Part of the Full English philosophy is to experiment with in-house production of as many ingredients and products as possible. Over the coming weeks we are going to master butter, bacon and bread as our staples but the aim is avoid buying in anything that we can possibly produce after taking into account lack of time, space and indeed knowledge.
I never want to see tired, bought in cakes and pastries when our own chelsea buns and rock cakes are so simple to produce and ten times better.
It’s unlikely that all of our butter for cooking will be home produced, but given that it takes all of 5 minutes to make a thick, creamy, fresh and unpasteurized (when we want to) version far superior to that off the shelf, then I see no reason why all of our table butter and all butter in our mashed potatoes can’t be produced in-house. The results are definitely worth it and it gives us the chance to play around with cream from different independent dairies. We might not go as far as a ‘butter menu’, but it could be fun to have on the black board ‘this week’s butter made with Hinxden Farm Dairy cream’.
Of course, butter production gives us a plentiful supply of fresh butter milk – brilliant for making our breakfast muffins and scones!
Putting our first bacon cure to good use with a play on Petit Sale using haricot beans instead of lentils
But when it comes to bacon, given our dedication to the breakfast genre, we are obsessive about every last detail of this porcine delicacy. So far we have dry cured bellies from Frank Godfrey and The Ginger Pig with varying results and the search continues for the perfect cure so that our ‘house bacon’ will be really special. I’m as yet undecided if we will invest in a smoker from day one so we may have to rely on our regular and one-off guest bacons to fulfill that role, but either way, ordering bacon at Full English should give you one of the finest and widest range of choices in the capital.
