Two weeks on from 'English Scran - Part One' and the "What? No Scouse/Chicken Parmo!" rage shows no signs of abating. Them gadgies is gannin proper radgie man (as one of the more northern inclined amongst Breakfast Champion might say). With that in mind it's time to found out how easily offended Southerners are when you miss their local specialities off a completely arbitrary list... Starting low (and flat), we have the East of England. A land of fens, reclaimed land, great ales and pubs (Norwich has the most pubs per capita of anywhere in the country), plenty of seafood, and Hertfordshire (noone knows anything about Hertfordshire, it's basically just a suburb of London I think). So which two foodstuffs will we choose to represent the whole area? Only one way to find out...
The king of mustards, no I'll go further, the only mustard you ever need. All other mustards pale in comparison. When people ask if you're a ketchup or brown sauce person the correct answer is 'pass the Colman's'. It is to what Americans think of as mustard what the chilli pepper is to the bell pepper, you can see they're in the same family but you soon learn how mistaken you are when you try a mouthful of each.
Have it with sausages, bacon, ham, pork chops, steak, roast beef, burgers, lamb chops and so on, and give whatever you're eating a real kick. This is the reason English food doesn't need chillies, we have our own heat, one that will make your nose feel like a bomb has gone off inside if you get the dose even slightly wrong.
And if you want to give it a try, or you're already as addicted to the stuff as I am, head on over to the 'Jams & Sauces' section of our e-store @ www.breakfastchampion.cn, or follow 'store>order' from the official account.Originally only available for purchase in Harrods or Fortnum & Mason's Maldon Sea Salt has always been considered something a little bit special. A family business currently run by Steven Osborne, whose Great-Great-Grandfather James founded the company, and his dad and grandad can be seen below making the famous salt by hand...
Easily pinched and crumbled, with a pyramidical crystal structure, and a mild taste lacking in any bitterness, this is the salt of choice for discerning kitchens from Penzance to Berwick, but also abroad (with over half of the salt being exported).
My personal favourite is their smoked variety, which, when used in moderation, brings a real depth of flavour to whatever you add it to.There's also a really deep, and really cold, salt water swimming pool on the shoreline there, that I got thrown into multiple times by my grandad as a boy. I couldn't find a picture online, so maybe it's gone now.What can you say about the cultural desert that is the South-East of England? Massively overshadowed by its world famous multicultural melting pot of a neighbour it mostly serves as commuter belt to the capital, but it's also home to a few culinary delights of its own. And Oxfordshire is nice, very quaint.
As well as being a devent description for the current state of
British politics, Eton mess is also a traditional English dessert consisting of
a mixture of strawberries, meringue, and whipped cream.
Traditionally served at the famous Eton college’s annual cricket game with the
pupils of Harrow school, this smash of fresh ingredients is quintessentially British summertime. Summer tests against some Southern Hemisphere team who
don’t like it up them, or a spot of tennis at Wimbledon wouldn’t be the same
without a serving of this.
With Eton Mess you get yourself a taste of being from the upper classes without needing to burn a twenty pound note in front of a homeless person, win:win.Steak & Kidney Pie (or Pudding)
Now we aren't entirely sure whether this meaty, saucy bundle of
joy wrapped in suet is actually from the South East, but as the recipe was first
put to paper in 1861 in Sussex (and it's a great representation of English
scran) we thought we would add it to this section.
Served traditionally with
mash and garden peas, this hearty meal is perfect as a winter warmer or even a
summer stormer (although I may have made that second term up). Equally as good as a pie or a pudding, although if push came to shove it'd be pudding all day long for me.
Best part of England, hands down (well, Devon and Cornwall anyway).
Great beaches, moorland aplenty, funny accents (all pirates speak West Country), strangers calling you 'my lover', no motorways (until very recently), wonderful cider, and tonnes of tourists (although generally the only non Brits down there are the Dutch for some reason), the South-West is home to some classic local culinary gems, but two stand out above all else for me...Best pasty fact for me is that the famous crimped pastry handle on the side of a pasty was traditionally never eaten. This was due to the high levels of arsenic in the mines, and so that would get on your hands, and then on the handle, so you chucked it. The leftover crusts would serve the purpose of keeping the ghosts of dead miners who haunted the mines happy, so nothing really went to waste. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Pasties, pasties, pasties. Not the kind that you'd find in a burlesque parlour, but I'm guessing it's been tried at some point. Pasties have been a mainstay of Cornish cuisine at least since the time of Chaucer, with pasties getting a namecheck in the Canterbury Tales. Traditionally the food of miners due to them being self sealing, easy to mark to show whose is whose, full of calories, generally delicious, and with the already mentioned anti arsenic poisoning handles; they're also a traditional food in the mining regions in Michigan after mass Cornish migration there in 1840s.
Traditionally you'd also get two courses in one pasty, with something sweet at one end; main and pudding in one dish. Always thought there'd be a couple of interestig bites in the middle due to that myself.
Ambrosia (the food of the gods, not the company that makes custard) ain't got nothing on this...
The first, of many, reason that clotted cream tastes as incredible as it does is the fat content. Normal pouring cream comes in at about 18% fat, clotted cream averages a whopping 64%! Folklore has it that it was introduced into the South-West by Phoenician traders looking to buy tin. There is a very similar dish called 'kaymak' that is prevalent across the Middle-East, and as far east as Mongolia, that it is thought to descend from. Wherever it's from originally, it is now quintessentially West Country.It's great with almost anything (a personal favourite of mine is the Clotted Cream Ice Cream Parlour in Woolacombe where all the ice cream is made with it, and you get an extra dollop on top as well), but it is at its best as part of a Devon Cream Tea; just maek sure you get the cream and the jam the right way round...
What is there to say about
the place a lot of Chinese people think is essentially the whole of England. This
multicultural city is a hub for food from all corners of the globe and is
‘possibly’ the best place on earth to sample some of the best international
foods from fine dining experienced to street vendors and small businesses.
Whatever your tastes there's a restaurant for you in London, but there are very few out of towners whose tastes stretch to our first taste of the big apple. Ladies & gentlemen, we give you...
Take yourself to within earshot of the Bow Bells and you are
now technically in the area of London you can call Cockney territory and from
there comes a dish that, very much like Marmite, divides opinion.
That picture is probably the best I can find
for this; aesthetically pleasing they ain't. Jellied eels are a traditional Cockney
dish that originated in the 18th century. The dish consists of chopped eels
boiled in a spiced stock that is allowed to cool and set, forming a jelly. It
is eaten cold or thrown directly in the bin depending on your feelings on this
monstrosity.
Apart from a few naysayers up in that there Lancashire, most people agree that FIsh 'n' Chips as a combo was first sold in 1860 by Joseph Malin who proclaimed to sell "fish fried in the Jewish fashion". He called it this because battered fried fish, often with beer in the mix, was first introduced to London by the arrival of the Western Sephardic Jews in the 1600s, and has gone from strength to strength ever since.Traditionally served wrapped in yesterday's newspapers (until the 1980s when ingesting ink was deemed hazardous to health; political correctness gone mad I tells ya), and commonly the cause of shock when you realise quite how much a bit of fish goes for nowadays so you end up getting a pukka pie instead.
You can have a good guess at where someone is from from what they have on their chips, I'm firmly in curry sauce country myself. Doesn't make for the best looking dish, but man is it delicious; great for sopping up the last of yesterday's booze before heading back down the pub.Welsh Scran - the land of working class rugby union, male voice choirs, and women in silly hats waving leeks about!
If you're from Wales and you have any suggestions about what you'd like to see included, just send them to one of these Customer Service accounts;