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.

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.

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.

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.

‘Barbecue’ is a bit of a national obsession in the US. From what I can gather there’s a bit of rivalry between the North and South in terms of style. I forget which, but one part of the country favours the dry, and the other the more saucy, but whatever side you meat falls on, it can be some tasty shizzle.

This recipe is a culmination of a bunch of different barbecue recipes we’ve read and tasted since we’ve been out here. A lot of the more recent ones seem to favour balsamic vinegar and going heavy on the sugar as part of the sauce, which to my taste is a bit sweet, and you end up with almost Chinese style ‘candied’ ribs. I prefer a bit more of a balance between sweet and savoury, so have used apple cider vinegar. But be careful not to go too far the other way or you’ll end up with something that will strip the enamel off your teeth.

The ribs get a double dose of flavour from a  dry rub (which you should allow to do it’s work for a good few hours; or ideally overnight) and a wet barbecue ‘mopping sauce’ that you douse the meat with whilst it cooks on the barbecue.

Right, lets get our grill on.

Ingredients (serves 2-3)

1.2 – 1.5 kg rack of baby back (loin) ribs

For the dry rub

1 tablespoon smoked paprika

1 tablespoon soft, dark brown sugar

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1 teaspoon ground allspice

1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1 teaspoon salt

For the barbecue sauce

1/2 onion, finely chopped

4 cloves garlic, finely chopped

120 ml tomato ketchup

60 ml cider vinegar

60 ml water

2 tablespoons soy sauce

2 tablespoons bourbon (whiskey)

1 tablespoon soft, dark brown sugar

1/2 teaspoon ground allspice

Salt and pepper to taste

Method

First up, get all the dry ingredients for the rub together, dump them in a bowl and mix until they are evenly distributed.

Then take your ribs and rub them all over with the mixture. Once you’ve got good coverage, pack the rest of the rub mixture wherever you can on to the meat, cover with foil and then refrigerate for a minimum of 5 hours, preferably over night.

The next day, an hour or so before you cook, take the ribs out of the fridge and allow them to get to room temperature. You’re going to part cook the ribs in your oven before you get them on your grill, so set your oven to 180c, put the ribs in a baking tray, and cover it tightly with foil, and then pop them in the oven for an hour.

Whilst they’re cooking, prep the barbecue sauce and get your grill fired up. For the sauce, start by frying the chopped onions in some oil with the garlic and allspice powder in an oven proof pan (this is kind of important as you want a pan that can be placed on top of your barbecue so you can mop the ribs with the sauce without running back and forth to your kitchen). Once they’ve got some good colour on them, de-glaze the pan with the bourbon and then add the rest of the ingredients and simmer for around 10 minutes. You should end up with a sauce which is both sweet, savoury and deeply flavoured.

When you’re ribs are cooked, take them out of the baking tray, add the cooking juices to your barbecue sauce, and then wrap them in foil. You want to arrange the coals on your barbecue so they’re set up to provide ‘indirect heat’. This means either scraping all the coals to one side, or creating a valley by scraping them to either side. You’re going to cook your ribs on the part of the grill that isn’t directly over coal with the lid on.

When you’ve done this, bring your barbecue sauce back to simmering point, and move your operations barbecue side. Put your pan and ribs on the grill and then give the meat it’s first coating with the sauce. Cover with the lid, and repeat the process every 6 or 7 minutes. You obviously want to avoid burning the ribs, but the sauce will caremalise, giving you layer upon layer of flavour each time you brush the ribs.

After around 30 minutes, the ribs will be done. Take them off the grill, cover with foil and allow to rest for 10-15 minutes. Serve with the remaining barbeque sauce, and whatever else you fancy. We had ours with barbecued corn (cooked in their damp husks so they steam steam, and then stripped finished on the grill) and a simpler, cleaner version of this coleslaw (substitute the hummus for more yoghurt, leave out the maras biberi, and just use parley instead of the other herb combo).

Eat whilst listening to the Deliverance soundtrack, and squeal like a piggy!

Back to Christmas for a couple of posts. As I mentioned earlier, my old dear does a Herculean quantity of cooking over Christmas, so it’s become a bit of a tradition that I’ll give her the night off and cook something up for the family.

This year I opted for a stuffed loin of pork, served with rosemary and thyme roasted new potatoes and buttered cabbage. The only really fiddly bit of this recipe is tying the joint up after you’ve stuffed it. I made a bit of a mess of my string work, but there are plenty of on-line vids to watch to help you hone your skills.

A 2kg joint should serve around 8 people. Get your butcher to bone and butterfly the meat, and score the skin for you, unless you know what you’re doing with a knife.

Ingredients

2kg loin of pork (the best you can afford)

400g pork mince

1 apple, peeled, cored and diced

1 onion, finely chopped

2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped

Handful of sage leaves, finely chopped

Handful of bread crumbs

Zest of a lemon

1/4 nutmeg, grated

Salt and pepper to taste

Another onion, sliced for roasting the joint on on

Half a glass of white wine

Method

It should be no surprise to learn that the first step is to prepare the stuffing, but before you do this set your oven to 230c, then sweat off the onion, apple and garlic in some olive oil, making sure your apple is diced nice and finely. You don’t want to colour the ingredients, just get them softened. When the onion is translucent, set aside to cool a bit.

Next, get the rest of the stuffing ingredients into a bowl. The mince, bread crumbs, lemon zest, nutmeg, sage, salt and pepper and give a good mix together. Then add the apple and onions, and using your hands, squidge everyything together until you’ve got a well mixed stuffing.

Pinch a bit of the stuffing off and make a flat patty about the width of a golf ball. Fry this off on both sides, and once cooked taste for seasoning. If you think it needs any more of anything add it to the mixture and give it another squidge.

Now grab your boned joint and lay it out skin side down. Season the exposed flesh with a little salt and pepper, and then cover with the stuffing in an even layer all over, leaving a small border around the outside to allow the mixture a little room to occupy as the joint is rolled and tied, which is what you’re going to do next. As I said above, have a look at some on-line tutorials if you don’t know how to tie meat.

Once the joint is trussed up, make sure the skin is dry by patting with kitchen towel, and then score it all over (if the butcher hasn’t done it for you) before sprinkling with salt and pepper. Drying the skin and giving it a salting should ensure a crispy skin. Now take a roasting tray big enough to accommodate the joint, place a layer of sliced onion along the centre, and pop the joint skin side up on top.

Roast the joint for 15-20 minutes at 230c to get the skin scorched and crispy, and then turn down to 180c to roast for a further hour.

After this time, take out the joint and rest it. Snip the string and remove the skin. You can return this to the oven so it remains crispy, and then cover the meat with foil for about 20 mins. This should give you time to make a totally slamming gravy.

Take the roasting tray, which will now be nice and sticky with roasting juices. Pour off about three quarters of the fat that will be resting on the surface, and sprinkle in around a tablespoon of plain white flour. Work this into the juices until their are no lumps. Put the put the tray on a heated hob and cook the mixture for around a minute. Now pour in the wine to de-glaze the tin, making sure you get as much of the sticky stuff off the bottom as you can. This is where you’re getting your flavour from.

Burn off the booze from the wine, and then taste. The gravy will probably be pretty strong, so dilute it a with a bit of the water you’re cooking your cabbage (or other veg) in. Keep adding and tasting until you’re happy. You can serve it as it is, but I like to pass it through a sieve to get out any lumpy bits and burnt onion.

Once whatever veg you’re cooking is done, you are ready to rock. Cut your joint into one and a half inch thick slices and give one to each person, and serve with vegetables, a good bit of gravy, some crackling, and a smug grin.

I love a bit of pork belly, but I don’t cook it at home that often. I’m not really sure why, but as soon as I taste that tasty, unctuous meat and get my teeth round that crackling, I vow to do it more often.

This recipe gives the belly the Eastern treatment using Szechuan pepper and Chinese five spice. Despite a lot of the fat rendering out during the cooking process, it’s definitely not the healthiest meat, but when it tastes as good as it does, who gives a toss.

Ingredients (serves 2)

For the pork

750g pork belly joint

1 tablespoon Szechuan pepper

1 teaspoon black pepper corns

1 teaspoon Chinese five spice

1 teaspoon sea salt

For the greens

200g baby pak choi

1/2 red chilli, chopped

2 cloves of garlic, chopped

1 tablespoon Light soy sauce

2 tablespoons water

6-8 Spring onions

Sesame oil

Vegetable oil

Method

First up, score the skin of pork belly all over in a diamond formation with as sharp a knife as you’re got. You want to cut through the skin, but not down to the flesh, around 3 millimeters deep.

Put a kettle on to boil, place your belly joint on a wire rack in your sink, and when it’s boiled, pour the water all over the pork’s skin. The skin will contract a bit making the scoring more prominent. Now pat the joint dry and set aside.

Pop a dry frying pan on the heat, and toast off the Szechuan and black pepper corns. When you can smell them, pour them in a pestle and mortar and grind into a powder. Now add the five spice and salt to the mortar and give it another grind to mix everything together.

Flip the belly joint over so it’s skin side down, and then rub the spice mix all over the pork meat. Set aside to marinate somewhere cool for at least 2 hours. You can leave it overnight in a fridge, but make sure the joint is at room temperature and check the skin is still dry before you cook it.

After a couple of hours, set your oven to 200 c and get your pork out. Some moisture will have leeched out of the meat, soaking into the spice rub. This is totally normal, and will help the rub stick. Now get a roasting tray which you can place a wire rack over and place the joint on the rack skin side up. Some of the rub will fall off, don’t worry about that. Now boil a kettle, pour the boiled water into the tray (avoiding getting the meat wet) until it is half full, and then put it in the oven.

Cook the joint for 20 minutes before turning the oven down to 180 and cook for another hour. Whilst the pork is cooking, cut the pack choi lengthways, slice the garlic and chop the clillies.

After an hour, take the pork out of the oven and remove from the rack. Turn the oven up as high as it will go, and then get your frying pan on the heat with a small amount of vegetable oil in it. When it’s good and hot, pop in the joint skin side up. You’re doing this to seal on the remaining spice rub to the bottom of the joint. After a minute, pop the joint back in the oven in the pan for 15 minutes.

Now cook your greens. Get a wok on the heat, add a few drops of sesame oil, a glug of vegetable oil and then fry the garlic and chilli. Before they brown, drop in the greens and stir fry for a couple of minutes, coating the veg with the oil. Then add the light soy sauce, water and cook for another couple of minutes.

You’re now ready to eat. Take the pork out of the oven, pop the greens in a bowl, cut the joint into chunks and serve straight away with steamed white rice.

Double happiness.

My day job takes me in to central London each day, and whilst I’m spoiled for choice for places to get lunch, I tire of giving the Prets and Eats my cash every day.  That being the case, a year or so ago my old work partner and I set ourselves on a bit of a mission to find some alternatives to the standard fayre, the results of which you can find on this map. I’ll be posting about some of the names on the list in the not too distant future, but first up I want to talk about Benito’s Hat.

No longer the preserve of stoned Californian students, the burrito has made it’s way to the UK (well London at least) and seems to be growing in popularity. I used to get my fix from an imaginatively named place called ‘El Burrito’ which promoted itself with a young Mexican kid dressed as a donkey (burrito means ‘little donkey’ in Mexican) handing out flyers, and then Benito’s Hat opened across the street. I think I went in there on the day it opened, and I’ve never darkened the donkey’s doorway since.

Based on Goodge Street, Benito’s hat has been open for a little over a year, and pretty much every lunchtime has a queue out of the door. It’s not hard to see why. The food is fresh, tasty and fast, and if you leave out the sour cream and cheese, probably not that unhealthy.

I’m a bit of a creature of habit, and always opt for a burrito with pork, black beans, hot sauce and guacamole (which costs an extra 50p – my only complaint). Once unwrapped from the foil, you know you’re in the presence of greatness. The tortillas are as soft and as warm as (I apologise for this analogy) a baby’s bum. Taking a bite you immediately get a hit of the seriously tasty stewed pork. Very similar to a ‘carnitas’ burrito you’d get in the states, the meat is intensely flavoured with lime, cinnamon, oregano and pepper black pepper. Then you taste the beans, then the heat of the chili sauce, before being soothed by the cool of the salad and guaca. The flavours are big and bold. It’s a seriously tasty and satisfying lunch.

I’ve tried other things on the menu, they’re all good, and would easily rival anything that you’d get in the Mission area of San Francisco, but I’m not sure that I’ve really done the experience justice here , so do yourself a favour if you’re in the ‘hood and eat like a Mexican this lunch time.

For the past couple of years my mate Ollie has been organising a hog roast, and last weekend was what has now been dubbed as ‘Hogfest 09′.

It’s basically a gathering for friends and family at his folk’s place in Shropshire, culminating in a hog roast. I know it all sounds a bit ‘River Cottage’, but for me escaping London and getting primal with a whole pig, a big fire and bunch of booze is my idea of a good weekend.  Ollie usually lives in Cairo where this kind of pork based entertaining doesn’t go down too well, so for him I think it’s also rare opportunity to feast on pork with impunity.

The preparation process is relatively simple. The pig gets scored all over with a Stanley Knife, given a good rub down with olive oil, and then sprinkled liberally with salt and pepper. No herbs or any other ‘fancy stuff’.

Cooking is a bit more complicated. The fire gets started at 5am, and then at 6 a barbecue pit of sorts is created using 2 sheets of corrugated iron, and by spreading the fire out into a hollow rectangular shape. The hog then gets mounted on a spit (bought on ebay and imported from the States no less)  and turned a quarter rotation every 5-10 minutes.

The fire’s heat should be more intense at the start to get the skin nice and crisp, this is pretty obvious when it happens, and then the rest of the cooking is slow and methodical. I think our pig was about 70 kilos and took around 12 hours to cook.

By 7pm (after a good half an hour resting) the meat was perfectly roasted. I had the honour of carving the beast, but after seeing it cook for so long my meat lust kind of took over and I went at it a bit like a demented cavemen butcher. It tasted amazing. Lovely salty crackling on top, sweet,  smokey, tender meat underneath. Totally worth the time and effort.

There are some more pictures of the lucky pig and the rest of the day here, and if you fancy doing it yourself there’s some ‘How To’ help here.