How did you all get on with making your own pork pies? In this episode of all thing Brit food, resident CFLB food writer John Hunter hopefully makes it a bit easeir for us to cook-along with a good old British fry up.

Eggs over easy. Bran muffin, toasted. Bagel with cream cheese and lox. A skinny latte. They still sound so unfamiliar despite having been here for three years. They are, of course, classic breakfast orders here in the Big Apple. In the Old Country, things are a little slower and the orders, although we ask for similar things, come out a little different: ‘Alright Darlin. I’ll ‘ave 2 egg, 2 bacon, 2 sausage, beans, fried slice, cup o’ cha. Oh b*#@!cks, forgot me paper. I’ll be back in a min.’

I have a very patriotic French friend who swears there is no finer meal than a full English breakfast. He grew up in Normandy surrounded by astonishing seafood, produce and cheeses and yet he succumbed to the overwhelming power of the full truckerbs.’Eez juss soo good.’ He is also the most sensible and sane person I know. This is praise indeed coming from him.

There are some subtle differences in the way the breakfast is served depending on where you’re from or where you happen to be in the UK. The English version generally is a full-on affair, aka The Full Monty (bacon, sausage, egg, tomatoes, black pudding - a heady concoction of pig’s blood, meat, cereal and spices - baked beans, fried bread, even devilled kidneys and cheese sauce if you’re posh) and there are also some regional variants. The Irish is sometimes served with white pudding and boxty (an Irish potato pancake). Or it comes in the form of the traditional ‘Dublin fry’ which includes scalloped potatoes. A Scottish breakfast might include Lorne sausage, a square-shaped sausage patty (akin to the one you might find on an American breakfast bagel) and oatcakes. The Welsh brekkie might involve larverbread. There are countless variations. When visiting one’s local purveyor, if you attend religiously every weekend, they will know just how you have it. Crispy bacon? Sure. Extra runny eggs? No worries.

Popularity of the full British breakfast has waned recently, in a direct correlation with the messages from an increasingly paranoid Department of Health, who will not want to burden the cost of heart disease treatment in the future. Although it is still popular, it’s become more of a weekend ceremony these days. Generally the first meal of the weekend taken at around noon (or later it you’ve been enjoying yourself too much the night before). It’s most definitely the first thing I think of when I wake up on Saturday morning. That, and aspirin. It’s compulsory in the UK to go out and drink a lot of beer after finishing work on Friday, and naysayers to that rule are punished. The tradition is to rock up all messy at your local greasy spoon and let the lady with the tea lull you into a grease coma. All you have to do after that is lie down for 2 hours and you’re ready for anything the weekend chucks at you.

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We have been inundated with CFLB supporters offering to help, like John Hunter, a self-confesed food obsessive who loves cooking and writing about good old British grub. So here’s Johns first installment of his Great British Food blog. Enjoy.

For our American cousins who’ve never been fortunate enough to have one, I give you: The Great British Pork Pie.

I have such fond memories of cracking that golden-baked pastry crust and chomping down for those silky nuggets of perfumed pork. For me, it’s one thing that represents the best of English cooking. My mother used to buy them in family sizes, perfect for slicing thickly at home to pair up with beans and mustard, or wrapping in brown paper and taking along to a picnic or school for the best packed lunch ever. I was the envy of all the other kids who only had Mother’s Pride fish paste sarnies. Pork Pies, or ‘Growlers’ formed a popular part of my childhood diet, because I was hand-reared in the North of England, home to the World’s finest pork pies.

I live in Brooklyn, New York, a land blessed with some fine pies, albeit of the fruit variety. My hunger for pork pies and Cornish pasties went unabated until another Limey told me about the incredible Myers of Keswick, a Greenwich Village-based purveyor of all things British, and Peter & Irene Myers make their own pies and pasties on the premises. I am a regular visit at Myers, and I always make a short detour to the White Horse Tavern for a Newcastle Brown after a few of Myers’ handmade delicacies.

Hudson Street is a bit out of the way for this Brooklyn resident, and I decided it was time to get the apron on, and try building my own at home. I didn’t expect the bloody ingredients to cost $40, but I wanted to test myself and see what I could manage. I followed this recipe and look at the results…It was delicious. Meaty, crusty, very satisfying.