To be very fair this is less, something for the weekend, and more something to start at the weekend and finish the weekend after but there you go slow food is so completely worth it.

It is essentially very very simple and creates the most incredible beef, and what’s more a phenomenal beef stock to bag up and freeze.

Stage 1 Ingredients

1.5kg piece of British beef brisket or foreflank
2.5l of water
250g demerara or light brown sugar (if you want totally British you can use Tate & Lyle granulated)
750g salt (don’t go crazy with very expensive salt it won’t give you anything extra, just try to avoid the caking agents)
1/2 tsp black peppercorns
1/2 tsp juniper berries (I bashed mine a bit to let out the flavour)
3 cloves (
2 bay leaves
fresh thyme

Put all the stage 1 ingredients except the beef into a large saucepan and stir over a low heat until all the salt and sugar have dissolved. Bring to the boil, allow to bubble for 1-2 minutes, then remove from the heat and allow to cool completely. Put your beef in a non metallic container, I used a large plastic cake storage box with a lid, this is pretty important to keep your beef submerged. Cover the meat completely with the cold brine and make sure the whole thing is submerged, I used a cocktail stick in the centre of the beef to push it down when the lid was on. Leave the box in a cool place for 4-5 days.

Stage 2 Ingredients

1 bouquet garni
1 carrot roughly chopped
1 onion roughly chopped
1 celery stick roughly chopped
Half a bulb of garlic

After your 4-5 days remove the beef from the brine, wash in cold water and then soak in fresh cold water for 24 hour. After its soak, place the beef with the rest of the stage 2 ingredients into a large pot, cover with fresh water and poach very gently on the top of the stove for 2-3 hours. Cook until the meat is completely tender and yielding when pierced with a skewer.

Serve just about however you like be it thick cut in a sandwich, with lentils or with just plain boiled potatoes. However you eat it you’ll love and appreciate every second of your weeks work!

– Emily

I am sure that most you already know how to make pancakes but there is no harm in going back over the basics. So, here is the recipe:

You will need:

• 100g plain flour
• 2 eggs
• 300ml semi-skimmed milk
• 1 tbsp sunflower oil or vegetable
• Butter/oil for frying
• pinch of salt

Method:

Blend the flour and eggs together with a good splash of the milk. This should leave you with a thick but smooth batters. pour in the rest of the milk slowly while whisking until you get the consistency of emulsion paint.

Heat a good size frying pan, pour the batter and heat on each side for about 30 seconds until golden brown. Easy!

Toppings

MrsB’s home made totally British pancetta. Recipe coming soon!

Now it is all about toppings. I spend some time living in Amsterdam after university and, as a sheltered Brit, I was confused by the Dutch’s  love of savoury pancakes. However, I did grow to love them too. So it has become a bit of a tradition in our house of me cooking up Dutch style savoury pancakes for Mrs B.

Tonight I am going to be cooking up pancetta and mushroom pancakes. Before anyone says “pancetta is not very British?”. Well, Mrs B has just made her own…. recipe coming soon!

– James

You know that feeling when you get to Monday morning and you think, where did the weekend go? I am sure I am not alone in feeling this at times, and as part of my New Year resolution for 2014 I want to try something new each weekend. I am hoping that this way there will be a stand out something for as many weekends as possible, making the weekends seem more productive and therefore slightly longer.

My focus over the last few weekends has been on slow food. There have been chefs both the celebrity type and the not so, who have been proclaiming this as a movement for a good number of years. I think really its just more about giving good, but not necessarily expensive, ingredients a little bit of time and care to turn them into something potentially more valuable and delicious.

The first thing on my to do list within this was to make my own smoked salmon. This, I will admit was prompted more by seeing a half side of Scottish salmon in Tesco for just £13. It is something I have wanted to try for a while and with the raw ingredient at a good price it seemed like the perfect opportunity.

After a good look through the internet I found that really the simplest recipe was just to dry cure the salmon, once rinsed in cold water and patted dry, in a 50/50 mix of salt and sugar. You can add flavourings such as dill or crushed fennel seeds to the cure but I kept things really simple for the first trial. I measured out a half cup of salt and the same of sugar and this seemed to be enough to properly cover the salmon all the way around without there being too much left over. I placed the salmon in a dish and covered it with cling film and into the fridge.

The most confusing information I found was on how long to cure the fish for. This ranged from 1/2 hour right up to 2-3 days. I left the cure on the salmon for 1 1/2 hours and in hind-sight I could have left it on for 2 hours happily as the finished product was salted but not as salty as I like. After the cure was done I rinsed the fish under cold water, patted it dry with kitchen paper and placed it on a cooling rack in the fridge overnight. This, so the internet said, is to create a slightly sticky coating on the fish which helps the smoke stick to it.

The following morning I pulled out the Pro Q cold smoking tray we have. If you are interested in cold smoking food the £35 investment is very well worth it as we have used it countless times for other things, garlic and cheese being two of the most successful. I put a couple of bits of string through the thickest part of the fillet to hang the fish over the smoke, started the tray off and left it in our smoking bin for the day. Its a good time of year to be doing this as its still nice and cold all day which keeps the smoke and the fish cool. Once smoked for the day, I cut the string loops off and put the salmon into a freezer bag and into the fridge. This allows the fish to absorb the smoke flavours.

24 hours later and the fish was ready to eat and it really was delicious. Such a huge quantity of home smoked salmon was well worth the small amount of work and the 48 hours of leaving it alone to do its thing. It brings slow food into a real perspective when you can thinly slice your very own smoked salmon and have with poached eggs for a Sunday breakfast. So I encourage you to give it a go and join the slow food crew or maybe just try it as something for the weekend 😉

-Emily

With the winter weather providing a plentiful harvest of curly kale we needed something more to do with it than simply boiling it to mush. A couple of weeks ago a read an article in the Watirose Weekend magazine which mentioned  making a pesto with kale but it failed to give a recipe. So, I decided to experiment.

I am not normally a fan of pesto, as I can’t eat pine nuts (allergies!!) but this one used almonds. Now before we have anyone saying ‘that’s not very British’ you are right they are not British but they are also the only nuts I can eat and are a rather important component of pesto. You could easily substitute this with British walnuts or even fabulous Kentish cobnuts.

Anyway here goes…..

You will need:

• 5-6 large handfuls of curly kale, de-veined and roughly cut into pieces
• Rapeseed oil (Farringdons)- enough to allow you to form a mixture
• 2 cloves of garlic (Isle of Wight Garlic Farm)
• A small handful of almonds skin on (or the same amount of cobnuts/walnuts)
• 2 small handfuls of grated hard cheese (Sussex Charmer)
• 1/2 a lemon squeezed (if you fancy it)
• Sea Salt (Maldon)

Method:

Very simply, blend or even finely chop until all the ingredients are combined to a consistency you like. I personally prefer mine a little more chunky but Lucan is a fan of the finer blend. Once you are happy with the consistency, taste and adjust the seasoning. I found this needed a little more garlic than I thought (as kale is quite a pungent flavour) and also more lemon than I first thought.

Decant the mixture into clean jars and once almost full top with a small amount more oil. This will create an airtight seal and while your pesto won’t last forever, it will help it to last as long as possible.

I would highly recommend storing some for a week or two before opening as the flavours really do mature beautifully. Also don’t expect this to taste like pesto you are used to. While it is a pesto in its most general sense it is nothing vaguely reminiscent of that which you buy in the supermarket. It is a taste sensation all of its own and we have found a great green addition to lots of different dishes.

Enjoy 🙂

– Emily