What food & beverages are Brits famous for? Quick brainstorm. (30 seconds later) Got scones, pasty (Pastete), tea, fry-up (üppiges Frühstück), chips, pie (Pastete) & mash (mashed potatoes=Kartoffelbrei) and porridge (Haferbrei) on your list?
The yummy (Lecker) / yucky (eklig) things above depending on your point of view star in an excellent article by the BBC about how dishes differ throughout the UK (see link) http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-43372765
If you don’t have time to read it, don’t worry, here are 5 things I learnt from the article:
Cornwall and Devon (neighbouring counties) in the SW of England are particularly passionate about the differences in their scones and pastry.
In Devon, locals expect to bite into their scones with a layer of jam and then cream on top. In Cornwall, it’s the exact opposite as the National Trust found out the hard way as an advert showed scones with cream – rather than jam – dolloped on first. Forget intercultural awareness we need interregional awareness!!
Cornish pasties are to Cornwall like (Bavarian) veal sausages aka Weisswurst are to Bavaria. According to (Gemäß) Cornish pasty tradition, there are made in a D shape and crimped on the side. In Devon, on the other hand, their pasty is crimped on the top and CAN, shock, horror, include carrots. I don’t know what the Cornish people have against carrots, but there you go.
Let’s zoom out and take a more global look at culinary art UK. The ‘Full English Breakfast‘ aka ‘fry-up‘ has mouth-watering bacon (Speck), eggs (fried = Spiegelei or scrambled = Rühreier), fried tomatoes, hash browns (like Rösti), black pudding (blutwurst), toast as well as the food every German licks their lips when they hear the name, of course, baked beans!! In different regions they add or take away to magnificent list of artery clogging (hemmend) yummies. In Northern Ireland, they replace hash browns with potato bread aka farls (add recipe). Scotland have something similar called ‘tattie scone‘ and sometimes slices of fried Haggis. The Welsh go one step further by offering laverbread, which is boiled, minced (kleingeschnitten) or pureed (püriert) seaweed (Meersalgen) coated in oatmeal (mit Hafermehl überzogen). Sounds a bit dodgy (verdächtig) to me, anyone ever tried it?
When the chips are down, the northeners cover theirs NOT in salt & vinegar with a choice of red sauce i.e. ketchup/mayonnaise or brown sauce aka HP sauce (britische Würzsauce aus den Schoten des Tamarindenbaums) like in most of the rest of the UK – but with GRAVY (Bratensauce). Yummy I hear you cry, but as a northerner myself I feel my mouth starting to water and pangs of hunger (quälender Hunger) set in as I write these words.
Finally, to an arguably more healthy breakfast – porridge. In most parts porridge is made with milk and finished off with some fruit, sugar or syrup. However, Scottish traditionalists keep it simple – ONLY oats, water and salt.
Hope you enjoyed this little culinary journey around the UK.