Eggs and cheese have been a mainstay of
British eating for centuries, making up many a large family meal, bar snack or
savoury. They are enjoyed by rich and poor alike and the recipes of this second
chapter of English Food are cast by
Jane with a very wide net: light soufflés, omelettes (which are as English as
they are French, by the way), patés that use up cheesy odds and ends and rich
savouries enjoyed by ladies.
Cheesemaking and dairy farming used to be a
vital part of British food culture; but when Jane was writing English Food, the masses were having to
buy most of their cheese plastic wrapped in perfect squares in supermarkets. Of
course we still do now, but the cheese aisles are now teeming with real cheeses
too, made traditionally and coming from all over Europe. Parmesan cheese is no
longer found ground and dried and smelling of socks and tasting of nought; the
real McCoy can be found almost anywhere.
In the 1980s cheesemaking was having a
comeback – traditional methods were being used, including the use of
unpasteurised milk. Those who liked proper food propelled what was quite a
niche market of micro-made cheeses right back into the forefront, eventually landing
on our supermarket shelves in large amounts several decades later.
Gloucester Ale & Cheese
We all shop in supermarkets, I certainly don’t
pretend otherwise, but nothing can be better than buying your cheese from a
proper cheese shop or stall. Manchester folk: my two favourites are The
Cheese Hamlet in Didsbury and Winter Tarn. Winter Tarn is a Cumbrian company that seeks out the best British
cheeses and travels around the north of England selling those cheeses in little
markets, and they pop up at Levenshulme Market every week.
Whether it’s farmhouse Cheddar, double Gloucester,
Cornish Yarg or Stinking Bishop you’re after, British cheeses have never been
better, but for the best, then as now, you must look beyond the refrigeration
section of your local Tesco.
In the 1970s and 80s, our eggs were in a
right old state – there was intense over-crowding and the chickens were fed a
meal made from the carcasses of dead birds. Quality of life, and egg, was very
low, and because of the sheer number of chickens in one place, it didn’t take
long for disease to spread. In this case it was the bacterium Salmonella enteriditis (SE) that killed many chickens and
quite a few humans too. Coupling this with the fact that eggs from different
‘farms’ and of different ages were being mixed up together, the source of an
outbreak couldn’t be found readily.
Pickled Eggs
All this was addressed by the British
government in the 1990s – chickens are now vaccinated against SE and with the
introduction of the Lion Quality code, which allows each individual egg to be
easily traced back to its origin, outbreaks could be tackled swiftly. Only one
percent of eggs get contaminated nowadays, and even then the number of bacterial
cells averages out at around 10 per egg – so you’d have to be pretty unlucky to
become ill.
Seftons
personally, only go for free range; I
feel far too guilty about the conditions they have to endure and I can’t bring
myself to buy anything less. The best eggs are those you can get from farmers’
markets, and are usually pretty cheap too.
This chapter contains recipes that have
become a mainstay of my cooking. Of greatest note, is that special combination
of cheese and egg, the soufflé, and Jane’s recipe is a very good and versatile
one. You just can’t beat it, and they are not anywhere as tricky to make as you
might think. There are Glamorgan sausages too (who needs a nasty vegetarian
sausage when you can have these!?) and an 18th Century bacon and egg
pie that transported me right back to my Primary School dinner hall.
A Fricassee of Eggs
There have been lows too, one recipe in
this chapter has achieved my only zero score so far. The English Rarebit was
disgusting: toast soggy with hot red wine, topped with congealed cheese. What
were they thinking!?
As usual, here are all the recipes listed
as they appear in the book with links to each post on the blog with their
score. It turned out to be a pretty average chapter with a mean score of 6.7
(and median and mode of 7.0).
#2
Glamorgan Sausages 6/10
#155
Welsh Rabbit 6.5/10
#75
Lockets Savoury 6.5/10
#351
Potted Cheese 7/10
#138
Cheese Soufflé 8.5/10
#413
Fish Soufflé 9/10
#214
Meat Soufflé 8.5/10
#229
Vegetable Soufflé 8.5/10
#57
Asparagus Omelette 6.5/10
#407 Seftons 8/10
#232
Pickled Eggs (and
here) 7/10
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