You know hot cross buns right? Those sweet chewy bread buns usually studded with dried fruit that you toast and slap on equal quantities of butter? Over the past couple of years M&S have had Marmite hot cross buns on sale at Easter time and they are TERRIFIC.
Scouring the shelves in 2024 and while their hot cross buns are out (and apparently available all year round) I can’t find them. One Tweet tells me it’s not clear if they’ll be around…
Hi Gary – Watch this space, noting has been announced yet – fingers are crossed we are 🤞- Thanks Clare 🙂
I’m distraught enough I have to make my own version.
You will be making a fairly sticky dough here – hot cross buns are usually tender so the dough will be quite soft. I like these Marmite hot cross buns toasted, then spread with butter while they’re still warm. But you could go crazy and add more Marmite.
Love it or hate it, here's a savoury treat to be enjoyed any time.
Course Snack
Cuisine English
Prep Time 20 minutesminutes
Cook Time 20 minutesminutes
proving 1 hourhour30 minutesminutes
Total Time 2 hourshours10 minutesminutes
Servings 12buns
Author Gary @ BigSpud
Ingredients
300mlwhole milk
50gunsalted butter
3teaspoonsMarmiterounded
500gplain flour
1large free-range egg
½teaspoonwhite pepper
½teaspoonsalt
100gmature cheddargrated
100gred leicestergrated
For the piped cross
75gplain flour
Instructions
Put the butter and Marmite into a bowl and microwave for 1 min to melt together. Stir together and allow to cool while you do everything else.
Mix the flour and yeast together in a bowl. Pour in the cooled butter mixture, milk, egg, pepper, and salt. Knead by hand for 5 minutes to form a smooth, sticky dough.
Put into a lightly oiled bowl and cover with a damp tea towel. Leave in the warm place for 1 hour to prove.
Mix the cheeses into the dough and fold until combined. Slice into 12 equal-sized buns. Shape each piece of dough into a neat ball and pop on a oiled baking tray. Space them out as they will grow, but authentically they will join at the edges like a batch. Cover with the damp tea towel and prove for another 30 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 200°C.
Mix together the flour with a little water to create a thick paste. Put in a piping bag and pipe a cross onto your buns.
Bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes, until risen and golden.
Cool on a rack before devouring like an animal, adding butter as needed.
Video
Notes
This dough is fairly tacky. A metal or plastic bench scraper can be a lifesaver to help get your dough to cooperate, eg https://amzn.to/49MkELC
Never work with children or animals… or do loads of things for the first time at the same time. Like I did recently, by (1) cooking sea bass (2) using someone else’s hotplate (3) going live on YouTube. These are the things that went through my head as I pushed the ‘go live’ button and streamed my first ever cooking of sea bass on panzanella salad.
Watch it back for yourself here:
I based this on a dish I’d had at the Blacksmiths on the Isle of Wight. It was a terrific fish dish with a loose nod to panzanella, the Tuscan bread salad designed to use up leftovers. Instead of leftovers ingredients went in fresh and headed in vaguely the same direction. Instead of stewing overnight tomatoes and onion were briefly cooked before being tossed with olives and capers. The fish served on a crouton of french bread finished it off.
The sea bass dish as they serve it at the Blacksmiths pub
Sea bass has a mild flavour, which means it can work well with a lot of different spices and seasonings. Plus, it’s got a really delicate texture that melts in your mouth. This makes it a great pairing for sharp, sweet and salty panzanella.
I was super pleased with how it came out and I’ll definitely be making it again. Possibly not livestreaming it next time though!
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balsamic vinegar and extra virgin olive oilto garnish
Instructions
Get a frying pan over a medium heat. While it heats, halve the cherry tomatoes and finely slice your onion.
Add a splash of oil to your pan and gently fry the tomatoes and onion just to soften slightly. They only need 5 minutes max. Remove to a bowl and stir in olives and capers.
Season the fish all over. Slice lightly across the skin 2 or 3 times - this will prevent it curling up. Add the sea bass skin side down to the pan and hold with the back of a fish slice or your fingers to convince it to lie flat. After 3 minutes deftly flick the sea bass on to the flesh side and cook for 1 more minute. Transfer to a board or plate to rest while you toast the bread.
Put your slices of bread in the pan and cook for 1 - 2 minutes per side to toast.
To serve, arrange your tomato mix on a plate and top with the toasts. Place the fish on top and drizzle over balsamic glaze (or really good quality balsamic vinegar) and extra virgin olive oil. Serve immediately.
Video
Notes
This can be bulked up with a little more veg in the salad; peppers and courgettes would be nice. Additionally consider serving with skinny fries to get an odd take on fish 'n' chips. A little rocket would also be really nice.
There’s food that makes the generation above me turn misty-eyed: liver and onions, jam roly-poly, pickled eggs… Bread and dripping is another. That is, a slice of bread smeared with a slick of grease rendered from the Sunday roast and rescued cold from the pan. Creamy white fat speckled with pepper on soft bread… I don’t share that same nostalgia, but I can see what they’re getting at.
That’s what was at the heart of this recipe, itself inspired by a dinner hosted by M&S in celebration of British beef. M&S have worked with some of the same suppliers for over 50 years and felt it worth celebrating. That relationship is good for the meat: every joint can be traced back to a farm and an animal, something rare on the high street. One family of suppliers, the Bells of East Fife, have a herd of 300 cattle grazing for nine months of the year on their 2,000 acre farm. From November onwards the cows head indoors for the Winter. For M&S working with the same organisations that involve the same farmers keeps quality high.
Here’s a video describing the event and more of the thinking behind it:
In an exposed brick hall in South London (I’m told it was where they film Dragon’s Den) M&S hosted an excellent dinner. With real turf on every table and backdrops of wandering Angus cattle the outside came in.
Over eight courses beef was explored in astonishing ways. Chefs Jon Jones (top BigSpud fact: my method of cooking potato dauphinoise is based on the version I was taught by Jon Jones when he was at the Waitrose Cookery School!) and Merlin Labron-Johnson had composed a stunning menu examining just how versatile such an ubiquitous ingredient can be. From a crisp ball of oxtail, to a tartare dotted with grilled baby onions, from charred cabbage scattered with grated ox heart, to a dessert of shortbread made with beef, the produce was centre-stage. Each course was exceptional, paired in turn with some superb wine choices. The quality of the beef shone through.
the menu
crispy oxtail
dripping bread
beef tartare
charred cabbage
rump cap
milk and grass
shortbread and blackcurrant
beef washed whisky
1 / 9
Of all these amazing dishes, it was the innocent-sounding bread course that stuck with me. “Dripping bread, horseradish butter” was the description. Bread and dripping, in the form of a roll. Chef Jones described it as “like a pain au raisin.” As you tore open the spiral roll, the glittering fat sparkled at you. Each bite of the pillowy bread left an aftertaste of intense beefiness like you’d just drunk a shot of gravy. Paired with a mustardy horseradish butter, I would’ve forsaken all the other excellent courses for eight servings of this. It was that good.
Hence me having a go myself. They used a sourdough as a starting point but I don’t have any to hand so I took a standard white bread roll recipe. Then I thought of a laminated bread like a croissant, with the chunks of fat and folding to build up the layers. Instead of butter I used dripping. I scoffed some pretty much straight out of the oven and thought I got pretty close to what we had on the night. With every bite it tastes like you’ve just eaten roast beef. I’m pretty sure it’ll become a regular side dish in my kitchen. Now I want to try it with other fats, such as lard or duck fat…
An indulgent snack. Great for lunch or as a side to a meaty stew.
Course Side Dish
Cuisine English
Prep Time 15 minutesminutes
Cook Time 20 minutesminutes
Total Time 2 hourshours5 minutesminutes
Servings 8rolls
Author Gary @ BigSpud
Ingredients
300gstrong bread flour
5ginstant yeast
1teaspoonsugar
1teaspoonsalt
100gcold beef drippinggrated or thinly sliced
1eggbeaten
Instructions
Combine the flour, salt, sugar and yeast in a bowl. Add enough tepid water to form into a dough. You'll need around 200ml. When fully incorporated knead on a surface for ten minutes until the dough is pliable and smooth. Cover with clingfilm to rise for an hour.
Once proved, knock back the dough and roll out into a wide rectangle. Scatter over half the dripping and fold over twice, then roll out into a rectangle again. Add the remaining dripping and roll lengthways. Slice into 2cm widths and move to a baking tray with a lip (to catch any leaking fat). Allow to prove for 30 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 180C. Brush the rolls with egg wash. Bake the rolls for 20 minutes or until golden, cool on a wire rack and eat with butter. The rolls will keep for a day or so in a container, but you just have to eat them warm.
Video
Notes
A fun alternative to plain rolls that are just as simple to make. Go great with soup.
I love lamb. A quick count says I have 37 recipes on here alone tagged with lamb. When a very good friend was coming over around their birthday I asked them what they’d like for dinner: they said lamb. Another friend of mine won a burger competition with a cracking lamb patty. When Easter rolls around, as a nation we like nothing better than making sure there’s a leg of lamb on the table. At the other end of the spectrum, a boozy night out often ends with a pile of shredded lamb doner.
But perhaps surprisingly, this isn’t the case for our American cousins. Lamb is a mystery meat for them, eyed suspiciously as a greasy, grey mess. In 2014 the American ambassador couldn’t take it any more lamb. This isn’t personal to Mr. Barzun however, the American consumption of lamb is a puny 0.4kg per capita (in other words, each US citizen eats just 400g of lamb per year). In Europe it’s 1.9kg but in the UK we eat 4.7kg per person per year – a pretty staggering amount. We pale next to the mighty Greeks though, who chow down three times that amount!
Source: OECD (2016), Meat consumption (indicator). doi: 10.1787/fa290fd0-en (Accessed on 20 May 2016)
So it shouldn’t come as any surprise that this lamb recipe has it’s roots firmly in Greek culture. If there’s any nation that knows what to do with a sheep, it’s Greece.
This is very simple. Marinate some lamb in herbs and spices, then char on the outside. You can do it on a griddle pan or the BBQ. I’ve also tossed in some super-quick flatbreads here: a tip of the hat to my old chum James for the idea of adding cumin seeds which are just genius. If you’ve never made your own flatbreads then give them a try – they require so little skill and can also be cooked on a BBQ if you feel like it. Served with Greek style accompaniments this is a dead easy midweek dinner. Maybe we can show the Americans what they’re missing?
Make the marinade for the lamb: mix the garlic, rosemary, oregano, chilli flakes with enough olive oil to make a paste. Season with salt and pepper and rub all over the lamb. Cover and refrigerate until needed.
For the flatbreads mix all the ingredients together with enough cold water to make a soft, springy dough. Cover to rest while you get on with everything else.
Preheat a grill or griddle pan to a medium heat and cook the lamb steaks on each side a total of 10 - 12 minutes until cooked to your liking. They will also need to rest for 5 minutes on a plate before serving.
Meanwhile, slice the cucumber and scoop out the seeds with a spoon. Combine all the salad ingredients into a bowl and allow to marinate until serving.
For the flatbreads divide into two pieces and dry fry in a very hot pan until bubbling on one side, and then flip (this will take 2 - 3 minutes). Cook until browned.
Serve the lamb sliced with the flatbreads, strain the excess vinegar off the salad and serve on the side. Crumble some feta over the lamb. It's also pretty good with lettuce, tomatoes and houmous.
