasting notes including plum, cherry and spicy cinnamon, this sounds like just the thing to be slugging back in front of the fire.

10. Subscription to Lucky Peach. It may be almost painfully hip, but David Chang’s food magazine is a great read, beautifully designed / illustrated, and it’s got cojones.

Like Hot Cross Buns at Easter, one of the things that make Christmas for me are mince pies. I love them. So when my mate Luke who co-runs clothing label Percival asked if I fancied making some for late night shopping evenings at their new pop up in Covent Garden, I was all over it like a cheap suit.

This recipe is a bit of a remix. Inspired by and finished like the mighty Eccles Cakes of St John, the filling is simpler than traditional mincemeat, but the spices, currants, muscavado sugar and rum pack a treacle-like punch, and instead of beef suet, or that horrible veg substitute, I use frozen, grated butter, so the veggies can chow too. I’d recommend making the filling a good couple of weeks before you make your pies. Over time the flavour gets better and better, and if you keep it cool it will last for ages.

This recipe will make 24 or more mincers. I make them in muffin trays with 6 x 3 dimples which gives them a meat pie like appearance after they’re baked.

Ingredients

For the pastry

480g Plain white (pastry) flour

25g Caster sugar

10g Salt

340g Unsalted butter, cold

110-140ml Cold water

For the filling

500g Currants

220g Muscavado sugar

10g Ground nutmeg

10 Ground allspice

100g Unsalted butter, grated from frozen

60ml Dark rum

Zest and juice of 1 medium orange

To finish

1 egg beaten with a pinch of salt

Coarse granulated brown sugar

Method

Making the filling is a cinch. Put the currants, sugar, spices and rum into a bowl. Zest and then squeeze the juice of an orange into the mix (use a sieve to keep the pips out) and then give it a good stir. Take your butter out of the freezer, and using a course grater, shred around 100g of it into the bowl. It will clump together, so now get your hands in there and squeeze and mix everything together. Cover with clingfilm and set aside somewhere cool.

A few hours, or ideally the day before you’re going to make your pies, make the pastry as it needs to rest before you roll out and assemble. Weigh out and sift all your dry ingredients into the bowl or your mixer or food processor, and then cut up the cold butter into centimeter cubes and add to the dry. Mix on medium speed or pulse until you have a ‘mealy’ breadcrumby type consistency.

Turn your mixer back on and add around 100ml of your water. You want to add enough to bring the pastry together, but no too much so it’s wet. If it doesn’t look like it’s going to come together after a 15 seconds or so, add a bit more water until it does. Remove the pastry from the bowl and ‘pat’ together, and then wrap in clingfilm, and rest in the fridge until needed.

When you’re ready to make your pies, take your pastry out of the fridge and let it warm up a little, and then roll it out to a 3mm thickness on a lightly floured surface. Again, it’s good to let the pastry relax a bit before you cut it, so cover with some greaseproof paper and leave it somewhere cool for half an hour.

Next, taking a 90mm and a 70mm pastry cutter, cut out 24 bases and lids from your pastry. Press the bases into the dimples of whatever baking tray you’re using. There will be excess pastry crinkles, but just press these into the wall of the tin. When you’ve lined all the dimples, fill around 3/4 full with the currant mixture.

Moisten the rim of each of your smaller lids with a little water, and then press them down onto the top of each of the pies. The final step is to lightly egg wash the tops with a brush, give them the Eccles Cake trademark of three scores, and then sprinkle some coarsely granulated brown sugar over the top of each one.

Bake at 170c for around 30 minutes until the tops are a lovely deep golden brown, and remove the pies from the tray as soon as you can and place on a wire wrack to cool.

They are best eaten warm, either on their own, with a glass of whiskey, or indeed a good lump of mature cheddar.

Ho Ho Ho.

I immediately thought of this amazing clip of an inebriated Frenchman on the streets of Paris opening a bottle of wine with just a shoe. Not sure how it would have gone down on the train, but incredibly it works, so I thought I’d share it. You never know, it might come in handy in the run up to Christmas.

Vive la France!

Anyway, I have managed to pull my finger out a bit, so here are the first couple of things I wanted to share from New York, Smorgasberg & The New Amsterdam Market.

New York doesn’t really seem to have the same kind of street food culture as San Francisco. In SF there were trucks and pop up stalls on every corner, and sure NY has their regulated the hot dog carts for decades, but much less of a mobile scene that pushes the boundaries. That being said, the street food scene is far from undeveloped, in fact it has given birth to something a bit different. The closest thing I can think of to describe it are the Hawker Centres you get in South East Asia. Smorgasberg is one such example, a weekly event on the same site as the famous Brooklyn Flea which collects all manner of food vendors selling some fantastic, and if I’m honest also some not so fantastic, grub.

But I’m not going to dwell on the negatives, as there were two stalls in particular that blew our tiny minds. First up Bon Chovie, which has to be the best food stall name since I saw a kebab van called ‘Jason Donnervan’ in Essex many moons ago. A bit like large whitebait, these guys sell deep fried achovies and boy are they good (picture above). They dip them in egg and then flour seasoned with salt, pepper and paprika , and serve them up with a wedge of lemon, pickled peppers and a smoked paprika aioli. You can eat them head off or on (Jersey style), and they are the perfect combination of crunchy, fishy and salty. They are seriously nice guys too. They give fish a good name.

The other winner on the day, were the doughnuts from the far less imaginatively named, Dough. But what they lack in inventiveness of their name, they more than make up for in their product. The doughnuts come in killer flavours from hibiscus and blood orange, to passion fruit curd and our favourite, coconut. But what makes them so good is the texture. None of the heavy, greasy fairground muck we’re used to. These guys are light, fluffy and pillowy soft. I’d give my left nut, and probably a couple of arteries in the process, for the recipe and technique.

If you’re lucky enough to be in NY or are going soon, I believe Smorgasberg is closed for the season, but will be open again in 5 months or so. But if you fancy a street food fix, I believe there’s something similar going on in Kings Cross now in the shape of Eat Street. I need to go check it out at some point.

New Amsterdam Market is something a bit different again. Part farmers market, part food fair, everyone there is an independent producer of some kind. Bread, chocolate (Mast Brothers have a stand there), cakes, pickles and pork products were just some of the tasty treats on offer. On the Sunday we visited, there was a ‘hard’ cider festival, so we could wash it all down with some booze.

There was so much good stuff to chose from, but again there were a couple of stalls that really caught our eye. the first was Nordic Breads. Baked by a Finnish artisan baker, they sell simple but amazing organic whole grain rye rolls and loaves which have a really good, deep nutty flavour. The stall and branding are pretty awesome too.

The other was Brooklyn Cured. Butchery and all things meaty are definately pretty cool in New York right now. Places like The Meathook in Williamsburgh (which deserves a post all of its own) that offer butchery classes and all the tools of the trade you might need, are testament to this, as is Brooklyn Cured. They describe their business as being inspired by the holy trinity of French Charcuterie, German beer garden and Italian-American pork store, and they make a killer selection of sausages, pates and of course bacon. I was so busy sampling, I forgot to take any pictures.

The classic French fruit tart has to be one of my favourite deserts. The combination of the sweet, crumbly pastry, the vanilla spiked crème pâtissière and the sharp fruit tick all the boxes for me. I know it’s more of a Summer dish, but I got hold of some late season British raspberries the other day, and decided to make it as part of a ‘welcome home’ lunch at my folk’s house.

The other great thing about this recipe is that once all the elements are made, it’s an assembly job. So you can make everything in advance, then throw it all together a the last minute and lap up the applause like it ain’t no thang.  NB. As with most pastry, it’s good to let the pâte sucrée rest in a fridge for at least a few hours, both after making it and after lining the tart mold as this should stop the case shrinking when it’s being baked off.

Ingredients (makes 27cm tart / 8 slices)

For the pâte sucrée

145g All purpose flour

60g Icing sugar

65g Unsalted butter

50g Egg yolks

30g Almond meal

1g Baking powder

1g Salt

1/2 vanilla pod, seeds scraped out

For the crème pâtissière

430g Whole milk

110g Caster sugar

30g Corn starch

85g Egg yolks

50g Unsalted butter

1/2 Vanilla pod, seeds scraped

Zest of 1/2 a lemon

To finish

400g raspberries, or whatever fruit is in season

Icing sugar (optional)

Method

Either the day before or the morning you’re going to bake, make the pastry. Sift all the dry ingredients together into either a mixing bowl or the bowl of your blender / mixer. Cut your vanilla bean in half, and then scrape out the seeds with a blade, and add them too. Then take your cold butter from the fridge, and cut it into centimeter cubes and then add to the dry. If you’re using a mixer use the paddle attachment and mix on medium speed until you have an even breadcrumby, mealy texture. You can do the same with a blender by pulsing the blade, or by hand by rubbing the butter into the flour gradually.

When you’ve got the desired consistency, add the eggs by mixing or pulsing the ingredients until they just come together to form a dough. You really don’t want to over work the dough as you’ll develop gluten, and the pastry could turn out tough. Take the dough out of the bowl, pat it together into one lump, wrap it in clingfilm and get it into the fridge for a few hours.

You’ll have plenty of time on your hands now, so make the crème pâtissière. To the milk add half the sugar (55g), along with the other half of the vanilla pod used above (seeds scraped out and added to the milk along with the husk), and the zest of half a lemon removed with a peeler, not grated. Put this on your hob and bring to a boil.

Whilst the milk comes up to temperature, whisk the egg yolks, remaining sugar and cornstarch together in a bowl so they are combined together, but without incorporating any air. When the milk has just come to a  boil, turn it down to a medium heat and then pour a third of it into the bowl containing the yolk mixture whilst whisking constantly. This process is known as tempering, and should prevent the eggs from scrambling.

Next, add the eggy mixture back in with the rest of the milk, again continuing to whisk. The corn starch will kick in pretty quickly, and the mixture will thicken dramatically and start to gently bubble like lava. Hold your nerve, and continue to whisk whilst maintaining the boil (but not scorching the custard), for 1 to 2 minutes.

Remove from the heat and stir in the butter until it has completely dissolved. Pour the crème pâtissière into a clean bowl, and place a layer of clingfilm onto the surface of the custard to help prevent a skin from forming, and set aside. Don’t worry about fishing out the vanilla pod or the lemon zest now, you’ll burn your fingers.

OK. Back to the pastry. Lightly flour your work surface and rolling pin, and gently roll out the pastry into a rough circle, around a couple of inches bigger than your tart tin. Work as quickly as you can, as the warmer the dough gets, the harder it will be to work with. Roll the dough over your pin, and then gently drape it over the tart tin. Lift the edges of the dough and gently push down into the edge of the tin’s base and lightly press against the side, repeating this process all the way round. Don’t worry if you have a few cracks or splits, you can patch these up with any spare pastry. Now trim away any excess pastry from the edge with a sharp knife, leaving a smooth, clean edge all around, and then put the lined case in the fridge for a good hour or so.

Whilst the tart case is chilling, pre-heat your oven to 180c. You’re going to blind bake it, so once the pastry has rested for sufficient time, remove the tart from the fridge and dock the base all over with a fork. Then line it with greasproof paper and weigh down with rice or baking beans, and bake for 10 minutes. After this time, remove the paper and weights and continue to bake for a further 10 until the pastry is a light golden brown.

Take out of the oven, and as soon as you can, carefully remove the pastry case and leave to cool on a rack. You’ve now got all your elements, and you’re ready to assemble. If you want to be really fancy (if not anal), you could use a microplane or another fine grater to ’sand down’ the edges of your tart case so they are perfect, but this isn’t really necessary.

Take your crème pâtissière and remove the lemon zest and vanilla pod. The custard will have set, so give it a good beating with a spatula until it’s smooth, which will be a lot easier if it’s at room temperature. Transfer your pastry case to the plate you’re going to serve it on, and then dollop the crème pâtissière into the center of it. Gently spread it out right to the edges, until you have a smooth even surface. Then take your raspberries, or other fruit, and arrange on the top. Finish with icing sugar, or any other garnish that tickles your fancy, and then you’re done.

You can keep the tart in the fridge for a day or so, but I recommend leaving it out for a good half an hour so it’s a bit warmer when you eat it.

Divide into 8 slices, and serve each with a generous pouring of double cream.

Having eaten my fair share of sliders in the US, I’ve been musing over the idea of doing an Anglicised version of these over grown amuse-bouches. I hit on the idea of doing an Ox Tail version around a week ago, but didn’t really have the perfect vehicle for the meat. Then the other day, almost as if he sensed my bun based anguish, Dan Lepard sent me a recipe for his slider buns that are in the Hawksomoor At Home book to try. The recipe will appear in this weekend’s Guardian, and you’ll discover that it contains custard powder. Yep, you read that right, custard powder. As crazy as it sounds, it’s actually a work of evil genius as it makes the buns tender, gives them a brioche like colour, and is vegan to boot.

The Ox Tail gets slow cooked for around 4 hours, so this definitely isn’t a 30 minute meal. In fact some might describe it as ‘a long walk for a ham sandwich’, but I think it’s worth it, and is a great way to use a much under appreciated cut of meat. I’ve served it with a crunchy, sharp, almost Summery slaw to cut through the fatty, sticky meat a bit, but these guys are still definitely winter warmers.

Ingredients (makes 10-12)

For the meaty bit

1 kg Ox Tail

300 ml red wine

300 ml beef stock

2 cloves garlic, crushed

1 onion, roughly chopped

1 carrot, roughly chopped

2 sticks celery, roughly chopped

1 chilli, sliced down the middle

3 sprigs of both rosemary & thyme, tied together

1 tsp Chinese five spice

1 tbs redcurrant jelly

Salt & pepper to taste

Seasoned flour – 2 tbs flour, 1tsp smoked paprika, salt and pepper

For the slaw

1/4 head red cabbage, finely sliced

3 spring onions, finely sliced

1/3 cucumber, finely sliced

Dressing -  100ml olive oil, 50ml lemon juice, 1tsp Dijon mustard, salt & pepper to taste

Method

The first thing to do is get that meat on. Turn your oven on to 160 c, and then in a freezer bag, dump in 2 tablespoons of flour, one teaspoon of smoked paprika and the salt and pepper. Give it a shake to mix it all together, then add the ox tail joints and give it another shake to coat them. Take them out of the bag, pat off the excess flour, and set aside.

Next, in a heavy casserole dish, melt a good nob of butter in some olive oil. Get it good and hot and then brown off the ox tail evenly on all sides. Do this is two batches, and when done set aside again. Roughly chop the veg and garlic, slice your chilli down the center, and add to the hot dish along with the five spice. Stir for a couple of minutes, being careful not to burn the spice and then de-glaze the pan with the red wine and beef stock, and bring to the boil.

Now add the tied herbs, the tomato puree and redcurrant jelly, and once the latter have dissolved, add the ox tail back into the pot (the liquid in the pot should almost cover the joints). Place on the lid and stick it in the oven to slow cook for around 4 hours.

Next make the slaw. Slice the red cabbage, cucumber and spring onions as finely as possible, and then make the dressing with the olive oil, lemon juice, Dijon and seasoning. Give it a good mix and then pour over the vegetables, making sure to coat them all thoroughly. Ideally you should do this a couple of hours before you eat, as the dressing will soften the cabbage and give all the flavours a chance to mingle.

After 4 hours, take the casserole dish out of the oven. Prod the meat, and if it falls off the bone, it’s ready. Remove the joints from the pot, and then pass the cooking liquor through a sieve into a bowl, discarding and bits of herb and vegetable, and then set aside.

When the joints have cooled a bit, remove all the meat from the bones, shredding it as you pull it off. Once you’ve got it all, pop it into the bowl with the liquid, and give it a good stir. You should be left with an unctuous, sticky, very thick, meaty sauce. You’re now ready to assemble the sliders.

Cut the buns in half, and then dollop a generous portion of the meat on the bottom half. Top this with a good helping of the slaw. Pop on the top, and eat. Now wasn’t that worth it?

So…….back in time a few weeks we hit the last stop on our trip, New York. It’s been a couple of years since I was last there, and to paraphrase DOOM, it still is a hell of a finer town. Knowing we only had a few days of our adventure left, we rolled up our sleeves and ate our way right to the core. I’m probably going to do some longer posts on a couple of other discoveries, and I didn’t make it to The Dutch which I REALLY wanted to check out, but here are a few highlights.

Where to start…hmmmm. The first time I went to NY, probably back in ‘97, my mate Matt took me to The Oyster Bar at Grand Central Station. I vividly remember sitting in the back room saloon surrounded by brash New Yoikers shouting at each other and guzzling plates of oysters whilst I sat slurping a New England Clam Chowder in a happy jet-lagged daze. The wife and I decided to pay it a visit this time, and I’m happy to say nothing’s really changed. It’s certainly a tourist attraction, but it is still rammed with every shape and size of New Yorker having lunch, doing deals and chewing the fat (oysters). We sucked down a couple of zinc-ey Long Island Bluepoints, a bowl of that creamy, soothing chowder and a very tasty crab-cake sarnie all, washed down with a couple of glasses of super chilled Sauvignon Blanc. As far as classic New York lunches go, it’s hard to beat, and good to see an institution like this still chugging away.

For the past few visits, no trip to NY would be complete for us without a visit to Egg. I’ve said it all before here, and as pretentious as it sounds, it’s still one of my favourite places to get breakfast in the world. The Eggs Rothko are a winner, the place is mimal in a cosy kind of way, the staff are hot, and it’s consistently good. Nuff said.

That being said, we did find another brunch place that gave Egg a bit of a run for it’s money. Five Leaves in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. I have to admit, the joint is styled to within an inch of it’s life, and it’s more hipster than a skinny dude with tattoos, a mustache and fisherman’s beanie perched precariously on the crown of his head. But you forget all that once you start munching. Between the three of us we had the home made beans and bacon, sage scrambled eggs, and the ricotta pancakes (see above), all of which were serious customers. The beans were sweet, smokey and spicy with a poached egg perched on top. The scrambled egg was seriously moist and soft, with a hint of sage, topped with strong cheddar and served in a tender white bap. And then the pancakes. F**k me. Light and fluffy, yet satisfyingly substantial. Slightly creamy from the ricotta, and served with a dollop of this amazing honeycomb butter. Crazy in all the right kinds of ways. They also serve Brooklyn’s own Stumptown Coffee, which is frikin’ delicious.

Whilst we’re talking about Stumptown and sweet thangs, we also popped in to the Momofuku Milk Bar in Williamsburgh. The sister of David Chang’s noodle empire, they also serve Stumptown coffee and a range of baked goods devised by Christina Tosi, who’s currently doing the rounds with the Milk Bar book. The reason I wanted to check it out was their Crack Pie, which I’d heard a lot of good things about it, including that it’s appropriately named. It is a bit hard to describe, but if you imagine a treacle tart and a cheesecake having a very dirty love child, you’re kind of close. The flapjack-esque base is insanely buttery, and the sticky, custard filling packs a super sweet vanilla punch. It’s dangerous stuff. So much so that it’s trademarked and comes in individually packaged doses. If you’ve got the willpower, you can make your own from the recipe here.

But despite all the above, I think my favourite food experience of this trip to NY was the evening we spent in Chinatown. Again it had been a while since we’d been there, but our ever reliable host, Matt, had a couple of places that he really wanted us to check out. The first was the Shanghai Cafe, which is famous for it’s Xiao Long Bao, or soup dumplings to you and me. I’ve got to say they were the best I’ve ever had, and judging by the team of guys at the front of the restaurant constantly filling and crimping them by hand, I’m not the only one to think so. They arrived at the table in a steamer basket wobbling like weebles, and although it’s generally a good idea to let them cool a bit so you don’t burn your mouth off, I couldn’t resist. The wrapper was giving yet chewy in all the right ways, the intensely savoury broth that burst out, delicious, and the porky filling spiked with spring onion a fitting end to the experience. I could have sat right there eaten a few baskets of them, but Matt had other ideas.

We left the Shanghai Cafe and marched about 10 minutes across town to a little Blade Runner-esque  joint under the Manhattan Bridge call Xi’an Famous Foods. Despite it’s size, over the past few years this tiny place has begun to live up to it’s name. They serve Western style Chinese food, which blends traditional Chinese flavours with those of the Middle East, and are famous for their hand pulled noodles. So that’s what we had. I went for their spicy cumin lamb noodles which were rolled, stretched, pulled and boiled before my very eyes and then combined with the lamb which was fried with cumin, some vegetables, chilli oil and lots of other good things. They packed our dishes up in containers, and we again took off on foot, but this time to a little park almost under the Williamsburgh bridge. Here we found a picnic table, and ate our noodles under the stars. And what noodles. They had great bite and chew to them, and the lamb had this awesome smoky cumin meets gamey flavour. The veg was crunchy and the sauce slighty sweet and spicy. All in all a truly memorable evening.

So that was it for our road trip. Gutted that it’s over because it was fucking awesome from start to finish. As I mentioned above, I’ve got a few other New York treats to share with you like Fette Sau and Four & Twenty Blackbirds, which I’ll get round to writing about soon.

So until then, stay hungry my friends.

That’s right, Hand To Mouth is back. Despite missing San Francisco like crazy, and Home Sweet Home not really feeling that sweet right now, it is good to be home. Kind of.

We got back to London a week ago, and its been a hectic. Along with flat hunting and catching up with friends & family, I’ve been lining up a bunch of interviews, meetings and trial shifts at bakeries across London. I had my first trial on Monday and have two more lined up this week, along with a couple of meetings. And I’m also meeting up with an old work colleague who wants to get me involved with a food based iPhone / iPad app he’s developing. Exciting times.

I’ve also got a bunch of posts to write when I get the chance, including a round-up of our New York eatathon, a couple of great finds from the city that never sleeps, and a killer rasberry tart recipe, amongst others.

So I promise I’ll pull my finger out and will be back here very soon.

Until then.

I saw this video about New York based Mast Brothers Chocolate about a year or so ago, and have desperately wanted to visit their shop ever since. As someone who’s interested in starting their own business, I found the approach they discuss really inspirational. I love the romantic idealism of treating their business like a boys own adventure, and striving for something that feels nostalgic and hand made, as opposed to mass produced and uniform.

Anyway, yesterday afternoon I managed to satisfy my desire by paying their Williamsburgh shop a visit. I was hoping to take the factory tour they mention on the site, but alas they aren’t doing them at the moment as they are in the process of expanding their operation. However, when the lovely guy behind the counter saw we were a bit bummed out about not getting to do the tour, he snuck us in to have a look at their new space. It’s a really lovely big, open brick walled warehouse unit, but what hits you first is the smell. It’s like being in a chocolate cloud. I’m pretty sure I started to drool almost instantly. The room is filled will sacks of cocoa beans, a roasting oven, ‘conching’ drums (these heat and grind the beans for 3 days until the chocolate is beautifully smooth), and this awesome mad scientist-esque glass vacuum pump device that separates the cracked beans from the husk. It’s very cool, and feels really nicely old fashioned.

Obviously you can’t visit a place like this without sampling the goods, but as well as trying their small range of bars, we also got to sample a few of their new products including an amazing chocolate pecan cookie, a couple of different types of caramel, and the craziest brownie I’ve ever tasted. It’s consistency was like a ripe soft cheese, and equally as pungent in a chocolatey kind of way. Pretty incredible. When the guy who gave us the tour hear we were from the UK he told us that they are just about to export a shed load of chocolate to Paul A Young for him to make truffles with, which will give those who don’t know Mast Bothers an indication of the quality of their product and their standing within the chocolate community.

But by far the coolest thing that Mast Brothers is doing (which they allude to in the video) is taking their romanticism to the next level by actually sailing their cocoa beans over from their suppliers. The maiden voyage of The Black Seal, a 70-foot cargo ship that they had converted into a three mast shipping schooner, docked in New York a couple of months ago after two weeks on The Atlantic bringing with it 20 or so tonnes of cocoa beans from the Dominican Republic. Amazing. And they are already planning subsequent voyages in the near future.

Maybe I’ve been in the US too long or I’m getting cheesy in my old age, but I’m going to end this post on a Mark Twain quote that I’m sure Mast Brothers are familiar with and I’ll be taking as words of encouragement as I endeavor to set up my own business in the future:

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

I unbelievably forgot my camera when we went to the shop, so…chocolate photo courtesy of mastbrothers.com and magazine spread is a photo story on the Mast Brothers that appears in this month’s edition of Edible Brooklyn.

From Nashville we headed for the ‘Low Country’, with a quick overnight pit stop in Atlanta to break up the journey to Savannah. In the short time we were there, we didn’t get much of an impression of Georgia’s capital, but it seems like a modern city that’s expanding pretty fast.

One thing we did get to check out was Varsity, which is (apparently) America’s largest drive in. I was pretty excited about visiting as it’s one of those old school places where they have people bring out your food and do the whole tray on the window thing. Unfortunately we were disappointed. Definitely go and check it out for the spectacle and atmosphere, but don’t go for the food. It was average at best. The burgers were no better than a basic McDonald’s hamburger, the fries were limp, and god alone knows what was on in the chilli on my chilli dog, but I’m not sure it was of this World. Bit of a shame really, because it’s a pretty cool set up.

After a 5-hour drive South East of Atlanta we hit Savannah, which was the first purpose built town in the US and is home to the US’s answer to Delia, Paula Deen. It’s a really pretty place, but as we arrived the heavens opened and it didn’t really stop raining for the 48 hours we were there. Yep, we managed to time our visit perfectly with the Low Country’s storm season. This being the case, we didn’t really feel like killing ourselves to get out there and sniff out Savannah’s more interesting food spots, so I don’t have that much to report, but we did have some really good Italian comfort food at a place called Leoci’s. Great prosciutto, mozzarella and lovely pasta. Just the thing when the hurricane nights draw in.

We were worried that we’d encounter similar conditions two hours up the coast in Charleston, but when we arrived it seemed like the clouds and winds had shot their load, and it was pretty pleasant, in a hot and sticky kind of way. Charleston is where the American Civil War started, so it’s steeped in history. But it’s also steeped in shrimp and grits. I’d got a small taster of this Low Land’s classic in New Orleans, but I had to get stuck into the real McCoy whilst we were here, and I got my fix at a great little place called Hominy Grill. For the uninitiated, grits are a America’s answer to polenta, but is usually white instead of yellow, and generally coaser ground. The grits I had at Hominy were creamy, slightly cheesy, with a tang of Tabasco and lemon,  and served with lovely juicy shrimp, bacon and mushrooms. Serious comfort food. We also tried their fried green tomatoes, another local favourite, she-crab soup, and every Charlestonian’s beer snack of choice, boiled peanuts. Really good stuff.

Whilst we were in town, someone also recommend that we check out a cafe called Dixie, a no frills kind of place known for it’s tomato pie. When we showed up for a late lunch, they were closing up the kitchen, but typical of pretty much all the Southerners we met, the lady and chef who ran the place were very accommodating and let us sit down for a slice before they finished for the day. Made with a beautifully tender dough, and layered with heirloom tomatoes, cheese and basil, it was a really satisfying lunch, especially when served with a nice hunk of sweet potato corn bread. I’ve got to say that it wouldn’t win many awards for it’s looks, but it delivered where it counts. Hmmmmm.

Of course, one of these posts wouldn’t be complete without a mildly terrifying fried chicken experience, and Charleston managed to deliver one of these too, in the shape of Hannibal’s Kitchen. Another little shack, in the rougher North East of the city, we yet again got to sample one of Southern cuisines most famous exports. The chicken was probably the mildest we tasted. Really balanced seasoning, with a small hint of spice, not too dissimilar from the Colonel’s Original Recipe. Fried fresh (we had to wait 20 minutes) and served with sides of corn and collard greens, it was yet another quality feed in less than salubrious setting, even if my greens did come with an unexpected addition of an unidentifiable pig part. If you look closely at the picture below you can see something pink poking out. For a moment I thought it was someone’s thumb, but it was definitely hog based, but no idea from where on the animal. Answers on a postcard please.

So that was the Low Country. I’m writing this from a VERY cramped sleeper berth on the ‘Silver Meteor’ train to New York, New York, our final destination. It’s going to be bitter sweet.

We’re ‘enjoying’ some the South-East coast’s famous storm season weather, so you’re going to get to read another post.

From LA we flew to New Orleans. After seeing all the news about Katrina and subsequent storms and floods, I really didn’t know what to expect, but I’ve got to say we were really impressed. Aside from Bourbon Street which is a bit of an abomination, it’s really cool and interesting place, that literally sweats music and good times from ever pore. We arrived with a fist full of recommendations of places to go from my mate Graison who I met on the  SFBI course and who used to live there, so we set about munching our way through town.

We had three really memorable meals in ‘The Big Easy’. The first was at Dante’s Kitchen. It kicked off in style with some stellar ’spoon’ bread, which is a kind of corn bread, and was absolutely delicious. So much so that I had to know what was in it, and the chefs kindly printed me out a recipe. This was followed by fantastic shrimp and grits and then ox tail. Small dishes, really nicely done. I’d go back in a shot.

The second was at Willie Mae’s Scotch House, which is famous for it’s fried chicken. Very famous. In fact some argue that it’s the best in the US, which may or may not be backed up by the James Beard ‘American Classic’ award they won in 2005. Whatever the case, Willie Mae’s is a tiny white shack in a slightly dodgy part of town (our cabbie warned us not to wonder around too much) but it left a big impression. The chicken isn’t traditional Southern style, it’s coated in a spicy batter (lots of salt and black pepper), not too dissimilar to chippie batter back home. Crispy, salty, spicy, moist and tasty as hell. The green beans side I had was pretty awesome too, but you really go for the chicken. Well worth running the gauntlet for.

The third was totally unexpected. We’d been out for a typically light dinner, and headed to a bar called The Maple Leaf to see some live music. When we arrived, the guy on the door told us entry was $10 which included the band and a ’shrimp boil’. We didn’t really know what he was on about, so paid the fee and sat down for a couple of beers.

After an hour or so, we were told that dinner was served and were led through to a room at the centre of which was a 20 ft table literally covered in a mixture of boiled shrimp, local andouille sausage, pork steak, corn and potatoes. Seconds later we were chowing down with 50 people we’d never met before chewing the fat and piles of shrimp, sausage and other assorted delights. It was lip tinglingly spicy from pepper and paprika, salty, smokey and really deeply flavoured. At one point, someone else produced a tray of stewed turkey necks, which I’d never tried before. They were sticky, sweet and gamey. A bit like mini ox tails, and maybe even more tasty. The whole evening was a totally brilliant experience. We felt like we were on an episode of No Reservations.

From New Orleans we got back behind the wheel and headed for Memphis, Tennessee. The birth place of Rock & Roll, realm of The King, and home to some pretty fine ribs too. Gracelands was pretty much exactly what you’d expect, and totally worth the visit. It also gave us the chance to sample one of Elvis’ favourite snacks, the fried  peanut butter and banana sandwich. It wasn’t bad, but on more substantial bread and with a rasher or two of candied bacon, it would have been better. Now, back to those ribs. Whilst we were in New Orleans, on two separate occasions, we were told that we HAD to check out the ribs Rendezvous. So we did. They specialise in dry rub baby back ribs, which I’ll take every time over the wet ones (too sweet and vinegary for my palette), and they didn’t disappoint. Succulent, juicy, and beautifully smoky. I find the strong flavours of US barbecue often mask the taste of the meat, but you could definitely taste these bad boys came from a pig. I could have easily eaten another rack. Turns out Rendezvous’ ribs are also a favourite of Bill Clinton and Barry Obama, and if they’re good enough for them…

The last stop on this part of the tour was Nashville, and I’ve got to say. Did. Not. Get. It. I was expecting (maybe foolishly) that it would be like a bigger Memphis, but that wasn’t really the case. It was more like LA. Really spread out, and fragmented into lots of little insubstantial feeling ‘hoods. But I’m pleased to say there was some good eating to be found. We discovered a really great modern Italian place called City House. Awesome pizza and great starters like octopus with butter beans and breadcrumbs. Super tasty. And it also afforded us another slightly dodgy fried chicken experience at Prince’s Hot Chicken. A good 10-15 minute drive from the centre of Nashville in a rather sketchy part of town lies a tiny kitchen and dining room that, like Willie Mae’s, has a big reputation. The chicken is more traditionally fried at Prince’s, but the key ingredient here is cayenne, and it’s available in Mild, Medium, Hot and Extra Hot. I opted for the medium, and I can’t for the life of me imagine the inferno that the Extra Hot creates because mine was pretty damn spicy, but it was good. Crispy and moist in all the right places, with a really good heat and served with a much needed cup of cooling slaw, some pickles and a couple of slices of dirty white bread to mop up the juices. The fried chicken of my dreams.

That’s it for now. Next stop Atlanta, Savannah and Charleston. See you soon.

So we are exactly a week into our road trip across the ‘States, and so far, so amazing.

From San Fran we drove to Yosemite which is just incredible. I visited the valley before with my folks as a young child, but I didn’t remember much of it. Probably too young to appreciate it, but it’s a jaw dropping place. Everywhere you look, there are unbelievable postcard views. It really is the big country. Food wise we had to pretty much fend for ourselves, firing up the barbie or gas stove at our camp and packing lunches, which was all good ‘back to nature’ stuff.

Next into Death Valley. Everyone had told us stuff like ‘…it’s just a long road…” or “…there’s not much there…”, so we were unprepared for how beautiful it is. That’s beautiful in a kind of brutal way. En route we stopped by Schat’s bakery cafe in Bishop and gorged on his famous sandwiches. The turkey club was the bomb. We stayed in the heart of the valley in a little settlement called Stovepipe Wells, which felt a bit like a theme village you might get at an amusement park. It was as hot as Hades, and the food wasn’t up to much, but the setting was incredible and they had a pool. Nuff said.

We then drove to Las Vegas. What a contrast. From the serenity and peace of Yosemite and Death Valley into the belly of the beast. I think we knew what to expect from Vegas, but weren’t really prepared for how we’d react to it. In short, we didn’t really get it. The novelty of the tacky glitz and glamour wore off pretty quickly, and it just began to feel a bit empty. We tried our best on the food front, but failed to find anywhere with much soul. Vegas has some World class ‘dining experiences’ from the likes of Alain Ducasse and Wolfgang Puck, but fine dining ain’t really our thing, and and all the restaurants seemed a bit personality less, which is a shame. However, there was one highlight we uncovered in the Venetian hotel. The Reuben Sandwich at Tower’s Deli. A seriously delicious oasis in a culinary desert. We could have been in Katz’s.

From Vegas we drove to Venice Beach, LA for a night. It felt good to be back in California, and the beach, skaters and sunset made in a pretty cool place to hang out for an evening. Not much to report from a food point of view. We wanted to eat at this place called Gjelina which did look seriously amazing, but my hangover, the long drive from Vegas and over an hours wait for a table wore me down, so we decided to get some take-out and retire to our hotel room.

Our next leg is going to take in New Orleans, Memphis and Nashville. See you soon.

I’m writing this post with a very heavy heart as tomorrow we leave San Francisco.

The five or so months that we’ve spent here have been so amazing, and the missus and I have totally fallen in love with the city. The hills, the fog, the history, the food, the people, the atmosphere all combine to make San Francisco a totally unique place. Having visited before for a short time as a tourist, I think I was a bit worried about being bored, but far from it. There may not be a huge quantity of ‘must do’ sights, but it has to be one of the best cities in the world for just hanging out and chilling. No wonder the hippies loved it here!

So yeah, we’re basically totally gutted to be leaving, and if things were different with visas etc, I think we would have stayed for a couple of years. But we can’t. C’est la vie. It’s not all doom and gloom though, as we’re heading on an awesome road trip that will take us across country to New York before we head back to London in late October.

So before we bid San Francisco a very fond farewell, I thought I’d give you my top 10 culinary highlights.

1. Mission Chinese Food – I’m pretty sure you’re all sick of me talking about MCF by now, but humour me. I love everything about this place. The food, the venue, the buzz. It’s been wining every time we’ve been there. Wonder if they’d deliver to London.

2. The Burger at Citizen’s Band – The best I tasted in San Fran. There’s something that really works about the combination of the Kobe beef patty, caramelised onions and challah bun. Killer.

3. Outerlands – We only went a couple of times, but this it’s such a cool place in a really interesting part of town. Fantastic bread descended from Tartine’s original recipe, great soups and sarnies, lovely atmosphere.

4. The Bread at Tartine – Three words. Believe. The. Hype. It really is great stuff, and it was an absolute pleasure to spend a few days behind the scenes with the team there. Great product, great cafe, great people.

5. BiRite Market – San Fran’s finest indie supermarket. It ain’t cheap, but it is f**king amazing. Such great produce, and their Brown Sugar ice cream is the bomb.

6. The Sandwiches at Rhea’s deli – Possibly the best sandwiches I’ve ever tasted. Both me and the Missus have felt high after eating The Delores. Maybe there’s something in the mayo.

7. The Swan Oyster Bar – A slice of San Francisco’s culinary history, and an old school classic. Great fresh fish, smoked fish, white wine and banter. Love. This. Place

8. The Temple O’ Spuds at Boogaloos – The true breakfast of champions, especially when topped with a poached egg and served with a side of bacon or sausage and lots of hot sauce. Goodbye hangover. Hello late morning snooze.

9. The Carnitas at Taqueria Cancun – I don’t know how they cook that pork, but it’s magic. Have it in tacos, tortas or burritos, but make sure you have it. Just delicious.

10. Last but not least, The SFBI - I’ve said it all already, it was such a a great and tasty experience. I’m still getting used to not going to school every day. I feel like there’s a quite a large hole in my life, but looking forward to filling it when I get back home and (hopefully) start a new career.

Notable mentions should also go to Delfina Pizza (awesome starters and ‘pies’), the Farmers Markets (’real’ people shop there, not just the wealthy) and Chairman Bao (amazing bun based street food).

So that’s it. Goodbye for now San Francisco. I sincerely hope I’ll be back soon. Very soon.

Every now and again, you get a really good feeling about a restaurant just by walking past it. In our first week in San Francisco, we walked past The Swan Oyster Depot on our way home after a boozy night out. Even through our alcoholic haze we could tell we were going to like it. It had this really lovely old-school feel to it, so the next day we decided to give it a go. As you can probably conclude from this post, we weren’t disappointed, and we’ve been back a few times since.

But before we get down to the nitty gritty, a short history lesson. The Swan has been around since around 1912, and by the look of the place not much has changed since. The original oyster bar was bought out by a guy called Sal Sancimino and his three cousins (Al, Pat and Frank LaRocca) in 1946, and in turn their kids took it over in the ’70’s, and it not surprisingly has a really friendly, authentic family feel to it.

It’s a ‘hole in the wall’ style place, with a long marble bar, original tiles, wood paneling etc and it only sits around 20 people at a time. So if you’re going to pay it a visit, prepare yourself for a wait. Possibly quite a long one. But don’t let this put you off, you can have a drink in the queue, and with a bit of banter from the owners, the time passes pretty quickly. And once you’re sat down eating, all is forgotten.

Now the fact that they serve oysters, and they’re good, local and fresh is kind of a given. So I’m not going to waste time talking about them. But what I will tell you about is their famous Boston style Clam Chowder. Less creamy and heavy than others we’ve tasted (we’re guessing the use milk instead of cream), powered by a really good stock and chock full of clams. The only thing that improves it is a few drops of Tabasco. Winning.

On our last visit we also had the most amazing plate of the Swan’s take on Sashimi. Absolutely beautiful hand cut slices of salmon, scallops, albacore and red tuna, all drizzled with olive oil, capers, shallots, and a little bit of salt and pepper. So delicate and fresh. Bloody delicious.

Once you’ve got the taste for it, it’s kind of hard to stop so we also ordered a plate of their smoked salmon and trout. The salmon came just as I like it, mounted on some buttered brown bread with a bit of black pepper and a couple of generous lemon wedges. The Yanks definitely go in for a heavier smoke than the Scottish style that I’m used to, but it makes a nice change, and if I’ve got a plate of smoked fish in front of me, I’m usually pretty happy. Which brings me to the smoked trout. Served as a fillet with a bit of shredded iceberg and some prawns, a fitting end to our meal, and all washed down with the house ice cold Sauvignon Blanc (I’m not sure what it is is).

The only real downsides of The Swan Oyster Bar are the queue (or ‘line’ as they’d say over here), and the fact that it’s a bit expensive. But for the heritage, atmosphere, banter and the fresh as you like seafood, I’m more than happy to overlook these things.

I hope that it’s still going in another 100 years and being run by the next generation of LaRoccas and Sanciminios.

Gyoza, dumplings, wontons, pot stickers, whatever you call them, I love them. They’ve fast become one of my favourite snacks. One of those things that when you think about them, you’ve got to have them.

I’d never really thought of making my own, but a chance encounter with a dumpling press and a packet of wonton wrappers in San Fran’s China town changed all that, and now I can’t stop cranking them out. Of course if I was a real expert, I’d be wrapping them by hand, but I’m not, and the $6 press does a pretty good job.

This Thai influenced recipe has a pork filling, but you can stuff these little guys with whatever you want really. You could do a variation with salmon or shrimp and chive, or maybe even tofu and shitake mushrooms. The cases we’ve found work best are Singapore style dumpling wrappers as they’re a bit thicker and give the pot stickers more substance.

One more thing, the pot stickers get fried on one side (which is how they get their name) and then steamed, so you’re going to need a wok or frying pan with a lid. Lets begin.

Ingredients (makes about 20)

For the pot stickers

250g pork mince

1.5 tablespoons fresh coriander, finely chopped

1.5 tablespoons fresh mint, finely chopped

3 spring onions (scallions), finely chopped

1 teaspoon fresh grated ginger1 medium red chilli, finely chopped

1 tablespoon fish sauce

1 large garlic clove, grated

Dumpling wrappers, Singapore style

Around 100ml of water, some sesame and vegetable oil for cooking

For the dipping sauce

3 tablespoons soy sauce

2 tablespoons water

1.5 tablespoons siracha hot sauce

1 small clove garlic, finely chopped

1 spring onion, sliced

1 teaspoon fresh coriander, chopped

Method

Get the dipping sauce done first, as once the dumplings are made you really want to cook them right away. Chop the spring onion, garlic and coriander, mix in a small bowl with the rest of the ingredients and then set aside.

Now to make the filling. Like the sauce this is a pretty straight forward exercise in combining everything together in a bowl, but make sure you chop everything as finely as you can. Once all the ingredients are chopped, grated and poured into your bowl, get your hands in there and give it a good mix until everything is evenly combined.

Once you’re done with this, set up a bit of a dumpling production station. You’ll need your mixture, your press, the wrappers, and a bowl of water to seal the edges. Get a dumpling wrapper and place it on the center of the press (as pictured), run a wet finger along the circumference, and then place a small teaspoon of your mixture in the center. Close the press tightly, then open and pop out your dumpling. Repeat until you’re out of the mixture.

Next get a wok or frying pan on a high heat, remembering you’re going to need a lid for part two of the cooking. Whilst your pan is getting up to heat, sit all your dumplings on their bottoms, so that the seam is pointing up, a bit like a Stegosaurus’ back.

Your pan should be ready by now, pour in some vegetable oil and a few drops of sesame oil for flavour, and place the dumplings bottom down in the pan (you should be able to fit around 10 at a time). After a minute or so, when the skin on the underside is nicely browned, pour around 100ml of water into the pan, place the lid on and turn the heat down to medium. The water will splutter and steam dramatically, but don’t take off the lid. In fact leave it be for around 5 minutes.

After this time, take a peek. The liquid should have all but evaporated, and the dumplings should look glossy and every so slightly bloated. They’re ready, so get them out of the pan and cook up your next batch. You can keep the cooked dumplings in a warm oven on a lightly oiled plate (they can be a bit sticky) or in a steaming basket over some hot water whilst you cook the others.

When you’re done, serve immediately on their own as a snack with the dipping sauce, or with a big bowl of steamed garlic and soy choi sum as a dinner for 2.

Us Brits may have invented the humble sarnie, but the Americans have taken it to a whole new level. Here the sandwiches are a proper meal, lots of good stuff slapped between whichever kind of bread you fancy. The fact that burgers sit in the same section on a menu kind of sets the tone. Now I’ve tasted the brave new world, I feel kind of sad when I think about the Prets and Eats I used to visit so often back home, especially as most of the really good ones come out of small independent shops and delis.

Anyway, to prove the point, I thought I’d show you the evidence by showing you a few of our favourites (excluding burgers) from the recent months. GET READY TO DROOOOOOLLLL.

The Delores from Rheas Deli

Smoked peppered turkey, spicy cranberry sauce, muenster, bacon, tomatoes, red onion, pickles, pickles jalapenos, spinach on Dutch crunch bread.

The Golden Gate Sandwich from Whole Foods

Smoked turkey, bacon, provalone cheese, avocado, tomato, spinach, sun dried tomato mayonnaise on sourdough.

Fresh crab, cucumber, lettuce, tomato, cress, lettuce, mayonnaise on sourdough

The Korean Steak Sandwich from Rhea’s Deli

Rib eye marinated in soy, garlic, honey & spices, swiss cheese, chili garlic sauce, pickled red onions & jalapenos, fresh onions, lettuce, garlic aioli on an ACME organic roll.

The Eggbert from Saul’s Deli

Organic egg salad, olive tapenade, shaved fennel, arugula (rocket) on toasted challah.

Mayoose’s CA-BLT from Ike’s Place

Bacon, avocado, jack, lettuce, tomato, dirty sauce on Dutch crunch.

So that’s it. It’s over. 4 and a half months, 18 weeks, 90 days, 720 hours, 43,200 minutes of hardcore baking action. We graduated from the SFBI Professional Bread & Pastry Programme last Friday, and I’ve go to say it was a bitter sweet occasion.

In the week running up to the graduation, as a group we made over 160 products, and most of them in multiple numbers. We were split into four groups as usual, with two groups concentrating more on bread and the other two predominantly on cakes and pastry. It was a full on week of late nights, early mornings, little sleep and lots of coffee. We all started on pastry, prepping stuff to be frozen and items with good shelf life, and the production schedule steadily ramped up over the week to fever pitch, particularly on Thursday and Friday for us bread people. It was full on, but hugely enjoyable. I have to admit, I felt pretty emotional as I scored the very last loaf that went into the oven.

The graduation ceremony itself was a fitting end, with a great turnout. Michel gave a fantastic speech, after which we each had to talk about our favourite product from the 18 weeks. I managed to forget why I’d chosen mine (I blame lack of sleep and having to stand near those bloody ovens), but think I pulled it back in the end. We were then treated to a bit of a skit / awards ceremony that two of my fellow students, Anthea and Justin, had put together. Each classmate was given a ‘Golden Baguette’ award, of which I received ‘Most Likely TV Chef’, which was flattering…I think. We then feasted on all that we’d made, as well as fresh pizzas from the wood fired oven, and a well earned drink or three.

Overall the course was a fantastic experience. It was pretty much everything I hoped it would be, and more. I’ve learned so much, and genuinely feel prepared and ready (or as ready as I’ll ever be) to take what I’ve learned to the next level. I’ve got to say a final big thanks to everyone at the school, but in particular Frank, Mac, Juliette and Le Grande Fromage himself, Michel. They run a pretty unique programme at The SFBI, and it’s been a great privilege to have spent the last few months in their company.

I’ve also made some great new friends from all four corners of the globe. I’ve got high hopes for each of them, and hope that they go on to do great things, and realise their hopes and dreams. Christ, I sound almost American! It must be time for me to come home.

So on that subject, what’s next? Seems odd that a few months ago, I thought that quitting my job and actually getting out here was the tough part, but I guess it’s the tip of the iceberg. I’ve got a couple of weeks work experience at Tartine before we leave, which is great, but when I get back to the UK at the end of October I’ll be looking for work. So if there are any bakers who need an extra pair of hands, or anyone who wants to help me fulfill my Golden Baguette award, you know where to find me.

If you want to see more pictures from the graduation week, click here.

ICEBERG DEAD AHEAD!!

The poor old Iceberg lettuce is a pretty unfashionable leaf these days, but the Americans still have a lot of love for it, particularly when it’s served in big old wedges and drenched in blue cheese dressing. This twist on the American Classic uses a local Californian goat cheese called Humbolt Fog, which is lovely and creamy, and has a blue-ish tang to it. Paired with some applewood smoked bacon candied in maple syrup, and a few thinly sliced red onions, it’s pretty much the perfect starter. It’s pretty easy to throw together too. Lets begin.

Ingredients (serves 4)

1 large iceberg lettuce

200g Humbolt Fog, or your favourite mild blue cheese

300g Buttermilk, or sour cream

Juice of 1/4 – 1/2 of lemon, to taste

1 teaspoon Tabasco

Salt and pepper, to taste

4 rashers of thick cut streaky bacon

1 tablespoon maple syrup

1/2 small red onion, very thinly sliced

Method

First up, make the dressing. It seems to taste better when it has a bit of time for all the ingredients to get friendly.  Pour the buttermilk (or sour cream) into a bowl, and crumble the cheese into it in small chunks. Then with a fork, give it a quick whisk to mix and break down the cheese a bit more, but don’t over do it, you want your dressing to have a bit of texture. Next add the Tabasco, lemon juice and seasoning and give it a taste. It should be creamy with some bite from the cheese, and a bit of heat from the pepper sauce.

Next, prep the bacon. Dry fry the rashers in a hot pan on both sides until it’s got some good colour and caramelisation, then pour off the excess fat. Turn the heat down, pour in the maple syrup, and toss the bacon in it until it’s all nicely coated and shiny. Remove the rashers from the pan to cool.

You’re now ready to prep your veg. Slice your red onion as thinly as you can, use a mandolin if you’ve got one, and then sprinkle with a little salt. This helps mellow them out and soften them up a bit. Then take your iceberg. Peel off any ugly outer leaves, chop into 4 equal quarters, and remove the heaviest part of the stalk from each wedge.

Place a wedge on each plate, scatter a few onions on top of it and then generously spoon over the dressing. Finish with a chopped rasher of the maple bacon per serving. Then eat.

Apologies for the radio silence. It’s almost been a week since I finished the course at the SFBI, and I’ve been enjoying a few well earned days off. I’ve got a bunch more posts in the bank to write, so if I can pull my finger out, I’ll get to these very soon. AND I’ve also got exciting news about some work experience that I’ve hopefully lined up here for the next couple of weeks.

But back to this week. It was something lurking in my in my in-box on Wednesday that has tempted me back to Wordpress, and that was the launch of the new Big Apple Hot Dogs site. I mentioned it briefly in this post, but I worked with the very talented chaps over at Nation on the site before I left for California.

I helped out with some thoughts on the design direction and food branding in general, and wrote the copy, and it’s great to see it all come to life, in particular the dog-sliding-into-bun animation (parallax scrolling, bitchez). Sweeeeeet!

If you’re ever in the vicinity of Old Street, and you want to treat your taste buds to something a little bit special, you really should go and pay BAHD a visit. Abiye, the guys who runs it, is not not only a thoroughly nice bloke, but he’s got the skills to pay the bills in a quality line-up of meaty treats developed with his secret weapon ‘The Sausage-Meister’, a butcher operating out of an equally secret location in London. I’ve also got love for the man because, like me, he used to have a desk job working for a big corporation, and decided that there was more to life, and Big Apple Hot Dogs is the result.

Anyways, go and have a look at the site and then go buy a dog. It’s that simple.

Last week felt like a pretty quiet one compared to the previous 16. I kind of got the feeling that our tutors were taking it easy on us as next week is graduation when we’ll be making pretty much everything we’ve made on the course. But in one week. That’s right. One frikkin’ week. We’re going to be busier than a one-legged man in a butt kicking contest.

The earlier part of the week, we spent prepping and making ‘baked custards’ of the world. France was repped by the crème brûlée and crème caramel, Italy by the panna cotta, and the good ol’ US of A by a rather tasty baked cheesecake. But where was the British custard tart I ask you? Nowhere. A bloody outrage!

The above was the pre-cursor to the plated deserts section of the course, which we were led through by Frank and Juliette, both of whom have worked as pastry chefs at some pretty fancy places. And it showed.

We learned a bit about what a customer expects, some thoughts on seasonality, how to come up with a desert including flavour combinations and then ideas on how to name it and put it together on a plate. All pretty interesting, especially as it felt more like cooking than baking, which is a different perspective to what we’ve been up to over the rest of the course. But enough of that, here are a few of Juliette & Frank’s creations:

Caremelised pineapple crepes with vanilla ice cream, candied hazelnuts and tuille baskets.

Pain Perdu with strawberry sorbet, mascerated strawberries and brioche coutons.

Caremelised apple tarts with sorrel and cinnamon sabayon and panna gelato.

Sable Breton and caramelised fig tart with strawberry sorbet and frozen yoghurt ice cream.

Chocolate mousse and anise marshmallow tarts, with tapioca, micro greens and crispy, caramel croquant wafer.

Caramel and vanilla poached pears, vanilla ice cream and  pastry crumble.

Pistachio frangiapane with fresh mint parfait, white chocolate ice cream and pistachio dragees.

So that was our penultimate, and I’ve got to say it, very tasty week. Next week’s the big one, and I’m sad to say, the end of the course. I have a feeling its going to get a bit emotional. Until then…

A real mixed bag last week at SFBI. Monday & Tuesday were dedicated to making all kinds of Petit Fours, Wednesday & Thursday we were set a two day practical, revisiting the pastry section of the course, and then on Friday we rounded off the week with a tour of the great and the good of the Bay Area’s bakeries. Tell Tale, ACME, La Farine, Semifreddi’s and Firebrand.

So, rewind selectah to the beginning of last week. A big part of Petit Fours is chocolate based, from mendiants and molded chocolates to truffles, you need a lot of the stuff, and being more accustomed to eating it than making it, I wasn’t really aware of one of the key skills of the master chocalatier, tempering. I’ve got to to tell you, it’s a tricky business.

If chocolate isn’t tempered properly it lacks gloss and sheen, and doesn’t set properly, so it’s more prone to melting. For properly tempered chocolate, you need your choc to have a concentration of the right kind of crystals (I’m not going to get into the science, so you’ll just have to trust me), and this is achieved through the combination of time, agitation and temperature. Whilst tabling is a valid method, for us this equated to A LOT of stirring. And don’t I know it. My right arm is still aching, and not from self abuse for once! I think I’ve contracted Tempeperer’s Elbow. But once you’ve got your chocolate right, you can create some pretty tasty morsels, as you can see. But it wasn’t all chocolate, chocolate, chocolate. We also made caramels, more macaroons, a rather unsuccessful peanut brittle, marshmallows, and some mouth-wateringly delicious passion fruit pâtes de fruits. Diabetes alert!

As mentioned above, we then had a two day practical. We revisited a lot of good stuff from the not too distant past to make sure that we’d grasped the main concepts, and again we were able to run our own schedule for a couple of days, which was cool. Our team was a pretty well oiled machine, but it was a hectic two days. Amongst other things we made choux, including a re-appearance of the Paris Brest which I was happy about, pies, tarts, puff pastry creations like the Pethivier, cookies, scones, muffins and so on. All in all, I was really pleased with how we did. The guys at Lost Weekend Video seemed to approve of the haul which we exchanged for Step Brothers (terrible film, don’t bother), and my pie got the thumbs up from my buddy Matt, who is a total pie addict.

Then on Friday, we had what can only be described as a dysfunctional, but very enlightening school field trip to visit a bunch of bakeries. I found it a really inspiring and eye opening trip, and whilst I’m not going to go into too much detail, I thought I’d mention the things that I liked about each of them.

Our first stop of the day was Tell Tale. They are a relatively new outfit, with mostly wholesale accounts. The space that they’ve set up is pretty incredible. Lots of space, great machinery, and from what we tasted, great products. Their croissant and financiers were the bomb. They also have really good branding, which was good to see.

Next up, we went to ACME. We were really privileged to be given the tour of one of their facilities by one of the founders, Steve Sullivan. He talked a bit about he got the baking bug, and how his business grew from it’s humble beginnings to the baking tour de force it is today. Really cool guy.

Next we went over to La Farine, a more customer centric operation with four outlets in the Berkley area. We met with the operations manager, Stan Dodson, at the Fruitvale location and what impressed me about La Farine was how they produced so much bread from such a small kitchen, and how involved they are in the community. It really is a customer business, and thats what makes them tick.

Our next stop was Semifreddi’s. Again like ACME, they have come from humble beginnings, but they recently moved to a new facility which is like a spaceship. A huge space, very clean, and runs like clockwork with a combination of automation and craftsmanship. The majority of their bread is still shaped by hand, but they have a bunch of labour saving devices that keeps them running a smoother, and from what we could see, a more pleasant operation for their staff.

Our final stop was Firebrand, a small wood fired bakery in deepest, darkest Oakland. It became pretty clear that the life of the wood fired baker is a hard one, and to a great extent it’s a lifestyle choice. Despite the style of baking not really floating my boat (I’m far too lazy), I was really encouraged by the fact that they have succeeded in making a business out of it, and that they had done so with such a small range of equipment and resources. Good on them.

So all in all, a varied and interesting week. Next week is plated deserts, before we batten down the hatches for the final week of hard core production in time for graduation.

For those of you that read this blog regularly, or follow on twitter, you’ll know that Hand To Mouth has a BIG restaurant crush on Mission Chinese Food. So when we saw that the guys behind it had written a sort of cookery book and were having a ‘food and chat’ style book launch, we were all over it like a rash. So much so that we bought tickets #1 and #2.

The book, Mission Street Food, is the brainchild of Anthony Myint and his wife Karen Leibowitz, who despite their tender years and relative inexperience, have already left a pretty sizeable legacy on San Francisco’s culinary map due to their DIY approach to the restaurant trade. As a couple who are also thinking of opening a food-based business, we were as keen as mustard to hear them speak about their experience, and basically get inspired.

Their story begins in late 2008 when Myint (previously a consultant who re-trained as a chef) was working as a line cook at Bar Tartine, the restaurant arm of SF’s famous bread emporium, and was looking for a more creative outlet in his down time. So he sub-let a Guatemalan taco truck on Thursday evenings and launched Mission Street Food, slinging phenomenal sounding gourmet sandwiches to a hungry and ever growing crowd of San Francisco foodies. Pork belly and jalapeño (PB & J), Pigs trotter and cornichon, 40 clove chicken, fried catfish and kimchi are among some of the sarnies listed in the book (I’m gutted I wasn’t around to sample them) and before long MSF had become as hot as Hades and demand was outstripping resource.

So Mission Street Food ditched the truck, and moved in to a rather scabby looking Chinese Restaurant in the Mission district called Lung Shan. The deal that Myint and Leibowitzt struck up with the restaurant owners was that they’d take over their dining room on Thursday and Saturday evenings, sharing the kitchen with the restaurants existing chefs who would still be knocking up take-away for deliveries. A pretty improbable arrangement, but it seemed to work. With an already strong social media fueled fan base, they were packed from the first night they opened, and despite what they described as a pretty shambolic opening, they served more food to more people than they ever could with the truck.

Over the next few months, MSF went from strength to strength, but it also continued to evolve. Myint was still working at Bar Tartine, and Leibowitz as a lecturer at Berkley University, which made planning, preparing and cooking for their weekly extravaganzas challenging to say the least. So they threw ‘their’ kitchen doors open to other chefs, inviting them to contribute to the weekly menus, whilst taking a bit of pressure off.

As a couple who seem to have a constant desire to innovate, Mission Street Food was never going to be a permanent fixture, and in June of 2010 it served it’s final meal. But it wasn’t game over for Lung Shan as Myint handed over the reigns of the dining room to friend and co-conspirator Danny Bowien and Mission Street Food became Mission Chinese Food. Since then the couple have been busy consulting, opening other restaurants (Commonwealth) and pop ups (the now closed Mission Burger), developing links with food based charities and writing a book. Slackers they are not.

As we hoped, hearing their story was really inspirational. I’m not sure what the other people at the event took away, but our feeling was that, talent aside, their success is due in great part to a few key factors. Neither Myint or Leibowitz had that much experience, but they had (and still have) a desire to do something different, and they went for it. Secondly, they were flexible in realising their goals. Without this flexibility, they probably would have run themselves into the ground, but they saw the benefit of switching things up, working out deals, finding collaborators and so on. Our third observation was that San Francisco played quite a big part. It’s a city that LOVES food and supports this kind of ‘can do’ attitude, and not just on a faddish level. I wish I could say the same of London. Finally, we were impressed with the idea of the democratisation of fine dining. As I’ve mentioned many times before, I’m no fan of fine dining. The snobbery, fussyness and atmosphere of fine dining restaurants don’t sit well with me, but part of Myint and Leibowitz’s mission was to apply the classical techniques and traditions of such places to food that is more accessible to the general populous. Smart thinking both from a point of view of keeping costs down, but also in terms of keeping their army of fans happy.

Speaking of being kept happy, over the course of the evening we were also served a very tasty three course meal by Myint. We started with a beef carpaccio, featuring very thinly sliced beautifully seared rib eye steak (cut against the grain – a technique he elaborates on in the book), a mozarella mousse dispensed from a C02 charged siphon (natch), a very tasty relish of olive, caper, pistachio, parsley, shallot, lemon juice and olive oil, and some insanely spicy crisps. A slightly odd combination, but it all worked well together.

The main course was a chicken Caesar salad, which was pretty traditional, but had some nice little touches. The chicken was ‘confited’ in chicken fat, before being grilled, and was served with some chicken skin crisps (if only Walkers would make these). There were also a few slices of avacado, a couple of boquerones and a generous shaving of Parmesan.

The meal was rounded off with a dish created for one of MSF’s theme evenings, Breakfast For Dinner, their take on Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Made with a doorstep slice of ACME’s pain de mie spread both sides with butter, and then dredged with sugar and cinnamon before being brûléed with a blow-torch and floated in a pool of condensed and regular milk. Sounds odd. Tasted great.

So, a great evening with plenty of food for both body and mind. Towards the end of the evening, were lucky to have the opportunity to have a good chat with Leibowitz as she helped her hubby dish up the desert, getting more on her perspectives on starting a business amongst other things. But I’ve written far too much already, so this may have to wait for another time.

Week 15. More cake. But as the title of this post ‘hilariously’ suggests, we moved away from the predominantly flour based sponges and in to mousse cake territory.

Most of these cakes followed a similar format. Some kind of sponge base, ‘inserts’ made either from more sponge or set crème anglaise based layers flavoured with anything from lemon and raspberry to mint, surrounded with some kind of mousse set with gelatin. These cakes get finished with different techniques. Glazes, cake walls, ‘pate decor’, we even got to get the chocolate spray-gun out.

Here are a few examples (for some reason I didn’t get as many pics as usual):

Fresh Fruit Charlotte: Lady finger base and walls, separate lemon and berry inserts, diplomat cream, all topped with fresh fruit. One of my favourites of the week.

Lemon & Blackberry Mousse Cake: Full on presentation on this one. Dacquase sponge base, blackberry insert, lemon mousse, a cake wall of biscuit jaonde decorated with pate decor, finished with a marbled neutral glaze. Pheeeww.

White Chocolate, Pistachio and Raspberry Mousse Cake: Pistachio and raspberry sponge base, raspberry insert, white chocolate mousse, finished with a half scollop motif, tinted white chocolate spray, and white macarons, which we started making this week, but will do more of next.

Vanilla Bavarian: Muscavado sugar sable Breton base, vanilla sponge insert, vanilla mousse all coated in white chocolate, again applied with the spray gun, and again tinted.

I’m going to be honest, the majority of the cakes left me a bit cold. Don’t get me wrong, the ingredients are all great (cream, sugar, fruit, booze, cake – whats not to like?), but I think I’m basically not that fond of the texture that the gelatin. Also, and this may not make much sense as all the individual elements have to be made, but for me these cakes felt like they were more assembly jobs than anything.

They are also not really my bag aesthetically. Making them was fun, and it was definitely good to learn some new techniques, but most of them look to me like they could be at home on the open seas on a cruise ship circa 1987, or in a slightly pretentious restaurant. I guess I just don’t find ‘modern’ presentation that appetising.

Next week, our penultimate week of study, covers macarons, chocolate, confectionery and petit fours followed by a two day practical and a bakery tour. It’s gonna be big.

But there’s gold in them there wedding cake shaped hills, so I manned up and took on the challenge. We made two cakes, one traditional with all that white butter cream, pipe work and hand made fondant flowers (see below), but for the other we had more of a free reign.

So I decided to have a bit of fun and make a Mr & Mrs PACMAN cake. I’m not going to say its a new idea, I basically copied it off the internets, but this is my take on it, and it took quite a lot of time and effort, so you’re going to see the pictures, and you’re going to enjoy them. Capisce?