Penelope's Kitchen, MediaCity, Salford

It's about time Media City got some decent lunch options. If you work in the vicinity you might not want a dirty great burger every day of the week, but for the occasional treat or a Friday blow-out I'd recommend a visit to Penelope's Kitchen.

It's a new indoor offering from the same people that ran the Dock Grill out on the square over the summer months. I never ate there, but I assume they'll be back outdoors next year serving up a similar mix of breakfasts, burgers and dogs.

The burger (can't remember its name. The classic maybe?) was the best I've had in a long while. Two pleasingly beefy patties (from Frost's butcher's in Chorlton apparently) cooked medium, plastic cheese, grilled onions and sauce. Messy but lovely. Only the brioche bun didn't quite do it for me, it couldn't handle all the slop and goo and ended up flattened out like some sort of baggy hat.

Fries were an unexpected bonus, they weren't advertised and I didn't order them, so they're either included as standard or I got lucky. Whichever it was they were good, similar to those from a fast food chain whose name I won't mention, and I mean that as a compliment.

An absolute steal at £5.50, and still great value even if that shouldn't have included the fries. It's not often I get enthused about this sort of thing ('ooh look another filthy burger place, how novel' style cynicism tends to kick in), but I'll definitely be back here. Recommended.

8/10

The Pie Factory
101 Broadway
MediaCityUK
Salford
M50 2EQ

http://www.penelopesmcr.co.uk

@penelopesMCR

Meat free breakfast of champions

In homage to my favourite breakfast of 2012 I've experimented with several variations on the french toast and syrupy fruit theme. Today was the best of the lot: a seasonal special of french toasted hot cross buns and caramelised apples served with yoghurt.

It really was bloody lush, although probably closer to pudding than anything anyone might realistically call breakfast. With a few minor alterations and a dollop of cream you'd have hot cross bread and butter pudding.

No matter, after a working week of weetabix or granary toast Saturday breakfasts are the right time for a little luxury. I can't think of many better options than this that don't involve pork, and just once in a while it's time to give the pig a rest. Honest. I won't be having bacon sandwiches tomorrow. At all.

This recipe makes enough for two.

What you'll need

3 hot cross buns
3 eggs
2 apples
butter
oil
milk
sugar (caster or granulated and icing)
salt
greek yoghurt

What to do

Core the apples then slice them thinly. Put a small frying pan over a medium heat and add a knob of butter. Add the apples to the pan and fry them until golden brown, turning them as necessary.

While the apples are frying crack the eggs into a jug or bowl, add a generous splash of milk, a small grind of salt and a heaped teaspoon of sugar, then whisk up with a fork. Slice the hot cross buns in half.

Set a large frying pan over a high heat and add a splash of neutral cooking oil. Pour the egg mixture into a shallow bowl or deep plate, then dip the hot cross buns into the mixture. Leave them in there for thirty seconds or so to soak up some egg before turning and repeating with the other side.

Remove the cooked apples from the other pan, turn the heat down a bit then add two heaped dessertspoons of sugar (granulated or caster) and a generous splash of water. Give it a stir.

Add the eggy hot cross buns to the hot frying pan and fry until brown and lovely before turning and repeating on the other side. While the buns are frying keep stirring the syrup pan until the sugar has dissolved and a syrup has formed. You want it to be quite runny but not watery. Either turn up the heat to reduce or add more water to loosen as necessary.

When the buns are ready turn them out onto a piece of kitchen paper, then throw the apples back in the other pan and stir them round to coat in the syrup.

Plate up the buns then pour over the apples in syrup. Add a big dollop of thick greek yoghurt then dust over some icing sugar.

Eat immediately, accompanied by a caffeinated beverage (tea or coffee, not coca-cola). Revel in its deliciousness. Enjoy the sugar rush. Get up and do something energetic before it wears off. Or go back to sleep.

Northern Food on tour: New Year in London part 1

Mega-post alert. We spent three nights in London over the new year festivities, you might not be surprised to discover that eating was a very important part of the trip. By very important I mean that's mostly what we did, alongside the drinking of course.

I'll never get round to writing up each meal individually, so here's a warts and all round-up, good and bad, in mostly chronological order, of the whole lot.

To make things a little more manageable I've split the post into two, this first one covers the casual and the unplanned, the second post will be of the two slightly more upmarket places we ate at.

Ikea, Milton Keynes

You'll probably be aware that Scandinavian food is the hot ticket right now. The Nordic dining revolution has made the short voyage across the sea to our shores, and is making waves in London and the South-east. It's an intriguing mix, connecting food to culture with an almost palpable sense of place, ground-breaking in its sourcing and preparation of foraged ingredients, terroir on the plate in the most literal way.

What better way, we thought, than to introduce ourselves to this cuisine with a trip to a restaurant run by an organisation that's done more than any other to bring Scandinavian food to the people of Britain. So we went to Ikea in Milton Keynes for lunch. As you do.

I'm not quite sure how it came about, but it was something like this: no breakfast + bored on the M1 + traffic jam + discussion about meatballs + pouring rain making original outdoor plans unlikely = sod it let's go to Ikea for lunch.

The meatballs are an experience. Nice in a rubbery, filthy sort of way, but I'm not convinced by the weird milky gravy. And the lingonberry stuff is just crap jam. Crap jam with weird milky gravy isn't a great combination I don't think. Next time I might have my meatballs unadorned.

We had apple cake with vanilla sauce for pudding. I really enjoyed the cake, it was moist with good fat chunks of tart apple in. Scan-delicious! The sauce was rubbish again though. It had the taste and texture of Bird's custard after you've mixed the powder into the milk but before you've cooked it. Weird.

Would I go again? Yes, it's inevitable. Avoid the weird sauces. Cheap.

5/10

Bletcham Way
Milton Keynes
MK1 1QB

http://www.ikea.com/gb/en/store/milton_keynes


Baozi Inn Takeaway, Chinatown

Baozi Inn is a little Sichuan cafe in Chinatown, I've eaten there a couple of times but not for a few years. The good news is they've opened a little takeaway next door that sells nothing but skewers and buns.

The skewers (£1.00-£1.20 each) are boiled to order in a dirty great vat of spicy broth laced with salt, chilli and Sichuan pepper. The result is stonkingly good: tender morsels of meat or veg intensely flavoured from the broth. There are loads of varieties, I only got as far as lamb and enoki mushroom, both of which were great.

The buns (bao) are big fat steamed dough monsters stuffed with pork and onion, sturdy and filling for the harsh winters in Northern China (or to fill a 15 Ikea meatball sized space before a trip to theatre). Two quid each.

8/10

27 Newport Court
Chinatown
London
WC2H 7JS


Princi, Soho

Princi is the sort of place I wish existed elsewhere in the UK, but just doesn't. This sort of thing only seems to work with the critical mass of London.

It's a big bustling Italian bakery-cafeteria-bar-takeaway. You shove your way to a space at the counter, shout out your order from an impressive display of baked goods, pizza, filled focaccia, salads, pasta, meat dishes and god knows what else, collect your drinks from the bar then elbow your way to any vacant space on the communal tables. Not the place for peace and quiet, but for a lively drink or two accompanied by some quality snacks (or a three course dinner if you feel like it) it's an excellent choice.

Pasta pesto and mozzarella and tomato salad were both very good. Beautiful milky cheese, tomatoes with some semblance of taste (which will do for me at the end of December) and grassy, herbal pesto. The pizza was just ok though, I'm never a fan of the thick rectangles of pizza a taglio stuff, not even in Italy.

Given the central location prices are reasonable. We paid just over a tenner for the food and a bottle of water.

7/10

135 Wardour Street
Soho
London
W1F 0UT

http://www.princi.com/




Full Stop Cafe, Brick Lane

A pleasant coffee shop with a few comfy sofas. The coffee, when it eventually arrived after nigh on twenty minutes, was satisfyingly robust. Yes I know that quality coffee isn't made in an instant, but twenty minutes is still too long in a not very busy place.

Still, at least we got to amuse ourselves eavesdropping on the conversation at the neighbouring table during the wait. This being East London hipster central it was mostly about their unbridled talent going unrecognised, this being the fault of others, his issues with anger and hers with Tatiana, ya? The joy.

£2.70 for a flat white. A bit much but probably par for the course in these parts. And still cheaper than Costa so on second thoughts that's good value.

7/10

202 Brick Lane
London
E1 6SA


The Breakfast Club, Spitalfields

We only ended up at the Breakfast Club as our original brunch choice was closed over Christmas and New Year. It was good enough to entice us back on New Year's Day for a hangover cure before the journey home.

It was an infuriating place though, with the makings of excellence being let down by shoddy execution in parts. The coffee was just ok, too milky and not very well made.

The bacon sandwich was also a misfire, but I shan't bang on about it having already done so here.

But the cinnamon French toast with roasted apples and syrup was bloody lovely, so much so that I voted it my breakfast of the year (and shared a plateful the day after, making it a contender for the 2013 award too!).

The half monty breakfast continued the trend. Beautifully poached eggs of unusually high quality (dark yellow yolks that actually tasted of something) balanced out by everything else on the plate being mediocre.

Breakfast plates are priced from around six quid up to a tenner, fair enough, but drinks are a little pricey. Service is brisk and the atmosphere verging on raucous, busy with loud music. Depending on your level of delicacy this could be a good or bad thing.

7/10

12-16 Artillery Lane
Spitalfields
London
E1 7LS

http://www.thebreakfastclubcafes.com/

Bacon Sandwich Quest: The Reckoning

2012 is done and dusted. Dawn has broken (twice given my tardiness in getting this written) on a new year, the world is looking forward and not back. The time for reminiscence has passed, where the last few days brought reflection, teary-eyed montages in print and on screen, henceforward is a fresh start. A blank canvas, time for resolution.

But wait. A year in review cannot be complete until the year is out. Bacon sandwiches pay no heed to the march of time, to our arbitrary full stops and delineations. A quest for the finest sandwich in 2012 would not have been a proper quest and true until the final seconds of the final minute of the year expired. The possibility of more bacon is ever present.

And so, here it is. The final reckoning. I set out to record every bacon sandwich I ate during 2012, and have done exactly that. As I noted at the start, the humble bacon sandwich really is worth celebrating, and I hope that's what I've achieved. It's been emotional, at times depressing, at others hugely greasily satisfying, often dull, mostly futile and usually pointless, but we've reached the end of our porcine road together.

There are just December's sandwiches left to review, and then at long last the winner can be announced. If you're already getting distracted and drifting off in the direction of more fulfilling reading material, then I suggest you look away now. December was a four sandwich month. FOUR. That's almost one per week statistics nerds.

First up, and giving weight to the theory that large chains can't make bacon sandwiches properly is this effort from the Upper Crust at Wetherby services. Overpriced (£2.99), under-stuffed with over-smoked, over-salted, overly American style bacon. Just not very good at all.

Secondly, and proving that you can't really trust a greasy spoon either, is a weak offering from a caff in a shipping container on an industrial estate in Speke. That's just round the corner from Liverpool Airport in case you were wondering. The cheap and nasty bread would be excusable but the flabby bacon and the weird tasting brown sauce are not, especially not at over two quid.

There's nothing worse on a bacon sandwich than the intrusion of some sauce imposter that doesn't even taste like proper brown sauce. It doesn't have to be HP, Daddies is quite nice, and even some supermarket brands are ok, but whatever it is it categorically must not taste like barbecue sauce. I went to Australia once, and they kept trying to offer barbecue sauce in lieu of brown sauce on the grounds that 'it's the same thing mate'. It fucking well isn't it.

Now I've got that off my chest let's take a look at a good bacon sandwich. An excellent bacon sandwich in fact. Ever since the early days of my quest people have been telling me to get my bacon on at The Greedy Pig in Leeds. I've eaten breakfast there so know they're good, but had never had their bacon sarnie until a couple of weeks ago.

The Greedy Pig bacon and mushroom was splendid, a real contender for the title. A good quality roll with a bit of texture to it, not the super-soft variety but not quite in Scottish territory either, and fillings verging on magnificent. Thick cut bacon with a good layer of crisped fat, salty but not overly so, and oooh what mushrooms. It's rare to get anything other than button mushrooms in a bacon sanger, but these were fat slices of meaty field mushroom and took the sandwich up to the next level. Excellent work, £1.90 for bacon, 40p extra for mushrooms.

Finally.... New Year's Eve. Last chance saloon for Bacon Sandwich Quest. The Breakfast Club in Spitalfields, London. A bacon sandwich in a restaurant devoted to all things breakfast, in a big city increasingly devoted to all things food. Surely this would be another contender for the title?

In a word, no. It could have been a champion, all the ingredients were in place, the long hours on the training ground complete, due care and attention given to the minutiae of elite level bacon sandwich preparation until the last, only for it all to go wrong with fatally flawed execution on the day.

The retreat into the chasing pack was caused entirely by the singular failure to apply much heat to the bacon. As if it had been sweated in the bottom of a damp oven, each of the four rashers (yes, four!) of good quality pig were rendered a damp squib. What a shame. £5 with a good coffee or freshly squeezed juice.

And that is that. Twenty-eight bacon sandwiches and we can have only one winner. You could cut the tension with an HP-smeared knife round here I tell you, so I shall keep you waiting no longer.

The winner of Bacon Sandwich Quest 2012 is.....

The Greedy Pig, Leeds

The judges (that's me by the way) praised the quality of ingredients used, the faultless execution, the great value and the rare attention to detail on display in the bacon sandwiches at the Pig. The decision was unanimous and the lovely people at the Greedy Pig are worthy winners of the inaugural (and final) Bacon Sandwich Quest.*

For those of you with an unwavering commitment to Bacon Sandwich Quest here is a link to each of the monthly posts followed by a photo montage of bacon-y goodness and last but least, the final leaderboard.

Introduction
January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November

*Note to editors: I am available for public speaking about bacon or other topics at weddings, funerals, christenings and bar mitzvahs. I will write for money. All text herein is © Northern Food 2012-13 and cannot be reproduced without my permission. No animals were harmed in the production of Bacon Sandwich Quest (except for pigs). I will accept free bacon subject to terms and conditions.

Good things to eat [Volume 14]: in praise of weekend breakfast

Is there a finer meal than a weekend breakfast?

Eating on a working morning is a perfunctory matter, little more than essential fuel intake for the day ahead. For me, in winter, that means microwaved porridge or occasionally toast, and in summer muesli or granola with a blob of yoghurt. These are not unpleasant things, but taken in haste, at a desk or on the hoof, eating them will never be a pleasurable experience.

I wish it wasn't so, but that's part of what makes breakfast on rest days so wonderful. They are special, the exception not the norm. I'm not talking about dining out for breakfast here, that's an entirely (although almost as fantastic) different thing, I mean breakfast at home, prepared in your own kitchen, ideally with the radio on and a pot of tea brewing. The opportunity to take time, to give it some thought, to make something lovely at leisure and then eat it on the sofa, in the garden, or best of all, in bed.

What are your favourite weekend breakfasts? I was aiming to write a top ten of mine, but I was struggling to keep the numbers down so here are twenty.

1. Stewed butterbeans with tomatoes and chives. Served with fried eggs and pitta for scooping.

2. You won't get one of these in Maccy D's. Black pudding and egg muffin. Cook your egg in a biscuit cutter for that authentic 'processed fast food joint' look!

3. Fried chorizo with tomatoes on sourdough toast with fried eggs. Make sure you get lots of crispy edges on your chorizo, then fry the eggs in the red fat that's leached from the sausage.

4. I'm not averse to a sugary breakfast for a change to all the porkiness. How about pancakes stuffed with greek yoghurt, banana, honey and toasted walnuts?

5. Anything shakshuka style always goes down a treat. A big pan fry of tomatoes, eggs and whatever tickles your fancy. In this case beans, chilli and coriander.

6. Staffordshire oatcakes are excellent breakfast fodder. Nuttier, earthier pancakes filled with bacon (or spam), mushrooms and cheese. Just the job to set you up for a twelve hour shift firing pots... or a long walk... or a day in the pub.

7. Reckon you need to squeeze all the liquid and starch out of potatoes before making rosti? Not necessary, just grate the potato directly into a good glug of very hot oil in a frying pan, then press it into a cake with a metal spatula. It will splutter and hiss, but the heat will quickly drive off the excess moisture and you can fry away happily. Good with any savoury breakfast things, in this case egg and pudding.

8. Holiday breakfast, or hot British summer breakfast (ha ha). Croissants, fresh fruit, sunshine.

9. This one is here to represent anything with Nutella in it. I don't care if it's basically chocolate flavoured vegetable oil, it's utterly delicious. Eat on pancakes or croissants or crusty bread or soft bread or crumpets or muffins or toast or porridge or yoghurt or anything at all.

10. Bacon sandwich. Have I mentioned bacon sandwiches before? They are quite nice.

11. A middle eastern themed plate of scrambled eggs, tomatoes, yoghurt, pickled chillies and parsley. Needs flat bread for scooping. Fresh, lively and surprisingly good for a hangover.

12. The communal Daddy-fry. Lots of people and a massive pan and all the pork products = a very good idea.

13. Holidays or warm weather again. This time with added jam, yoghurt, juice and coffee. Bliss.

14. Early autumn fruits lend a different taste to the pancake and yoghurt combo. Fried apples and plums.

15. Bubble and squeak with the works. Leftover mash with pretty much any green vegetable (except lettuce, don't try it with lettuce) makes a good bubble. Always finish with a knob of butter for that burnished crust.

16. An acquired taste, but once you've acquired it you'll never lose it. Soft boiled eggs with anchovy toast. Mash a couple of anchovies into a large knob of butter then spread it on hot granary toast. Dip into your eggs. Heaven.

17. A dirty great sausage muffin with ketchup. I like to split the sausages just as they're served so the juices run into the muffin.

18. Plums often undergo a magical transformation when you cook them. Boring, mealy-fleshed eaters can be turned into tart, crimson-juiced wonders with a little heat and sugar. Serve simply with thick yoghurt.

19. The carbo-licious hangover cure. Sometimes bread alone is not enough. Which is when a cheesy scrambled egg, potato waffle, bacon, mushroom and tomato sandwich comes into play.

20. Plain old eggy bread with ketchup. Sometimes the simplest breakfasts are the best.

Bacon Sandwich Quest: November

At last! An almost interesting month on BSQ. Things are belatedly hotting up in the breakfast sandwich world, if not exactly in terms of quality then at least in variety. It's been a three sandwich sort of a month, each of them unique in their own funny little ways.

First up: the Costa bacon muffin. Three quid's worth of wrong, fresh from its superheated blast in the sandwich press. The waves of warmth radiating from the thing were actually the best bit, defrosting my hands on a chilly morning. The texture of the muffin wasn't unpleasant and HP sauce was available. Apart from that it was crap. The bacon was too smokey, bordering on artificially so, and  one and a half rashers is taking the piss.

It's chain central this month, the second offering being from Gregg's. Quite a pretty looking sandwich don't you think, with its bronzed, cornmeal dusted bap. A very reasonable two quid with a cup of tea. Let's open her up and take a look inside.....

....what the very hell is this? SAUSAGES? I didn't ask for them, honest, but they were better than I'd have imagined. Not half as dirty as they could have been, so I had to give this five out of five for accompaniments, as free sausages are not to be sniffed at even when they are smeared in cheap sunflower spread.

Surprisingly good bread and bacon that tasted alright despite the wizened like an aged flip flop look of it completed the picture. Go Gregg's.

I almost had a third chain butty last month. Almost. There I was, in hurried need of sustenance prior to a meeting in Birmingham. Caffe Nero was there. They're not too bad I thought. Better than those other chain coffee bastards I thought. Can't be worse than the Costa bacon effort I thought.

And then I saw this. The bacon roll, not the disgusting sounding festive panini thing. Same sort of refrigerated cellophane wrapped effort you find at the other places, but pre-loaded with the wrong sauce. The WRONG SAUCE. Who are you to tell me I must have tomato sauce on my bacon sandwich Caffe Nero? Hmmm? You guys are in charge of condiment decisions are you? Not on my watch.

So I went down the road and got this for 99p instead. There's a baguette price war going on in the vicinity of Birmingham New Street station, I counted three different places selling pretty much anything you'd care for in long sandwich form for a quid.

The bread and bacon weren't half bad for the price, and the whole thing was enormous. Too salty though and let down by copious quantities of astringent budget brown sauce. All in all 99p baguettes are about the only redeeming feature of the dystopian bunker that is Birmingham New Street. Not sure you'd want to make a special trip though.

There we have it. I've brought you chain catastrophes, free sausages and scarily cheap French themed breakfast comestibles. What more could you want?

In December I'd like to eat a truly great bacon sarnie that I didn't make myself. Please Santa I've been a very good boy.

Here's the leaderboard:

The Riverside Café, Hillsborough, Sheffield

I hadn't eaten a dirty great fry-up in ages, so was really hoping the Riverside might be a successful source of breakfast joy.

It's a popular café, and an attractive one too, with a clean, bright feel you don't often get in a £3.50 breakfast establishment. I wasn't expecting the finest quality ingredients but I was anticipating a well executed full English.

It didn't really stack up in the end which was a shame. They cocked up the order, his and hers customised breakfasts should have been one with hash browns and scrambled eggs, the other with black pudding and a fried egg. The extras arrived arse about tit, and they forgot to put the beans on one of them. No beans!

Bacon, tomatoes and mushrooms were all ok but rubbery eggs and damp toast really let the side down. The black pudding tasted of soggy regret. Sausages were of the scrapings tube variety, but that's not a criticism as that's what I expected. Being a tad hungover I quite enjoyed them.

On a more positive note passable freshly brewed coffee at £1.20 was a bargain and they had some good looking cakes and pies. I'll give them another try at some point for these.


5/10

80 Catchbar Lane
Hillsborough
Sheffield
S6 1TA

Bacon Sandwich Quest: October

The end is nigh. We've reached the final quarter of our journey together. We've experienced highs and lows, mostly the latter... I'll shut up before I go any further with this or I'll have nothing left to write come BSQ eulogy time in a couple of months.

Guess what? October wasn't particularly thrilling. 'Twas a two sandwich (actually three, but I got carried away and wrote about one of them last month) month, one steady but slightly disappointing and one offering up an unsettling bread related curveball.

Slightly disappointing was this effort from the Whirlow Hall Farm stall at the Sharrow Vale market. Whirlow Hall Farm are a charitable trust doing great work so I'd rather not be too harsh about their sarnie, but it was a bit pants. Very small, unevenly cooked bacon, not much of it, no brown sauce available. £2.50. The bacon itself was good quality though, so I'll just recommend that you go and buy some and leave it at that.

BROWN BREAD BACON SANDWICH KLAXON. This is wrong surely? Not just any old brown bread but full on thick sliced granary. This comes courtesy of the nice chaps at Mrs Atha's in Leeds, who will serve you excellent coffee. I think you need to rein in some of your wilder ideas a bit though lads. Granary/bacon is not the way to attract a regular buttie clientele. There's a time and a place for experimentation and the working person's breakfast is not it.

Having said all that I quite liked it, but the quantity of bacon therein was rather meagre relative to the bread. Brown sauce and good service were in plentiful supply. £3.

Due to unforeseen circumstances I can't bring you the leaderboard (I mean unforeseen in a kind of 'problems on the railways' sort of a way, as in 'entirely foreseeable') this month. It's safely stored on my personal laptop which is at home in Sheffield, whereas I'm in a hotel room in Scotland. Oops. I'll update the post on my return, in the meantime you can rest assured that neither of these two is going to trouble the frontrunners.

Not long to go. Keep the faith.

Edit: here's that leaderboard you've all been waiting for.