Food

Food is fab, bring on the holidays... Just been planning a new year's eve BBQ with sister in law and her bf, many beers, much grub, sunshine, taking the dog for a walk along the beach, cannot fucking wait... Tough year...

Yeah man. Same. Not the beach and dog part, but you get the drift...

Sunday roast is my hands down favourite bit of the week. Christmas is like a giant three day Sunday roast. What's not to like?

where should I buy the pork for a porchetta in North London? I assume my local butcher would do it, but if there's somewhere very special then I'd like to go there. I dont want a premade one, just the pork.

sounds brilliant have a great holiday time 👍

My favourite café has been knocking it out of the park with the Christmas specials. Just had a bite of a sandwich with confit turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, crispy sprouts and near enough half a wheel of camembert. Almost wish I wasn't going away for the holidays.

+1 for this. Ginger Pig seemed to be the default but they only do pre-made for double what I was expecting to pay.

just ask your local fleischmeister for a pig belly with the loin still attached.

I'm with you almost completely.

I like to apply butter. Butter is good.

Nice write up, agree with it all except I’d use a glass of wine in the gravy and drink the other 3/4 bottle whilst cooking 😂

Deliberately didn’t say “the other half of the bottle”. Chef’s perks innit. 2 bottle minimum required for a decent roast.

slow roasting veg? anyone done it?

my beef shin macaroni pot will be occupying 80% of our oven and it's going slow and low for about 3 1/2 hours at 150 so combining things is going to be a bit of hassle.

plan is to serve it with a lovely rich mash as that just needs hob space to boil the spuds and a handful of veg (those poncy small thin carrots with the trimmed tips still on, asparagus tips, vine tomatoes, tenderstem broccoli) but I can't decide if i should just stream & grill pan as appropriate or try and sneak them all in the oven at 150c to roast for the full 3 hours and hope they're properly done at the end (i have to whack it up to 180 for 20 minutes to finish so should hopefully help finish them off).

That is a good write up. +1

I add flavoured butter under the skin of chicken/turkey but I do the other way to you - slow then hot and usually remove juice before the blast. I often use a different stock for the gravy from a previous roast because getting the stock to cool enough can be a challenge. Can also use butter to thicken a gravy, which is having turkey can be nice as it's more velvety and rich. Also I only really use white wine for gravy because I find red too overpowering - maybe occasionally for beef. Madeira/sherry are also fine additions.

Quality of meat significantly improves the juice - That has made the biggest difference to my recent attempts

I'm going to try Meat N16 in Stokey, been past it many times but not yet tried it.

Baldwins Butchers on Green Lanes is also decent http://baldwinsbutchers.co.uk/about-baldwins-butchers/

I use jacket potatoes for mash (pomme puree) - less water and better flavour I've found.

You could pickle some veg as would help cut through some of that richness and maybe some griddled veg would go well still with some crunch - otherwise it could all be a bit soft?

Turner and George, the Butchery E1 or Hill and Szrok.

All three know their onions, I'd say the first two are the ones I'd recommend, they're both on IG too so you can ask them Q's on there.

I think it's a bit meh - the aged meat on offer at those two places are worth the trip alone ^

pretty sure you can avoid these super white folks £££ butchers and just check in at your local chop shop.

honeycomb flex is back on masterchef.

Is that in London? I hope so

Norwich I think (urgh)

All my local chop shops don't sell pork.

Well... You could save space by not bothering with asparagus or vine tomatoes as they are out of season?

23kgs of flesh being delivered on Friday. Fairly excite.

That's basically a 7 year old.