“I think the nose-to-tail movement opens a pathway for people to cook responsibly and sustainably.” Today, Bon Appétit spends a day on the line with Chef Chris Leach, co-founder of Manteca, London’s hottest Italian restaurant. Manteca focuses on whole-animal butchery, making sure that no part of the animal goes to waste.
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00:00I think the Nose2Tell movement opens a pathway for people to cook responsibly and sustainably.
00:08We opened Manturka in Shoreditch in London.
00:12As a chef and co-founder, I work with the senior team in more of a support role and
00:17help drive the restaurant more creatively.
00:20The plan was to always use whole animals.
00:23It gives us better control over sourcing, gives us the best quality and price that we
00:28can then pass back on to the customer.
00:30We make everything from our creme fraiche to our pasta, our whole animal butchery and
00:37all of the salumi.
00:39If we're talking about 100 years ago, Nose2Tell was the only way of eating.
00:44Hi, I'm Chris Leach, the chef and co-founder of Manturka.
00:52We're here in Shoreditch.
00:53We've got a busy day ahead of us, so we're going to get started.
00:59It's about 8am now.
01:01We're going to catch up with Jake and just go through today's menu.
01:05How are we looking?
01:06Quite a few big tables in.
01:08Tonight is looking as it always is.
01:11Nice.
01:12But it's looking good.
01:13We've got a whole pig that came today.
01:15We're going to break that down now.
01:18We've got this pig in this morning.
01:21It'll last us a couple of days.
01:23We'll go through about two and a half whole pigs a week.
01:27For ease of delivery for the drivers, we get this cut into six parts.
01:32We're going to go and break down this pig upstairs.
01:35We'll start this for the rest of the day.
01:43This is our whole Jurok Saddleback cross.
01:47We buy direct from farms or butchers we have very close relationships with.
01:52We know everything we need to know about the animal.
01:55I'm going to break down the shoulder and the butchery team are going to break down the
01:58rest of the animal now.
02:00We will take the copper muscle, which is a collection of muscles that will lead into
02:05the loin, which we'll cure downstairs.
02:07We'll salt that for three weeks.
02:10So we just saw straight through here, then cut down.
02:15So cut off the top.
02:18That will go to be braised with the head.
02:21We will begin by removing the pork skin.
02:25So when I'm taking off the skin, I'm trying to just take it off in one big piece without
02:29cutting into the flesh.
02:32And then some of it we will dry out in a dehydrator that we will serve with a ragout, which we'll
02:38make from the rest of the cooked pig skin.
02:42When you buy whole animals, it's very easy to serve chops and pork bellies and nice easy
02:50cuts like that.
02:51What you also are left with is a lot of skin, a lot of fat, and a lot of other connective
02:56tissues that aren't as easy to make use out of.
03:00Landing on the pig skin ragout as a dish to use up the skin was something that was, I
03:04think it really defined what we do as a restaurant, which is using every part that we can.
03:11Now when I'm going to separate the shoulder blade and the copper muscle, finding the natural
03:15seams, you can do most of it with your fingers and then using the knife just to break away
03:19any connective tissue.
03:21You stay in as close to the bone as you can.
03:23And the way we cure our copper muscle is to leave a nice big chunk of fat on, which is
03:30just at the end here.
03:32The fat cures very nicely and it gives the particular cut a really nice mix of textures.
03:39When it comes to salumi, you want a good mix of fat and lean, but you do always have
03:44to be a little bit careful when having too much fat because you can get higher levels
03:48of rancidity.
03:50The copper muscle, it cures very evenly.
03:53It's off the bone.
03:54We stuff it inside a beef bung, which is part of the cow's intestine.
03:59It protects it as it's curing.
04:00Generally about three months it takes for it to be on the menu.
04:03And then once it's off the bone, we will salt it to around 2.7% of salt to the weight
04:13of muscle.
04:15So in this case it's 3,507 grams, that's our target weight.
04:21And then I'm going to weigh out each of these 96 grams of pure sea salt.
04:27The more accurate we are with our spicing, the more consistent the recipe is.
04:31So this is ground nutmeg.
04:33They work really well with the pork.
04:35Same amount of ground bay leaf, freshly ground black pepper to this as well.
04:38I'm just going to put the cure all over.
04:42We're going to rub it all in and then we're going to vacuum seal it in the cure.
04:47When you're buying a whole pig, you would really want to be looking for a good amount
04:52of fat coverage.
04:53The more fat, the better for curing.
04:55So now we're going to take this down and vacuum seal it so it can go to be cured for the next
04:59few weeks.
05:03So it's 9.30 now.
05:04We're going to do a team briefing, go through the menu for the day, deciding what pastas
05:09are going to be on, looking at stock counts from the day before, making sure everybody
05:13knows what they're going to be prepping for the day.
05:16Because we work with whole animals, we make a lot of different slow cooks and ragus, which
05:21will ultimately change day by day.
05:26Briefing please.
05:27Okay, let's do this.
05:31So we've got 100 booked in for lunch.
05:35We've got 300 tonight, so we'll be looking at probably 320, 330 as per usual.
05:41Two lunch parties and two evening ones, which we'll get into afterwards.
05:44Then at 1.30, we're doing all three meats for 18 people.
05:50We're going to do a potato mix today for a new dish, scarpignoc, which we're going to
05:53serve with possibly a ragu, so we'll try that today.
06:01So with the menu locked in, we're going to go and check on the salumi in the salumeria
06:06downstairs.
06:12So this is our salumeria.
06:14We call it a salumeria because salumi is the Italian term for what's known as charcuterie.
06:21The general process of salumi making in Italy and the way the butchery is done are all about
06:27elongating the muscles.
06:28Okay, so I've got this copper that's going to be on the menu today.
06:32This has been curing for four months.
06:35There is a system to how things move around.
06:37For example, here are all of the coppers that stay around here and they kind of move around
06:43and by the time they're at this stage, they are ready.
06:48Everything that comes in is given a code, so we know the weight it is when it goes in.
06:54We monitor the pH before it goes in, so we want our acidity levels to be right on each
06:59product.
07:00We will monitor it until the weight drops by about 30 to 35%.
07:06The fat won't lose any weight, but the lean muscle mass will.
07:10With the copper muscle we've just cured, those three weeks in salt will draw out a lot of
07:15moisture from the copper, from the muscle.
07:19Our setup in here is to essentially replicate the caves and curing cellars in Italy.
07:26We have a humidifier and a dehumidifier so that the relative humidity in here is at around
07:3270, 72, 73% and the temperature hovers at around 10 degrees.
07:39Those conditions allow the meat to very gently dry out.
07:44If the temperature was too high, it would take too long for the cure to reach the middle.
07:48We would not end up with a very desirable product.
07:51Just to compare two pieces, this has been in here for a week, so that's very, very fresh.
07:57This has got a long way to go.
07:58This has been in here for three months and you can see there's much less give on it.
08:03We could probably take that out and slice it.
08:05When they are ready and they've lost the desired amount of weight, we'll take off all of the
08:10protective layers, cut off all the string, then we'll re-vacuum seal it so that the cure
08:15is allowed to fully equalize all the way through.
08:17We're going to go upstairs and check on the next stages of the pigskin ragout.
08:28So we've got our sofrito of onion, carrot, celery, fennel and garlic that's been cooking
08:35down for a couple of hours.
08:37We cook the sofrito for a long time, nice and slowly, really cook out the vegetables
08:41and bring out all of the natural oils in them.
08:44Then we will add white wine, reduce that.
08:47We've added to this a spice mix of cayenne pepper, black pepper, fennel seed, star anise
08:53and chilli flakes.
08:54There's a lot of fat and richness to this and the acidity from the wine and tomatoes
09:02helps cut through and balance this really, really nicely.
09:04So we're going to add now some crushed whole tomatoes, then we're going to cook this down
09:08just a little bit and add all of the cooked pigskin.
09:11Skins were cooked two nights ago.
09:14They were scraped and prepared yesterday, minced this morning and now all of this will
09:18come together to complete the dish today.
09:21So the next step of this process is adding the cooked pigskin to the base here.
09:26We'll put it back on the stove.
09:28We'll cook that now for probably a couple of hours.
09:31All those flavours and all that fat and skin will start to make friends and that is the
09:35main protein in this.
09:36It's very rich and sticky.
09:38It's probably the dish that defines what we do at the restaurant the most, using up slightly
09:42more gnarly bits that don't necessarily have a place all over the menu.
09:47So now we're going to fry some pigskins to serve with the dish.
09:52So now we've got these dried pigskins.
09:55We've dried them out fully since they've been cooked and we're essentially going to rehydrate
09:59them in the fryer so this will nearly double in size.
10:05So essentially this is a chicharron.
10:07We use this as a vehicle for basically eating the ragu with.
10:13Nice and big.
10:14Just going to season it with a little bit of salt.
10:17The chilli, fennel, spice mix.
10:18We just give it a little dust.
10:22And we'll serve this on top of the pigskin.
10:25There'll be some fresh parmesan on it.
10:26They'll snap it, break it, eat it.
10:28So now the pigskin ragu is ready.
10:31We're going to go and work on a couple of new dishes with some pasta.
10:38This is the section where we roll and make all of our pastas for the day.
10:43These are some of the ones that we've got here.
10:45We've got lumaque, which means snails.
10:48This is the strottopretti that we sometimes serve with our brown crab cacio e pepe.
10:52This is campanelli and we serve this with a duck ragu, malaredis, which we serve with
11:00a pork and fennel ragu.
11:02So the reason we'll choose different shapes for different ragus is how they work.
11:06This has got lots of little ridges in.
11:09It catches the sauce really well.
11:10So we'll serve this with a pork and fennel ragu.
11:14I'm working on a new dish at the moment, which is going to be a filled pasta.
11:20And so this is like a classic pasta dough, essentially one egg for every hundred grams
11:25of pasta.
11:26When you see these air pockets here, that's what you want to see.
11:28The dough was made yesterday, has had a really nice rest.
11:32The protein allows it to be worked quite well, works with the gluten, which is in the
11:36dough as well.
11:37So I'm going to roll this out now.
11:39We use a machine rather than by hand because it is a lot more effective for us to do 400
11:47covers in a day.
11:48So it goes through these steel rollers and starts to get quite thin.
11:52Dust it along the way.
11:53We're going to fold and we'll be trapping lots of air in between each pasta.
11:57This is called laminating.
12:00And this will give us a really nice mouthfeel and texture when we come to eat the pasta.
12:04If it's too thick, it will be undercooked in parts and that's not what we want.
12:09We're going to fill it with a potato filling and we'll serve it with a meat ragu.
12:13This is our potato filling.
12:14I'm going to put little dots of this here and then we're going to fold the pasta over,
12:21bring them together to create a nice little shape, which is called scarpigno.
12:25And that's from the north of Italy.
12:28And I'm just pushing any excess air out as I keep the shape.
12:32And then I'm going to use a cutter, which is a little brass fluted cutter, and I'm going
12:36to make these cuts.
12:38We've got these, we're going to just squeeze out the air, put a little dimple in them.
12:43What I love about making pasta is the craft.
12:46I've always loved making things with my hands.
12:48We have tried this filling before with a duck ragu, but with a more classic ravioli shape.
12:55But I think this, it's going to present a little bit better.
12:59It's hopefully going to eat a bit better and I think with the beef ragu, it's going to
13:02be delicious.
13:03So let's go and try these.
13:07I'm going to try this with a beef shin ragu, with a little bit of butter, and then I will
13:14cook these.
13:15And when you're on this section, you're cooking hundreds of portions of pasta and you kind
13:20of have a sixth sense for it after a little while.
13:22We use the pasta water, it's a pretty essential ingredient in all of our pastas.
13:26It's got a nice amount of starch in it.
13:28It just helps the sauces loosen up a little bit.
13:31We couldn't cook the amount of pasta we do if we didn't have a setup like this.
13:35It's really, really important to taste as you go.
13:39The ragu has been finished, it's perfect, but we'll just give it a little kiss of sherry
13:44vinegar.
13:45It just needs a little extra bit of acidity just to help lift and elevate the whole dish.
13:49We're kind of thinking about a lot of things.
13:52How this will work for us in a busy service.
13:55How we can manage the prep for 300 covers in an evening.
14:00We need to think about how it looks, how it tastes, and how we can plate it.
14:03Ultimately the test of this will be how it all eats together.
14:07Jake, let's try this.
14:09Looks great.
14:12This is pretty good.
14:13I think it's lovely.
14:14Jake keeps me in check and won't let me do stupid things like put really difficult things
14:17on the menu.
14:19I definitely need Jake Steers the ship.
14:22I rock it sometimes.
14:23So it's noon.
14:24We need to get set for service.
14:25So I'm going to see you in a bit.
14:32So now I'm doing the pass.
14:33That's just calling tickets and managing the tables throughout service.
14:38Checks come in.
14:39I'll let the team know what's on order and then we'll just send them as they come through.
14:45So when I ring the bell, that is for service and somebody will come and take these dishes
14:50to the table.
14:51A weightable 14, pork blade and a cabbage salad.
14:55It can be quite a hectic pass to manage.
14:59There is a lot going on so we have to be very organized on here.
15:02We try and get all starters out within 20 minutes and then similar thing with pasta
15:07which allows us a bit more time for longer cooked proteins like steaks and large protein
15:12cuts.
15:13Away.
15:14So we're coming up on that now, yeah?
15:17So when a check's called away, we'll keep it on the pass so we know what's on order.
15:21We'll move it into an away section so the team know exactly what's going on and where
15:24they're at with the orders.
15:26Send this to 14, cacio e pepe and then this hogget collar to 62.
15:32When we've completed a check, we will spike it here so we keep all of the check from the
15:36last hour so we know what's going on.
15:40We'll put a note on it here so we know it comes from our section.
15:44Check on for ketchup, mussels, follow, ribeye, potatoes, farm salad.
15:48There's a lot of shouting during service.
15:50It can be quite loud in the evenings as well.
15:53Lunch service is three hours.
15:55We finish at three-ish and then we reopen at 5.30 and then that will be a big five-hour
16:02service.
16:04OK, last table's in.
16:05We're about to get ready for a busy dinner service.
16:07Hope you've got a sense of what it's like to be a chef at Manteca, but you've got to
16:10go now.
16:11So thank you.
16:12Bye-bye.