Nothing about what Elnecot does involves shortcuts. It’s perhaps the main reason why it’s one of our favourite restaurants in Manchester.
This modern British bistro – though it has influences from all over the world – is always changing, flipping its menu with the seasons.
But what never changes is the love of process. Chef and owner Michael Clay is never one for making it easy for himself.
Take the new vol-au-vents, one of the new ‘nibbles’ – either a snack with a drink, or something small and delicious to kick off a full-on feast.
He braises ox tongue for five hours, shreds it down once it’s soft and giving, then with tuna, garlic, anchovies, eggs, capers and a few other bits, makes a tonnato, an irresistibly savoury sauce from northern Italy.
He then combines the shredded tongue with the sauce, and then stuffs the mixture into a vol-au-vent case for a single bite of purest joy.
“Five hours of cooking, probably another hour or so with the dicing, and it’s all for one bite,” he says. It’s entirely worth it.
Also take his nduja. An almost ubiquitous ingredient these days, he could just buy it like everyone else does, but instead he makes his own.
“We thought we’d have a bash,” he says. “We get lean pork mince and pork fat, mince it all up, put in our secret blend of spices. We want ours to have a nice smokiness to it, but also have that chilli spice you expect to get from an nduja, then we wrap it up in a very pretty ‘ox bung’ (the cleaned appendix of the cow).”
It’s then hung for a few weeks to cure, before being served on toast and finished with an ‘aijvar’, a spread of smoky, charcoal grilled peppers and garlic and some see-through lardo, cured pork fat, on top.
Again, this is merely a snack.
These two dishes, while small, pretty well epitomise Michael’s approach to cooking. The new menu features a host of snacking dishes, alongside larger sized dishes for sharing.
There’s a confit duck leg, served with a Thai-style red curry and a tang of gooseberries, the ‘prawn party’ (prawns served with prawn butter and prawn toast), a summery burrata salad with tomatoes from the Cinderwood Market Garden, and Devon brown crab cakes.
And when it’s sunny, they will – as always – have the grill on outside, cooking up barbecued burgers and dogs on Cutting Room Square.
The new Elnecot menu is available now, with nibbles starting at £3 and main dishes from £8.50.
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