It’s all a bit “you say potayto, I say potarto” for me…
The denizens of the frozen north may claim foods as “northern”, but a Lancashire Hotpot is pretty much the same as a hotpot anywhere else in the UK… i.e. veg and meat chucked inna pot and cooked until you can’t taste what it was originally.
We leave 'em to it though… they have so little else to live for that rhapsodizing over the relative merits of “barm cakes” and “stotty wossnames” is one of the few pleasure left available to them
And for all the winkle-haters out there, they ain’t so very different to cockles from Morecambe Bay (both are grotty, gritty pieces of salty inner tube, passed off by hopeful merchants as a gourmet dish, as far as I can tell).
e-Logic
(whose recent move to the Midlands requires the learning of a whole new language)
I’m sure you’re right - most molluscs are better eaten without looking too closely at them - but winkles just look like bogies (and in view of this, it’s surprising that small boys don’t relish them).
Can we claim meat pies up north? I know they are eaten all across the country, but I am sure I have read that we eat more per person on average (particularly in Wigan, or anywhere I happen to be living).
A couple of friends from Preston, Lancs have introduced me to their version of the “Meat Pie Floater”… a meat pie (note: the “meat” is usually unspecified!) placed lovingly upsidedown in a bowl of thick gravy.
The Aussies do something similar with mushy peas and ketchup, but the northern english version was a bit purer.
By ‘eck lad tha’s pushin’ tha luck ‘ere. Youse wanna watch it me owd cock or me an’ t’lads ull be round t’sort thissen out wi’ a few knuckle butties, bah gum.
Hmm… I copied & pasted that into babelfish and selected “english” as the required language, but it couldn’t find a match.
Just kept mentioning something about “chips on shoulders” and “pints of gravy” :dubious:
For the record, my mother is a scouser, so visits to my nan’s house were always culinary adventures.
Not sure if anyone’s mentioned “scouse” yet - Lobscouse - Wikipedia - although at my nan’s we used to get “blind scouse”, which is the same dish without the meat.
"I say old chap please be very careful what you say otherwise me and my very dearest friends shall be obliged to call upon you and engage in some fisticuffs.
As the (unwitting) instigator of this round of north-south bitchery, let me say that my observation is simply that “northern” cuisine is the same as “southern / western / welsh” etc food, just with different names.
So I’m not sure there’s much - nomenclature aside - that can be claimed as authentically “northern”, as you’ll find the same thing (or a close variation of it) in other parts of the UK (all of whom would be amazed to learn that someone else was “laying claim” to a particular dish)
I’m tempted to head off for some local oysters & smoked eel in Orford, or maybe get something fresh from the fishermen on Aldeburgh beach, just to spite you
What sort of “meat pies”? (When I first heard of a “pork pie” I assumed it was like a chicken pot pie but made with pork; apparently it’s something very different, a rather gelatinous dish served cold.)
Jellied Eels are (AFAIK) confined to Southern England.
In the North, the poverty stricken downtrodden, satanic mills North, we have Cowheel and Pigs Trotters to sustain us through the winter.
Then when spring/summer arrives we generally hunt Haggis altho’ these rascals are in danger of extinction because of the influx, from the South, of the feared and ferocious Whelk.
