Have you noticed how good, old-fashioned food is making a comeback? A ‘real food’ revolution began a few years back, when the recession refocussed families on cooking from scratch, rather than spending a fortune on expensive ready meals. Real food also gets the seal of approval from nutritionists who are rightly sceptical of low-fat, high sugar foods, and those with lots of ingredients most people would struggle to pronounce. As we increasingly worry what’s in processed foods, it can only be a good thing to keep things simple. Fresh ingredients, and less of them, means we know what we eat! But apart from money and health concerns, why are we making for ‘vintage classic’ recipes? The answer is: nostalgia! Flavours and aromas that remind us of granny’s kitchen offer a wonderful sense of comfort. What did your nan make when you were a kid? Steak & kidney pudding? Spotted dick? Can’t you just taste it even as you think back? Don’t you feel warm and cosy and safe casting your mind back to those times? If time pressure is the only thing keeping you from the wonderfully reassuring foods of yesteryear, then New Street Butchers has the answer. We are making old favourites like steak & kidney pudding, bacon puddings and faggots, by hand, using our own simple, family recipes (probably very similar to your gran’s). We even do the onion gravy to go with them! If you really want to step back in time, we also sell pig cheek, ox cheek and ox tail, cuts that are undergoing a bit of a ‘fashion’ moment right now. You can find simple recipes to cook these meats. Check out Nigel Slater’s books, as he’s a fan… He describes pigs cheeks as “plump, unctuous porcine cushions that fall apart on your fork”. He continues, “Cheeks are as good-natured a cut as you will find, calmly doing their own thing in a low oven, slowly edging their way towards tenderness. An occasional stir, a turn or two, that is all they need. Oh, and a lid, they must have a lid, to stop them drying out and the cooking liquor evaporating.” If you’re hankering for flavours from your past, come on by to New Street Butchers and let us take you back in...