Category Archives: Food

Beside the seaside! Beside the sea!

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On Friday afternoon I was on the tube heading out of Hammersmith when a guy got on holding a bag of chips wrapped in newspaper and by the smell, I am guessing they had been smothered with vinegar and salt.

The smell that filled the entire train was just AMAZING and you could tell that everybody on the train was now envious of this highly unhealthy but mouth-wateringly delicious food.

Skip forward 24 hours and it’s a Saturday morning in January. It is a clear and sunny but very cold day. What are we going to do today?

My mind wandered back to the man with the chips. The thought of chips led my imagination to thoughts of sitting at the end of the pier eating chips from a newspaper because chips (and fish) always taste better at the seaside. Indeed the very smell conjures up images of beaches, amusement arcades and so on.

We’re going to the seaside!

Right now!

An hour later and we are in the wonderful English seaside town that is Skegness. Most of the arcades are closed for the winter but the important thing is that the fish and chip shops are open.

So here’s Sam tucking into a tray of chips in Skegness

Sam eating chips

For my American friends, what you see here are deep fried potato chips covered in something called curry sauce and in Sams case, accompanied by a fish cake. You then sprinkle with liberal amounts of salt and then splash lots of malt vinegar all over the top.

Unless you have been to the UK and tried this for yourself, just like mushy peas, you have no idea what you are missing.

We would have eaten them on the pier except Skegness pier is currently closed

Skegness Pier (closed)

So a quick stroll along the sea front (remember it is January thus whilst the sun is out, it is still cold enough to make your eyes water)

Skegness pier

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And like most people we weren’t brave enough to roll up our trousers and go for a paddle in the sea

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So back in the nice warm car and back home, full of chips eaten beside the seaside, beside the sea.

It’s A Pasty Jim But Not As We Know It

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NOT a Cornish Pasty

I don’t know about you but whenever I think of a Cornish Pasty, I think of something served either from a cart on Kings Cross railway station or from a cabinet in a petrol station. Often the contents are dubious to the point of “best not to look at what’s inside” but normally you eat it because you are miles from anywhere sensible to eat, are in a hurry and 3 hours past what should have been lunchtime.

But there is a lot more to the humble Cornish Pasty than meets the eye. For example, that picture above is NOT a Cornish Pasty at all. It’s a Devon Pasty!

A real Cornish Pasty

This is a Cornish Pasty. Can you see the difference?

Well the Cornish Pasty has just been awarded Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) status after many year of campaigning by some Cornish people which in a nutshell means that to call a Cornish Pasty a Cornish Pasty, it must have been made in Cornwall in the same way that a Melton Mowbray Pork Pie has to hail from Melton Mowbray.

But the campaigners have gone one step further. It’s not just good enough to set up a factory in Cornwall and churn out poor quality motorway food. The new EU ruling has a clear definition that must be followed:

A genuine Cornish pasty has a distinctive ‘D’ shape and is crimped on one side, never on top. The texture of the filling is chunky, made up of uncooked minced or roughly cut chunks of beef (not less than 12.5%), swede, potato, onion with a light seasoning. The pastry casing is golden in colour, savoury, glazed with milk or egg and robust enough to retain its shape throughout the cooking and cooling process without splitting or cracking. The pasty is slow-baked and no artificial flavourings or additives must be used. It must also be made in Cornwall.

So does this now mean the end to those stale pasties being passed off as quality fare at the motorway service stations filled with some grey substance that may or may not be meat?

Unfortunately not. They can still call them pasties just not Cornish Pasties so we should be able to spot by name alone good honest Cornish food from motorway junk.

Likewise, it is allowed for the pasty to be prepared in Cornwall and then baked somewhere else so for those of us living somewhere other than Cornwall, there is still hope.

For more information on Cornish Pasties in general (go on you know you want to) head over to the Cornish Pasty Association (CPA) website which you can find here.

And remember, the next time somebody tries to pass off some pale imitation of a Cornish Pasty that is clearly a Devon Pasty (see you learnt something today didn’t you) just say no!