Alongside our new Lurpak TV ad, we’ve also created a few posters and the first two are breaking now. Like the TV ad, they celebrate the imperfections in home-cooked food and the joy derived from getting your hands dirty. Or floury.
Whether it be an oozing meat pie, unevenly puffed up and burnt at its
edges, or individual cupcakes unique in their crooked formations;
home-cooked food can’t be beaten. To help bring this to life, we worked in partnership with several
passionate food bloggers we follow and respect, Helen Graves from
www.helengraves.co.uk and Jeanne Horak at www.cooksister.com, who
devised the food recipes and cooked them on set so that we could photgraph them for the posters.  Imperfectly delicious.

WHITE CHOCOLATE & RASPBERRY CUPCAKES recipe by Jeanne Horak
(As shown above).

Melt the butter in a double boiler.  When half melted, add the white
chocolate and stir until both chocolate and butter are melted.  Check
for lumps and remove from the heat.  Add the sugar, then the eggs and
vanilla essence – mix well.  Sift in the baking soda (to prevent lumps),
then add the flour and beat until mixture is smooth.  Stir in the water,
a little at a time, mixing well between additions until all water has
been absorbed into the batter – it will be quite runny.  Line a 12-cup
muffin tin with paper muffin cups.  Pour about 2 Tablespoons of batter
into each cup.  Place 2 fresh raspberries into each cup, then divide the
rest of the batter equally among the cups.  Bake at 180 for 20 minutes
or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.

ROAST CHICKEN AND BACON PIE WITH FENNEL recipe by Helen Graves.(As shown above.)

(Fills an 18-20cm pie dish) 

 1 free-range chicken  

 25g Lurpak, softened   

 small handful of chopped parsley  

 1 lemon, sliced  

 2 bulbs fennel, tops, bottoms and core removed and finely sliced  

 1/2 large onion, sliced  

 4 rasher smoked bacon, diced  

 1 large leek, sliced  

 3 cloves garlic, crushed  

 Splash of white wine (optional)  

 A dollop of wholegrain mustard (optional)  

 Olive oil  

 350 – 400ml bechamel or white sauce (bought or home made)   

    

 For the pastry 

100g Lurpak, at room temperature
220g plain flour (not strong white bread flour) 
A large pinch of salt 
1 egg, beaten 

Method
– Preheat the oven to 190C and set a shelf in the middle.
– Take a roasting tray large enough to accommodate your chicken and
lay the lemon slices on the bottom and sit the chicken on top. Mix
roughly two thirds of the softened butter with all the parsley. Using
your fingers, make a pocket between the breast and skin of the chicken
by sliding your fingers gently underneath. Stuff the herbed butter into
these pockets and then spread the remaining butter over the outside of
the chicken. Season generously with salt and pepper. The chicken will
take anything from 30-90 minutes depending on size but keep checking on
it. The bird is ready when you can skewer it at the thickest part of
the leg and the juices that come out are clear.
– While the chicken is roasting, prepare the pastry by sieving the
flour and salt into a large bowl. Then cut the softened butter into
cubes and add it to the bowl. Using a knife, start cutting the butter
into the flour until it is fairly well mixed. You can now go in with
your hands and start rubbing the butter into the flour – do this as
lightly as possible. If you try to squidge the butter between your
fingers too much the pastry will become tough. When it resembles fine
crumbs, get some cold water (the colder the better) and add a
tablespoon at a time, cutting it in with the knife each time, until it
starts to come together. When it starts to form large lumps, go in with
your hands and bring it together into a ball. It should leave the bowl
clean. Rest in the fridge for 30 minutes.
– Now prepare the vegetables. Heat a splash of olive oil in a pan and
add the bacon to it. Once the bacon is cooked add the leeks, fennel and
onion (plus the wine if using) and cook on a very low heat with the lid
on for around 15 minutes then add the garlic for a further five.
– When the chicken is ready, allow to rest and remove the meat.
– To assemble the pie divide the pastry into two portions – one
portion should be two thirds of the total amount and this will be the
base and sides of the pie. The remaining pastry will form the lid. Roll
out the base pastry into a circle shape on a lightly floured surface.
The shape will need to be larger than your dish as it needs to form the
sides of the pie also. Carefully lower this into the dish. Roll out the
lid and set aside. 
– Mix the chicken, fennel mixture, mustard (if using) and bechamel
together. Take care when adding the bechamel. Add a little at a time to
get an idea of how much you will need. Season the mixture with salt and
pepper then fill the pie and top with the lid, taking care to make sure
the edges are sealed. Cut a cross in the top with a knife and brush
with the beaten egg.
– Bake for 20-30 minutes at 200C until golden brown.

Subway Sect – Ambition (Rough Trade 1977). Design: unknown.

New exhibition now on in London's second smallest exhibition space – the L Gallery in W+K's reception desk. It's a selection of Neil Christie's collection of old punk singles.

'We oppose all rock and roll'

In 1977 I was
fifteen. I was a kid living, it seemed to me, on the edge of everything, up in the
frozen wastes of northern Scotland, waiting for something to happen. The first
wave of punk was what I’d been waiting for: a movement to join, a cultural call
to arms, a teenage rampage, a riot of our own. It’s hard now to imagine the
scarcity of media in those days. There was no internet, only three TV channels,
you could buy chart records in Woolworths or Boots.  And they cost so much you could afford to buy maybe a single
a month. There was only the NME and the John Peel show – and in Aberdeen these
were like bulletins from another world. 

Sex Pistols – God Save the Queen (Virgin 1977). Design: Jamie Reid.

The 45 rpm 3
minute (or less) single was the key artefact of the era. Songs on singles weren’t
generally included on albums, many of the bands never even made albums and
things were changing very fast. (Some purists would insist that anything
recorded after 1977 isn’t really punk.) The singles were the thing. Old school,
Old Grey Whistle Test rock was LP
music – records with sleeves big enough to roll your joint on… you hippy. Punk
was 45s.

Generation X – Your Generation (Chrysalis 1977). Design: Barney Bubbles.

These singles
were totems, talismans and badges of allegiance. Not widely available, hunted,
hoarded, swapped, carried to school, played again and again and again. The
graphics on the covers were themselves codes to live by that we wore on our
sleeves and pinned to our blazers.

Punk maybe
didn’t overthrow royalty and the government in the way it aimed to. But it
changed me. And its influence – the sound, the look, the attitude – is still to
be felt today in the indie scene, the DIY aesthetic, design, art, the fashion
world and society at large.

In the words of Subway Sect (from A Different Story, B-side of Ambition):

"We oppose all rock and roll
as going down the chute.
We oppose the rock'n'roll that's held you down for so long you can`t refuse."

  Sex Pistols – Holidays in the Sun (Virgin 1977). Design: Jamie Reid.

The Clash – Complete Control (CBS, 1977). Design: CBS in-house.