The Picnic Maker

Expert sandwicher Max Halley is turning his attention to picnics, and he’s got a few changes he’d like to make.

All of Max Halley’s sentences end with either a massive, joyful exclamation mark, or a boom of laughter.

The London-based sandwicher is the proprietor of cult restaurant Max’s Sandwich Shop – and has now decided to take on the state of the picnic, with his new cookbook Max’s Picnic Book, co-authored with Ben Benton.

Don’t get him wrong, Halley absolutely loves a picnic, but he reckons the time has come: it “needs a hand. It’s become this sort of Sound Of Music, Mary Berry’s birthday party, chintzy thing covered in rose-tinted goo, when lunch on a train is a picnic! Lunch in the motorway service station car park is a picnic! Lunch at your desk is a picnic!” he rages jovially. “And these are all opportunities for deliciousness that we too often let pass us by!”

The book itself is a little incongruous, surrealist and goofy at first – it features a meat trifle, a picnic dedicated to the sausage, one picnic menu is ‘hosted’ by Mary Berry and Hunter S. Thompson, and another by Ringo Starr and Debbie McGee. But as you start reading and Halley’s radiant enthusiasm seizes you, it begins to make a whole lot more sense – and more importantly, makes you question the very notion of traditional picnicking.

Halley’s love of them comes from a simple place: getting tipsy on trains.

“What nicer thing to do?!” he says, with one of those huge laughs. “Breaking the bread with friends or, quite frankly, with anyone, is a wonderful thing. And doing that by a river under a tree, listening to music, having a lovely time with your shoes off, is a beautiful way to do it.”

The problem, Halley says, is when it gets to the food portion of the picnic. “We often accept substandard things just because it’s a picnic. We think hummus and pitta is enough – and it’s not. There’s also carrot sticks in a bag and if you’re extremely lucky and really going for it, cucumber sticks in a bag. An innovative approach to hummus does not a picnic make.”

We need instead to look at picnics differently. “We need to think about how good a friend of ours the thermos flask really is, and why aren’t we putting tinned beef, consommé and supermarket tortellini into a thermos flask and having that at our desk for lunch? I mean, that’s picnicking like a boss, instead of it being the meal deal from Boots.”

A picnic, he adds, isn’t about “bunting and jumpers for goalposts and homemade ginger beer. It’s about eating something delicious in any place that is not your dinner table.

“We’re told that to do a picnic properly, you have to have all your stuff in a wicker basket. And yet, [we know] they’re not fit for purpose. A tote bag is way better for carrying stuff; all your bottles aren’t going to fall over; it doesn’t jangle in quite as annoying a manner; and a tote bag never ripped anyone’s jumper!” Halley continues passionately. “[The picnic’s] been sort of co-opted and become something it isn’t. It’s turned into this Enid Blyton abomination that is just not true.”

The real truth is, you can buy a pack of dark chocolate digestives, some ricotta and cherry jam from the supermarket “and you’re making mini cheesecakes! How much does any one of those individual things cost? Three quid, total? And you and four people can feast on that in a park!”

Completely by accident, Halley appears to have written the book at just about the best time ever to write a book about picnics – the pandemic has made it practically mandatory, and pretty much the only way to socialise (restrictions allowing). “I wish I’d thought of that before,” he jokes. “I would have asked for more money.”

The book is a nudge to make those moments sat on park benches a little more exciting. “This is what we need,” he says. “It’s like a little tiramisu. A little pick-me-up – everything’s just so bloody grim, isn’t it?”

As someone who also owns a restaurant, he adds, “let me tell you, s*** has never been bleaker.” At the time of speaking, it’s mid-January and Halley’s sandwich shop is very much closed – but he remains characteristically optimistic, acknowledging it’s the “weirdest time” but sure “everything will be OK”.

After all, as far as he’s concerned, the most fun you can have at work is running a restaurant. “Even though it’s hard, fundamentally you’re giving people a good time for a living, without having to take your clothes off,” he says. “That’s a really genuinely lovely thing to do.”

Now 38, Halley’s worked in the industry since he was 22, and his dad’s a wine journalist, so good food, good wine and entertaining for him is “the be all and end all”. You can feel that on every page, the sheer joy he finds in coming up with ever more inventive ways to create something delectable.

The book is full of hacks, like things to do with a leftover jar of dill pickles, when you’ve eaten all the pickles, brilliant uses for a Swiss Army Knife, ways to make the most of Thermos flasks (he’s obsessed and owns around 20, all in different sizes) and, crucially, ‘six wonderful things to mix into mayonnaise’.

“At my sandwich shop, there are two mantras,” says Halley seriously. “What will happen when I throw that into the deep-fat fryer? And can you mix that into mayonnaise?” These questions are ones we should all live by.

“It’s the ideas I’m so proud of,” he says with real feeling. “I believe in exploiting life’s opportunities for deliciousness. And being inventive. And I like enjoying myself and having fun and feeling like I’ve done something really cool, like, ‘I’m drinking ice-cold white wine on the train out of my cooler bag’.” You can see why his 36th birthday involved fancy dress and a mass McDonald’s order that saw all his mates concocting freestyle Maccy D mashups with random condiments, with everyone adding booze miniatures to milkshakes. It sounds like the best birthday ever.

“I really do think cooking is one of life’s great providers of joy,” he says, and hands down, a Max Halley picnic is a picnic you want to be at.

The king of sandwiches turned picnic connoisseur and cookbook author, Max Halley has three delectable recipes to help you raise your game in the picnic stakes.

Homemade pickled eggs recipe

“If you’ve never popped a pickled egg into a packet of salt and vinegar crisps and given the whole thing a bit of a scrunch before eating, then you’re the sort of wrong ’un we normally try to avoid. But you’re reading this recipe, so actually, you’re gold. A pickled egg is a versatile thing. Yes, they are a rarefied treat as described above, but they’re also a great way to knock up a lightning-speed egg mayo sandwich with a nice little kick, and a bona-fide snack in their own right. You can add all manner of aromatics to the pickling vinegar and you’ll have a new spin on the humble pickled egg. A couple of tablespoons of soy and mirin can take you down a very naughty path, as can a jalapeño or two. We’ll leave it to you to experiment.”

Homemade pickled eggs from Max’s Picnic Book by Max Halley and Ben Benton

Ingredients:

(Makes 12)

12 medium free-range eggs, at room temperature

2 sprigs of thyme

2 bay leaves

A few whole black peppercorns

About 500ml distilled vinegar

Method:

1. Bring a saucepan of water to the boil. Gently spoon the eggs into the pan and simmer for exactly seven minutes before running the pan under the cold tap until the eggs are cool enough to handle.

2. Peel off the shells and pack the eggs into a sterilised Kilner (Mason) jar or similar container (you’ll want something that’s airtight and big enough to hold all the eggs snugly). Add the thyme, bay leaves and peppercorns, then pour in enough vinegar to completely cover the eggs.

3. Seal the container and leave the eggs to mature for at least a week, before popping one in a bag of crisps and seeing what happens. Remember, never put your fingers in the pickle jar! Use a spoon to retrieve your beautiful friends.

Steak tartare recipe

“This is a sensational recipe, whether you’re making it at home or out and about. If you want to tartare at your picnic and haven’t successfully persuaded your butcher to chop the meat up for you, you’d better have a penknife in that kitbag and have remembered a chopping board.”

Ingredients:

(Makes enough for 8–10 lettuce cups)

200g beef (ideally something lean, such as fillet)

2 little gem (bibb) lettuces, leaves separated

Seasoning ingredients:

1 shallot, finely diced

1tsp white wine vinegar or lemon juice

1tbsp capers, finely chopped

1tsp ground black pepper

½tsp salt

½tsp Dijon mustard

Optional extras (not really, you’d be mad not to use these too): 1 egg yolk, a small handful of chopped parsley and a dash of Tabasco sauce

Method:

1. Chop your steak at home, add all the seasoning ingredients and mix well, then store in an airtight container until you are ready to eat.

2. If you are heading out on a hot day, you might not want to carry a bag full of raw meat, gently sweating in its own juices. On such a day, it’s a good idea to mix all the seasoning ingredients at home and take them with you in a little tub. While out and about, purchase your chosen piece of steak from a butcher, ask them to finely chop (never mince) the meat for you, and then mix the seasonings into the meat just before you eat. Either way, when the time comes, simply spoon the tartare into the lettuce cups and serve with the ‘optional’ extras alongside.

3. Why not explore the butcher’s counter a little further? Much of the cow works well in this way, be it as beef or veal. Heart is a world-beater when tartared, with some expert commentators (Ben Benton) suggesting it makes a steakier-tasting steak tartare than steak does. People are funny about heart, but it’s not a creepy secreting/filtering organ like liver or kidneys, it’s just a muscle like rump or fillet.

Breakfast martini recipe

“Do yourself a favour and buy the best you can. Get that good, good marmalade and a decent gin. Also, keep your gin and triple sec in the freezer, and freeze a couple of martini glasses too. That frosted glass is a rare treat, and essential for a perfect martini – at breakfast, or any other time.”

Ingredients:

(Makes 2 martinis)

Ice

2tbsp fine-cut marmalade

100ml gin

2tbsp triple sec or Cointreau

2tbsp lemon juice

1 slice of bread, toasted

Method:

1. Put a few lumps of ice in a martini glass and fill it with water to chill.

2. Put the marmalade in a cocktail shaker with the gin and triple sec and stir and stir until the marmalade has dissolved.

3. Fill the shaker with ice, add the lemon juice and stir and stir and stir making sure the spoon goes right to the bottom of the shaker. Don’t shake it like that philistine Bond, it will only water it down.

4. Stir 50 times – count them. The shaker will have become so frosty and cold you will hardly be able to touch it.

5. Sling the iced water from the glass and pour the sparkly liquid through a sieve into it. On the side of your martini, have a slither of cold, heavily buttered toast with marmalade on it. Why should the toast be cold? Because as my mum says, ‘Butter should be ON toast, not IN toast’.

Max’s Picnic Book by Max Halley and Ben Benton, photography by Louise Hagger, is published by Hardie Grant. Available now.