We dissect what London’s much-loved dishes are made from.
‘Could you live without a bin?’ That’s the question that someone once put to chef Douglas McMaster. It inspired him to open Silo, a Hackney Wick restaurant serving high-quality food while creating as little food waste as possible. Its crowd-pleasing Siloaf ice-cream sandwich totally encapsulates the restaurant’s zero-waste ethos. ‘It’s a poetic dessert,’ says McMaster. ‘It uses the waste from the Siloaf bread and butter from the first course, bookending the entire menu.’ He talks us through it.
The syrup
‘We soak our waste bread in water and leave it for two days. It starts to ferment and turn into Marmite, which we make into a caramel that’s little salty.’
The flavour
‘One mouthful is rich, decadent and caramel-y. The Marmite flavour adds complexity and brightness. That salty, umami, sweet combination is like dynamite.’
The wafer
‘We accrue surplus bran from milling flour for our bread. To use the waste, we mix bran with brown butter, oats and sugar to make a wafer that tastes like salted popcorn.’
The ice cream
‘We churn our own butter and we get a lot of excess buttermilk. We caramelise it to make dulce de leche, then make ice cream from that. It’s silky, bright and super-sweet.’
The experience
‘I always tell people to pick it up and eat it with their hands. It’s more visceral and intimate because you feel the coldness of the ice cream and the texture of the wafer.’
Unit 7, Queens Yard, E9 5EN. £7.
