Contrary to popular Aussie belief that the Poms only eat fish and chips, roast beef and over-boiled vegetables, curry and chips. In fact, chips with everything including bacon, egg, spam and chips for breakfast. English cuisine has evolved just as much as the Aussie variety over the last twenty or so years. Having said that, I will start this ramble with a discussion about English Fish and Chip shops or ‘Chippy’s’, which are, after all a national institution and as such deserve a good review.
I have to say that I was very disappointed with the chips in general anyway, I think that the Poms have lost the ability to cook a decent chip. It could of course be that they just didn’t live up to the the exaggerated expectations of my memory. The fish was excellent as were the steak puddings and I fell in love with a couple of faggots.
This is not to say that my sexual orientation has changed, the faggots I ate were in Swadlincote, at the chippy in the main street. If I ever found out what they were made of, I probably wouldn’t touch them with a well greased High Peak Canal barge pole, but ignorance is bliss and what you don’t know can’t hurt you. So cliches apart, they were delicious, which is more than can be said for’mushy peas’.
I persuaded my daughter to try them, this could have been a big mistake, it took me ten years to get her to eat ‘frozen peas’. She took one fork-full of mushies and as I was sitting opposite her, it was only her genteel upbringing that prevented me from wearing them. It could take another ten years to get her to look a pea in the face again. I mentioned this to my Yorkshire friend DeeDee today and she loves them, she gave some to her kids and they asked her why the mashed spuds were green.
She also mentioned ‘Pease Pudding’, which I’m ashamed to admit that I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting. Although I do remember the old English rhyme.
Pease Pudding hot
Pease Pudding cold
Pease Pudding in a pot
Five days old.
Which apparently refers to them throwing peas into a pot and keeping it on and off the boil, don’t ask me who ‘them’ were, look it up on Google, I’m too idle.
We then got on to discussing other offal things like ‘kidneys’, ‘brains’, ‘hearts’ and ‘tripe’, but I don’t want you to lose your last meal, so I’ll leave it there.
I ate a portion of cod and chips from ‘Andy’s Chippy’ in Swadlincote, which got an award for being the 2nd best chippy in the UK. The fish was superb but the chips were ordinary at best.
To get away from Chippies, I mostly ate at Pubs and Pub food these days is a revelation. It used to be pies and pasties, pickled eggs and peanuts. If you were really lucky you might have scored a dried-up sausage roll.
These days you can get everything from Thai food (which seems to be a bit of a favourite) through Chinese, Indian (of course) and the Olde English favourites. Roast Beef, Steak and Kidney Puddings, Gammon Steak, Ploughman’s Lunch with Pork Pies and cheeses, Liver/Bacon/onions. Not to mention various Continental dishes.
They varied in quality but were mostly very good, they have to be, because that’s how the Pubs make their money nowadays, since smoking was banned.
I was also lucky enough to stumble on a cafeteria at Morrison’s Supermarket in Swadlincote. Now, I’m not saying that the food served up there was exactly gourmet stuff, but when you’re like me and ‘eat to live’ rather than ‘live to eat’, their food is excellent value for money.
I normally only eat two meals a day, one at around 11:00am and the other at 7:00pm. A ‘Quick Start’ (I think that’s what it was called) brunch of ‘Egg, bacon, sausage, tomato and fried bread’ for two pounds seventy pee, was a great ‘start’ to the day, I wasn’t too impressed with the bread, it was too greasy and always a crust.
I did sample their excellent roast beef sandwiches on occasion, with a bit of salad, which was great with a cup of capuccino (no baristas there, out of a machine!). I once had the braised-liver, onions, mash and peas. O.K. but I can think of better brunches. (I am however in the process of cooking some up, with bacon for the family dinner tonight).
Overall, I liked English food and as an average shit-kicker, rather than an epicurean, I was more than happy with the grub served up.
Cheers for now,
SkyBlueSkull
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