[RECIPE] Peanut Butter and Bacon French Toast Sandwich
Because every week is sandwich week, really.
This recipe works best with some nicely staled challah - we get ours from Costco. Don’t make any plans to do anything for at least a few hours afterwards.
Serves 2-3
Ingredients
- 3 eggs
- ground cinnamon
- 300ml of whole milk
- 50ml of double cream
- Skippy Smooth peanut butter
- 6-8 rashers of smoked streaky bacon
- 1tbsp of vanilla extract
- at least half a stick of unsalted butter to hand at room temperature
- icing sugar
- blueberries
- maple syrup
- 2/3 stale challah rolls (or other white bread)
Method
Preheat the oven and throw the bacon in on a baking tray.
Beat the eggs, milk and cream together lightly. Add in a good dash of cinnamon and the vanilla extract.
Pour the mixture in to a flat bottomed dish.
Halve your rolls and submerge them into the dish for a minute, flip and then do the other side too. Try to get as good a covering as you can so the mixture has really soaked in.
Melt a healthy knob of butter in your favourite pan.
Batch fry the toast, making sure the pan doesn’t get too hot and brown the butter too much. 2-3 minutes per side should do it but you can flip pretty regularly. Keep going until they’re a pleasing golden brown.
Once the toast is cooked, let them cool a little and then add a healthy dollop of peanut butter. Smooth works best with this recipe since it’ll melt quickly and is easier to spread without ruining the finish of your toast.
The bacon should nicely crisp by this stage - wipe off any excess grease with some kitchen towel, snap them in two and put them on top of one half.
Apply the top half, add a liberal dose of maple syrup, a cursory handful of blueberries on the side and sieve a layer of icing sugar on top.
Cancel your plans for the rest of the day.
- Simon.
[PREVIEW] The Fred Smith x Byron Chilli Queen Cheeseburger / Byron, London
Twenty two fricking venues. Twenty two.
That’s what Byron is up to now. If anyone ever had any doubt that this whole new wave burger thing wasn’t mainstream, then try to figure out how many covers they must be doing every weekend. Mindblowing.
Our general thoughts on Byron are already encapsulated in a review of their previous special from last year, the Uncle Sam, and haven’t really changed, so we won’t keep you.
What’s great about the Chilli Queen though is the involvement of Fred Smith of the Admiral Codrington, who is fast becoming a local hero. He neatly pirouettes around our nitpicks with the standard Byron experience: the bun is proper, the cheese is American and the sauce is plentiful.
In fact the chipotle mayo is wondrous - it doesn’t turn runny when cosied up to a hot patty and the raw chilli crunch delivers a pleasing uniform heat.
If Byron is Justin Bieber, then Fred is its smooth talking Ludacris.
This is a great way of more people getting a taste of what Fred’s up to, and that is most definitely a Very Good Thing.
Get it while you can. From today until that Queen holiday thing next month, at all the Byrons.
- Simon & Rob.
[PREVIEW] MEATmarket / Covent Garden, London
MEATMarket, the latest offering from MEATrepeneurs Yianni and Scott, is a fast-food version of their one-stop-burger-shoppe model, hosting some old MEATfavourites as well as spanking new incarnations of classic American-style fast food.
If you’re at all interested in the movements of the Meat[_____] crew then you’ve probably already seen a few reports on this new site in Covent Garden that was previewing last weekend. So, to cut to the chase, here’s our take on it.
If you plonked Gott’s Roadside in a locale like DownUnder in Seattle’s Pike Place Market, we reckon this is what you’d get.
It’s the counterpoint to MEATliquor: the menu is optimised for speed and takeaway convenience. Yianni gave us a quick tour of the kitchen, explaining how it’s been organised so each dish has its own cooking station which will keep wait times to a minimum and make it a real option to the Covent Garden lunchtime crowd, as well as the post-theatre folks who don’t have anywhere to go.
The burgers are the quicker cooking dual patty versions with a few new additions. The Black Palace isn’t really a White Castle slider, more a version 2.0 of the Ibzo burger that was briefly available during the Meatwagon era eighteen months ago. How time flies.
The jalapeño poppers are a proper must-have, just like the deep fried pickles are at MEATliquor. Perfect heat.
The deep fried bacon covered Ripper Hot Dog was the surprise star of the evening.
The velocity of these guys is incredible. #MEATeasy only just closed down thirteen months ago and these guys don’t show any signs of slowing down.
Yianni is getting to indulge his love of Wendy’s and A&W with this one. We love it too. It’s a proper fast food joint with a shiny, new kitchen.
The strip lit market location makes it immediately different. And if we’re honest, underneath those lights, the burgers are more functional than aesthetically pleasing. Our suggestion? Wrap them up. Have some tongue-in-cheek fun with the packaging.
Jubilee Market is one of those especially grotty bits of Covent Garden. You’ll sit on a balcony above it, looking down upon a sea of tourist tat and Microsoft Word signage. It’s quite the juxtaposition and we can only hope tourists do stumble upstairs by accident.
It’s going to be another rip-roaring success, and it might just be the first step to making this corner of Covent Garden something to be proud of.
- Simon & Rob.
Pretzel Buns and Reuben Burgers from the B/A test kitchen.
Recipe to follow once it’s been perfected.
[REVIEW] Pancakes, pancakes, pancakes / Bubby’s / Tribeca, New York
It’s important to toil against the impending jetlag and the most efficient way of doing that is mainlining buttermilk pancakes and bottomless cups of diner coffee.
On a recommendation from the lovely Gizzi Erskine on the Twitters, we wandered over for a full buttermilk assault.
It’s easy to forget just how ruddy fat they are. I’m getting to the stage where I’m quite proud of my own-recipe batter that gets made on weekends, but being confronted with a stack like this slaps me right back into place. These make mine look like Pancakes Jr.
Great texture, superb uniformity to the edge and the sautéed bananas were wicked sweet. Only complaints would be the sour cream doesn’t really bring much to the table and that we were wholly unable to finish them.
It’s also up the street from the Ghostbusters fire station, so overall, essential.
We want to come back for the scrapple, but realistically we’ll be there after midnight for some of that pie.
- Simon.
