Diaries are never mundane. For our Day In The Life series, we’re asking some of our friends, collaborators, and people we admire for a mini-diary, to let us see what a ‘normal’ day in their life looks like.
This month we asked Sophie Hambling the co-founder of Offcuts. @off___cuts
Spanish callos with Irish soul.
This is probably one of the tastier dishes at Mara. Slow cooking, patience and love are the key to our grandmother’s cooking. Let all the flavours infused together blend the texture and the result it’s a silk, full of flavour dish that feed the soul.
All ingredients are locally sourced at our local butcher.
1 for the sofrito sweat chorizo and ham to realise all the fat, then add onions, garlic and chili flakes. Cool for 2 hours
2 in a pressure cooker add white wine, trotters, tripe, onion, leek, peppercorn and cover with water. Cool for 1 hour
3 add grated tomato to the sofrito and cook until reduced all the liquid
4 deboned and dice the trotters while they are hot and the tripe when it’s cold
5 strain the cooking liquid and reduce to a 1/3
6 blitz the sofrito and add to the reduced stock with the diced meat.
7 cook for further 30 minutes and season with salt. ( important don’t add salt before cooking the tripe)
8 let it set and dice the day after
9 serve with chickpeas chives and drizzle with olive oil
10 enjoy
#offcuts #waterfordfood #thisisirishfood #marawaterford #shoplocalwaterford
life lately has been all about
💘eating everything rhubarb on the menu
💘drinking all of the iced drinks (lychee Yakult ice!!)
💘looking up to admire the pinks and the whites against the blue
💘soaking up the sun, a rare sight!!!
💘enjoying the simple things in life—a well-made pasta, a maritozzo bun with my maritozzo bun 🐈, a yummy lunch of pork chop rice
💘buying and reading as many food magazines as I can
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BEHOLD! The second of our occasional, super special guest sandwiches with pals who KNOW their sandwiches. This doozy is in collaboration with Joe aka @erniethechef and was inspired by one he had @wildairnyc that may have been “the best sandwich I’ve ever had”….
A beautiful pig head from @girlbutcher is slow braised for ages with stock veg and cider until melting. Then a hot roast crisps up the skin. The meat is shredded, seasoned and the crisp skin is chopped through. Blast that on the grill to melt the fat and caramelise the meat - carnitas style.
A sharp remoulade-style salad of chicory, celery leaves, cornichon and loadsa mustard balances out the rich meat.
All that is piled on a fresh baked sub.
It’s great, like the best pulled pork sandwich you’ll ever try. Don’t take my word for it, try it for yourself - only @sorcerercoffee this weekend until sold out.
We make sandwiches you will like
I've been enjoying perusing the latest issue from @off___cuts off this bench this week.
Whole-animal butchery -- nose-to-tail, with no shortcuts -- is at the centre of my work here at Cormorant. For me, it is about respect: honouring the animal and minimising waste.
Every piece has its place if you're willing to pay attention and spend a little time.
Thank you to everyone who came to my talk at @tokyoartbookfair - it was a surreal moment to present @off___cuts on the other side of the globe!
In exploring ways to broaden the conversation around offal, I invited local chef @rukumatokyo_ebisu for a Q&A. Chef Ryo Kumai is a Horumon (offal) specialist, whose experience extends beyond my own, running his restaurant for 18 years. We bonded over our passion for these cuts and our shared favourite - liver!
Offal is eaten across the world and its use is deeply rooted in many Asian food cultures, including Japan. It felt important to include authentic cultural representation, especially as my own viewpoint, though increasingly open and influenced by global practices, is still primarily Western. Speaking with Ryo offered the chance to understand what eating offal means in Japan and allowed us to explore where our experiences and traditions overlap.
One of the first things that emerged was our shared appreciation of the pig - a fitting connection, given that the pig is also the symbol of St. JOHN and also his restaurant. In Japan, there is a traditional saying: “buta wa nakigoe to ashioto igai subete taberareru” which translates to “you can eat everything from a pig except its squeal and footsteps.” The expression reflects a long-standing belief found in Japan and elsewhere, that pigs are extraordinarily valuable animals with almost no waste. Similarly in Japan, offal has often been seen as low-value or overlooked yet the saying underscores the remarkable breadth of what the animal provides. It’s a reminder that the pig embodies a tradition of resourcefulness, values shared across many food cultures and at the heart of why conversations like these matter.
The event sparked interest from offal lovers and hopefully encouraged a few uneasy beginners, helping to spread the Offcuts word and encourage readers to try something new!
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2025 - Whadda year! 😮💨 just had a flick back through the archives and there were many high points.
Some of which include: getting another @guildoffinefood award, moving unit into a space waaaay bigger (and waaaaaaaay more expensive…), @sorcerer in the @indycoffeeguide , launching a bangin’ breakfast at sorcerer, pop ups in @housebarheaton and @thegrovenewcastle , a sweet collab with @pigsx7 , relaunching Total Hotty with ace new design by @suzie_winsor_studio , a whole host of great new wholesale suppliers across the UK including @mellischeeseltd@minimaegden@pophamsbakery@banditbakery and all our great local suppliers, got an ice cream machine, celebrated one year slinging subs with Sorcerer and started doing our late night diner (with added booze), been writing more again with a regular condiment corner in @appetitemaguk and a feature in @off___cuts , made a mad good steak sub on @wildfarmed black bread for all hallows, casually dropped PINCH! at the end of the year for market season.
Dunno what ‘26 is gonna hold but here’s hoping we can keep the leash on this wild beast!
