British Cooking

So... since you have lived here, what are your favourite local dishes that you discovered and wondered how you ever lived without? I have to say, I really love British cooking... honestly. I don't understand how people say the food is bad! Some local things that I love:

Pease pudding (my FIL makes this, and it's sooo good on ham sandwiches - it's just yellow split peas boiled with water into a sort of paste, and I'm told this is definitely a northeast England thing)

Broth, as it's called up here - thick soup with ham, lentils, potatoes, peas, barley and whatever else you want to throw in. I don't know if this is specific to our area or not. (Not the soup, but calling it broth, I guess, might be a local thing. Not sure.)

My mother in law's corned beef pie - who knew that a tin of corned beef mixed with mashed potatoes and baked with shortcrust pastry on a plate could be so darn tasty!

Pie in broth - oh yeah, toss a slice of that corned beef pie into a shallow bowl and top with the broth mentioned above and it's out of sight! Honestly! I think it's a local thing. My MIL does this, but I've also had it at DH's friend's mam's house. There was a huge group of us scarfing it down... it disappeared quick!

So many other things.... the haggis and whiskey cream pie I had in Scotland blew my mind. It was the best tasting thing that ever passed my lips, I think!

Curry, curry & more curry!

Sunday roasts with Yorkshire puddings & gravy & all

Bangers & mash plus gravy

Eating locally raised or grown, fresh food

Trifle

I'll have to say that I'm still not a fan of warm, steamed puddings - or warm custard.  Cold custard is great though.  I prefer American-style desserts to British ones.

I like a nice roast pork joint (shoulder/leg/belly doesn't really matter) with roast veggies. I just season & cook the joint for an hour and then throw the veggies and a few quartered onions into the dish with the joint for the last hour...simple & easy.  If you want gravy, take the roast veggies & joint out of the roasting pan, leaving the onions, mash up the onion , add a little flour to the drippings & add a bit of cream or milk (even water works) and whisk while heating on the hob then use a coarse strainer to get the large bits out of the gravy. I have to admit I stole this one from Jamie Oliver.

I also like Faggots & Mash...another easy one.

I'll have to say that I'm still not a fan of warm, steamed puddings - or warm custard.  Cold custard is great though.  I prefer American-style desserts to British ones.

As a little English girl in England, I never liked steamed puddings either. Blech. But I still love other British desserts - lovely apple/blackberry crumble, gooseberry fool, pavlova, etc.! Oh, and pouring cream on everything! Yum!

I'm pretty sure I've seen pease pudding (or also called pease porridge?) at Tesco and Sainsburys at the deli counter. Never had it though!

I don't know about local, but you can't go wrong with bangers and mash, shepherds or cottage pie, or any of the other pies (chicken and mushroom, ham and leek, etc).

My all-time favorite, though, has to be a Devon Cream Tea. Yummy!

My all-time favorite, though, has to be a Devon Cream Tea. Yummy!

Indeed!

First time I ate so much that I gave myself a stomach ache.

As a little English girl in England, I never liked steamed puddings either. Blech. But I still love other British desserts - lovely apple/blackberry crumble, gooseberry fool, pavlova, etc.! Oh, and pouring cream on everything! Yum!

Oh yes - I like crumbles & pouring cream, but I'd had versions of those in the US too!

My all-time favorite, though, has to be a Devon Cream Tea. Yummy!

Don't you mean a Cornish cream tea?  

Oh yes - I like crumbles & pouring cream, but I'd had versions of those in the US too!

But you hadn't had curry or trifle?  

I think British food has a bad reputation not because there's anything wrong with the food itself, but because it is often so indifferently prepared.  My MIL overcooks EVERYTHING, from roasts to puddings to veg to garlic bread.  It's not that she thinks it needs to be overcooked, either, she just doesn't care.  She and FIL like their beef well done, which is fine, but there are methods of cooking that would keep a well-done roast moist, and she just doesn't bother.  It's not exclusive to her, either, every time we have a carvery it's the same thing--dry, tough meat and mushy veg.  A good roast with all the trimmings is really, really good, but it's got to be cooked right.  

That said, I love lots of the food here:  curry (which I had in the US, but there's so much more variety here), cream teas, roast potatoes, fish and chips, mushy peas, jacket potatoes (yeah, just baked potatoes, but it's all about the filling), HobNobs, cherry bakewells, Cadbury's chocolate .... well, I could go on  

But you hadn't had curry or trifle?  

I'd had curry very few times in the US - maybe 3-5 times at most & never knew all its variations.  Never had trifle until I was here.

I guess I was lucky in that I'd had all of the foods mentioned so far in the US - with the exception of pease pudding which I've never had but which sounds lovely!

As a little English girl in England, I never liked steamed puddings either. Blech. But I still love other British desserts - lovely apple/blackberry crumble, gooseberry fool, pavlova, etc.! Oh, and pouring cream on everything! Yum!

Just me being pedantic but Pavlova was first created in NZ, it's not a British dessert.

I don't understand how people say the food is bad!

Same here. 

Just me being pedantic but Pavlova was first created in NZ, it's not a British dessert.

Ooops! I actually thought it was Australian, not from NZ! But I suppose what I meant is that it's a dessert more commonly served in the UK than in the US.

(I like pedantry, so pedant away!) 

...overcooks EVERYTHING....dry, tough meat and mushy veg.

Sounds like the food I grew up eating in the midwestern US!