We love being print only, but the thing about being print only is that you have this wealth of content once the issue has sold out. We’ve long thought about how to show people what we do without doing a digital version, a Pit Lite if you will. We don’t really like digital versions of printed magazines (but that’s an essay for another day).
We posted on Instagram on Monday about how we need more subscribers to be able to make a new issue. So this is part of us DOING OUR BIT. This newsletter will always be free, but we will be not so gently reminding you to subscribe to get the full Pit experience. We can’t do this without our subscribers. So to all of you, thank you! Keep sharing! We’ve got a STONKER of a theme all ready, and we are chomping at the bit to get going. We’ve got a number in mind, and we need another 95 subs to get there!
SO meet Pit’s Bits. A weekly newsletter with recipes, articles, photo stories and a few bits of original content from behind the scenes of the Pit team. There’s going to be some fun things that we don’t usually get to talk about, how do we choose a cover? Why do we keep changing the typeface every issue? Who is the illustrator behind the last issue? We’re hoping it makes you all feel a bit more included in our ‘creative process’, and will help more people get what we’re all about.
We need to get better at selling our magazine, when people know about us and subscribe, they do tend to really love it as much as we do. But because we are good at making a magazine and not so good at marketing it’s getting extremely hard for us to cover our costs as we always have.
Nobody needs to hear more about how hard it is to do anything independent especially in publishing right now, BUT we need more subscribers before we can make another issue. So please if you’ve been umming and aahhhing over subscribing. Please consider it. It’s £6.50 an issue plus P&P so you save £3 on the cover price. We do an issue once or twice a year. IT’S A BARGAIN!!!
For the first newsletter recipe, we’ve decided to go with Holly’s favourite meal of all time. Sausage in bed. Elite dinners of all dinners. This is from our sold out sausage special issue.
Sausage in bed
AKA toad in the hole
with smoked bone marrow and onion gravy
Recipe by Helen Graves
Photograph: Robert Billington
Pit’s art director Holly calls this ‘sausage-in-bed,’ which once confused one of her friends, who thought she had to go and wait under the duvet for her dinner. Holly’s mum always made it with mixed herbs, so we’ve added some chopped rosemary to the batter
in homage, which brings a gentle background flavour rather than making the toad something different entirely. The onion gravy is enriched with smoked bone marrow and we’re not too shy to say it’s the best onion gravy we’ve tasted: lighter than the Bisto-brown stuff thanks to chicken stock, but deeper in flavour thanks to the bone marrow. Holly doesn’t like onion gravy with her toad, as she feels the bottom of the toad (the undertoad) is wet enough already. We’ll have to agree to disagree on that point.
For the gravy
2 pieces of marrow bone
(1 bone cut in half, find this easily at a good butcher)
4 medium onions, peeled
and sliced
1 heaped tablespoon plain flour
300ml good chicken stock
2 teaspoons wholegrain mustard
A large knob of butter
You will also need a disposable metal tray or a tray you don’t mind using on the barbecue
Wood chips, for smoking
To make the gravy, light the barbecue and bank the coals to one side for offset smoking. When ready to cook, add some smoking chips (we used oak).
Put the marrow bones in the tray and place inside the barbecue on the cooler side of the grill. Close the lid. Leave for 30 minutes, then remove and allow to cool down enough to handle.
Add the butter to a frying pan with the onions. Cook gently over a low heat for 30–40 minutes, or until the onions are caramelised. Stir them often
so they don’t burn.Add the flour to the pan and cook for a couple of minutes, stirring. Add the stock and mix. Scrape out the bone marrow and add it to the pan with the mustard. Season with salt and pepper and let it cook on a low heat for 10 minutes or so.
For the toad
6 sausages (we used a ‘country-style’ herby sausage)
3 eggs
150g plain flour
300ml whole milk
A tablespoon of finely chopped rosemary
3 tablespoons vegetable, sunflower or groundnut oil
(you could also use beef dripping or lard)
We used a 28cm x 20cm roasting tin
To make the toad, beat the eggs with a hand whisk or electric mixer until it becomes like a foam, with lots of small bubbles (a few minutes). Add the milk, then slowly whisk in the flour until you have a smooth batter. Set aside to rest for at least 30 minutes
(at room temp is fine).Preheat the oven to 220C.
When you are ready to cook, pour the oil into the roasting
tin and place it in the oven
for 15 minutes to heat up.Stir the rosemary into the batter. Carefully remove the tray from the oven and pour the batter into it, then place the sausages on top.
Bake for 35 minutes, or until well risen and dark brown. Serve with the gravy.
Plus a few other things we’ve liked this week
1. Gigi’s Pizza in Bristol
Very busy, very good!
Rob’s been eating mango sticky rice in Bangkok
We’ve been reading The Mortar, a new project from Steve Watson at Stack magazines. This is a shameless plug, really, because Holly is art directing the illustration but who cares.
Illustration by Towoqo
Last but not least, our latest issue, all about America is still available in limited numbers. If you haven’t got your hands on one yet, then go over here
Thanks for reading!
Holly, Helen and Rob xx
