Even today, well-brought-up English girls are taught by their mothers to boil all veggies for at least a month and a half, just in case one of the dinner guests turns up without his teeth.
Calvin Trillin
The Home Audience has returned from weeks of work and a few hours of play in green and lovely England, and among my souvenirs has brought me a word-nerdy treasure. He has brought me the knowledge that much like the peoples of the frozen North have entire vocabularies devoted to the description of snow, the English have seven separate words for rain.
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| Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.... |
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| Bamburg Castle. Really. for real. A fully functional castle. With a dungeon and a gift shop and everything. |
The Full English Breakfast:
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| Well, I forgot the baked beans, forgot the bacon, and we don't have black pudding, so this English Breakfast is really only half full. Or maybe it's half empty... |
Scrambled eggs, Fried eggs, fried tomatoes, fried mushrooms, fried sausages ( noticing a pattern here?) and in their dazzling this-house debut:
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| TATTIE SCONES!!!! |
Let's count the reasons to love tattie scones
1. The name. Tattie (rhymes with batty) is a nickname for potato. I like food, I love breakfast, and I adore nicknames- nicknamed breakfast food? This is about as fun as a meal can get without a box full of sugar and the addition of tropical-colored food dyes.
2. The gluten free-ness. The recipe calls for a cup or so of flour, but with most of the work being done by potatoes, the substitution of a gluten free flour mix doesn't change a single important thing
3. The taste and texture. Something like a potato pancake or potato gnocchi turned into a biscuit.
4. The way they use up leftover mashed potatoes.
And mashed potatoes, if slang and nicknames followed rules of logic, should be called mushy tatties.
Except that sounds all kinds of unappetizing.
Of course, mushy peas also sound all kinds of unappetizing. So gross, in fact, that they almost weren't invited to Wednesday night's fish and chips party. A commitment to authenticity prevailed, and am I ever glad! Mushy peas are so yummy! They are so yummy that after two bites, their name becomes cute and comforting. Perhaps all they need is a marketing genius strong enough to help them leap the Atlantic, and perhaps they, as so many immigrants did, should change their name. If Pomme frites can cross the ocean and turn into French Fries, can mushy peas turn into Mashed Peas? Here they are with both the oven baked fish and chips and the beer batter fish.
It's all well and good to eat like the castle-dwelling English of yore if one lives like the English of yore- if one is prone to walking half the day on the moors, or riding to hound, if one is spending 19 hours a day hard at work being the salt of the earth, or a miner of it's coal or a tiller of its soil.
Even the straight backed beauties of English legend could eat a legendary breakfast and maintain a willowy figure, what with all that constant gathering of rosebuds while they mayest.
This may be the menu that created a power of world conquering proportions, but when the world one has to conquer is a modern one, eating English style too often makes one take on the shape of a potato. And not just any potato, but a potato from whom all the stiffening starch has oozed. One feels full and stodgy, and understands why English of the aristocratic set sometimes float across the channel for something light and French.
So what's a legend to do when it's threatened with antiquation? Is the full cooked breakfast the next member of the support group for the superseded?:
Nope.
A real legend remembers what made it a legend. In the case of English food, that would be a straightforward, unpretentious, home-grown way to feed hard working people.
A real legend keeps serving up the stuff of legend.
Even if the serving changes style. Case in point? Smitten kitchen's favorite breakfast in England, Spinach Pizzettes
See? A simple protein, a stalwart veg, and some starch to mop it up with. Yummy. And if you use frozen spinach and a ready made crust, an easy straightforward way to feed hard-working peeps.
Legends change, and legends stay the same.
And I hope that this week, it's the same for you.
I hope that you know and understand
the things that make you amazing.
And if ever once you wonder
whether there's still space in this world
for the best you have to offer,
I hope you'll look deeply into the fires that make your life
the wild, precious thing it is,
and know that the passion, curiosity, wisdom and love
that form the core of you
3. The taste and texture. Something like a potato pancake or potato gnocchi turned into a biscuit.
4. The way they use up leftover mashed potatoes.
And mashed potatoes, if slang and nicknames followed rules of logic, should be called mushy tatties.
Except that sounds all kinds of unappetizing.
Of course, mushy peas also sound all kinds of unappetizing. So gross, in fact, that they almost weren't invited to Wednesday night's fish and chips party. A commitment to authenticity prevailed, and am I ever glad! Mushy peas are so yummy! They are so yummy that after two bites, their name becomes cute and comforting. Perhaps all they need is a marketing genius strong enough to help them leap the Atlantic, and perhaps they, as so many immigrants did, should change their name. If Pomme frites can cross the ocean and turn into French Fries, can mushy peas turn into Mashed Peas? Here they are with both the oven baked fish and chips and the beer batter fish.
 |
| In a tail to tail match up, the oven fried fish scored a surprising victory. No kidding- it really was more full of flavor than the deep fried versifison. And did I mention mushy peas |
Even the straight backed beauties of English legend could eat a legendary breakfast and maintain a willowy figure, what with all that constant gathering of rosebuds while they mayest.
 |
| Hmm. Well, maybe not just the gathering of rosebuds. |
This may be the menu that created a power of world conquering proportions, but when the world one has to conquer is a modern one, eating English style too often makes one take on the shape of a potato. And not just any potato, but a potato from whom all the stiffening starch has oozed. One feels full and stodgy, and understands why English of the aristocratic set sometimes float across the channel for something light and French.
 |
| an omelette maybe. or a nice little salad. |
Nope.
A real legend remembers what made it a legend. In the case of English food, that would be a straightforward, unpretentious, home-grown way to feed hard working people.
A real legend keeps serving up the stuff of legend.
Even if the serving changes style. Case in point? Smitten kitchen's favorite breakfast in England, Spinach Pizzettes
See? A simple protein, a stalwart veg, and some starch to mop it up with. Yummy. And if you use frozen spinach and a ready made crust, an easy straightforward way to feed hard-working peeps.
Legends change, and legends stay the same.
And I hope that this week, it's the same for you.
I hope that you know and understand
the things that make you amazing.
And if ever once you wonder
whether there's still space in this world
for the best you have to offer,
I hope you'll look deeply into the fires that make your life
the wild, precious thing it is,
and know that the passion, curiosity, wisdom and love
that form the core of you
 |
| will never be obsolete. |
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