Chicken n mushroom pies are awesome. Awe-some! But pub grub homemade or bakershop ones are usually better than shop-bought. Otherwise it can be mushroom and chicken sauce pie, with not much chicken!
Blame my misinformation on having watched too many Victorian/Edwardian-era films and TV shows in whch British characters refer to Italians as "garlic eaters."
According to an article in the infallible The Guardian, garlic is now "king" in the British kitchen.
Then why isn't mustard included with the red and brown sauces on restaurant tables? Huh? Huh?
Funny how "Yellow mustard" is derided for how mild it is yet red sauce and brown sauce don't suffer that same discrimination. Our wonderful, classic yellow mustard is but one of a limitless number of mustards available here. I adore a spicy mustard spiked with horseradish or any other hot-inclined seasoning. The Brits are known for their love of curry, so at least spicy food isn't treated like some homely mustard relative.
It's true mustard isn't as common in greasy spoon type cafes as ketchup and brown sauce, though usually available if asked for. However on hot dog and hamburger stands in markets, fairs and late night town centres you do get yellow mustard in line with the other two. In fact now there's a pile of stuff these days. Visit any branch of the pub chain Wetherspoons, and you get all the main saces.
I dispute for my own tastes that mayo and salad cream pollute anything. This sounds like the belief of a condiment avoider of whom I know a few actually. Not a massive brown sauce fan personally, unless it's the fruitier variety that's basically the same stuff that surrounds Branston pickle. Wife wouldn't have a bacon sandwich without the HP type.
And whilst pork pie meat might LOOK like Spam, it sure as hell ain't. Many believe that it's usually rubbish that goes into pork pies, and maybe some cheap supermarket examples may be like this, but a decent butcher's pie like my faves above are pure pork shoulder, as an ex-butcher drinking buddy of mine tells me. I suspect our Barnsley area pies are different to the famous Melton Mowbray. The meat inside the latter is gray, ours is pink - yes like Spam. However this is because MM ones use uncured meat, ours uses cured. So it's pink like ham and bacon.
Btw, I do like a bit of Spam when the mood takes me, especially fried with eggs and baked beans. Very popular in British cafes. In chip shops where it is fried in batter as a Spam fritter.
I used to eat a lot of those shop bought chicken and mushroom pies from chip shops as a kid. They were indeed mainly sauce, but I figured I was 'slumming it' anyway. Chip shop curry sauce doesn't have much to it either but if it's just an accompaniment to a quick takeaway meal, it's fine.
There's no good pork pie only tv Desmond's - the quality of meat no matter how much you pay is still crap cuts, you see that white shit in the meat too that jelly preserves mainly the meat coz its crap.
If sausage rolls are not home-made forget it i don't eat bulk-sausages - nothing like a baguette with seasoned sausages tucker like that over greasy pastry tastes better stick those onions into belly-filler
If sausage rolls are not home-made forget it i don't eat bulk-sausages - nothing like a baguette with seasoned sausages tucker like that over greasy pastry tastes better stick those onions into belly-filler
So pie and mash is just a London thing? Small country, vast differences, it would seem.
There are a few pie and mash shops here in Kent. One opened in Rochester, where I work, just last year. I took my mum, who had never had pie and mash before. It was decent but not up to London standard. They also did jellied eels. Ugghh.
I dispute for my own tastes that mayo and salad cream pollute anything. This sounds like the belief of a condiment avoider of whom I know a few actually. Not a massive brown sauce fan personally, unless it's the fruitier variety that's basically the same stuff that surrounds Branston pickle. Wife wouldn't have a bacon sandwich without the HP type.
A little mayo can work wonders on a sandwich, but it can also overwhelm, like xebec in "What Movie Did You Watch?"
HP I always have at the ready. It's sweeter and not as salty as our similar "Heinz 57" sauce, which I no longer like. HP does a bang-up job complementing those American baked beans Rameau dislikes, as does the yellow mustard you hate because it cuts the brown sugar sweetness in those beans.
I'll make it a point to try some salad cream on my next bacon sandwich, though I am gradually (gradually!) phasing out pork and beef from my diet.
So pie and mash is just a London thing? Small country, vast differences, it would seem.
There are a few pie and mash shops here in Kent. One opened in Rochester, where I work, just last year. I took my mum, who had never had pie and mash before. It was decent but not up to London standard. They also did jellied eels. Ugghh.
Yeah, and I see from the above that at one time the traditional liquor was made from the water held over from stewed eels!!! Blimey, a serious Ugghh! Mind, if cooked eels are no worse than say, baked cod I can almost see this working. On the rare occasion I've made cod and parsley sauce I've used the milk from the poached cod..
Mind, we northerners do have black pudding, and I've never seen the attraction here with it's composition being congealed pigs blood and fat.
I do remember eating tripe - the edible lining of a cow's stomach folks! - as a little kid when my dad used to take me to Sheffield's Castle Market, along with the seafood served at other stalls. But there was a gap when I didn't go and the next time I saw it.. not for me! Even worse, my grandma used to sit watching tv eating the same thing from a pig, with the ever so enticing name of pig bag. It was grey and looked like a floor cloth that hadn't been washed for a while. It was eaten with chitterlings, the small intestine. "Pig bag and chittle" she used to call it. LOL!
On the baked bean front I do know that our UK version has a nicer appearance I think, with it's red tomato sauce base. On my early visits to Canada I remember theirs were a browish colour and often said "with bacon" on the label, but this was a mere trace, possible meant to be for extra flavour. Is this because they're meant to be like bbq beans? I have made Boston Baked Beans which included all manner of things, and were very pleasant.
The brand leader here has always been Heinz, but there are of course many others - HP and Cross and Blackwell when I was a kid - and we buy own branded from the supermarket. They are a staple of the British working man's tea (supper to you US folks), and the great traditional Full English Breakfast.
I used to choose the store brand over the name brand. That is, until I compared the salt content. Mind you, this was only on jars of pickles, but the store brand had considerably more salt than the name brand; I apologize for sounding like a commercial.
I dispute for my own tastes that mayo and salad cream pollute anything. This sounds like the belief of a condiment avoider of whom I know a few actually. Not a massive brown sauce fan personally, unless it's the fruitier variety that's basically the same stuff that surrounds Branston pickle. Wife wouldn't have a bacon sandwich without the HP type.
A little mayo can work wonders on a sandwich, but it can also overwhelm, like xebec in "What Movie Did You Watch?"
HP I always have at the ready. It's sweeter and not as salty as our similar "Heinz 57" sauce, which I no longer like. HP does a bang-up job complementing those American baked beans Rameau dislikes, as does the yellow mustard you hate because it cuts the brown sugar sweetness in those beans.
I'll make it a point to try some salad cream on my next bacon sandwich, though I am gradually (gradually!) phasing out pork and beef from my diet.
Mmm, now I would't say salad cream is a natural companion to bacon, though I do actually have them together on a BLT...
Mmm, now I would't say salad cream is a natural companion to bacon, though I do actually have them together on a BLT...
A character on To the Manor Born mentions how Richard Devere's "Cavendish Foods" supermarket chain salad cream would go well with bacon sandwiches. TV dictates everything I say, do, and think, so salad cream on a bacon sandwich "must" be delicious.
Mmm, now I would't say salad cream is a natural companion to bacon, though I do actually have them together on a BLT...
A character on To the Manor Born mentions how Richard Devere's "Cavendish Foods" supermarket chain salad cream would go well with bacon sandwiches. TV dictates everything I say, do, and think, so salad cream on a bacon sandwich "must" be delicious.
Salad Cream on BLT works, though i still have to have HP on it too.
