All Hail British Cuisine

By Stephen Bugno

Enough from the nay-sayers! British food is good!

It is time for the unfavorable reputation of English cuisine to end. In my 20 days in England, I didn’t have a bad meal. The most memorable were the home cooked meals I had in Yorkshire and pub food in the cities and across the countryside.

The Full English Breakfast

Baked beans for breakfast?! What a great idea. Add fried eggs, bacon, fried potatoes, mushrooms, a tomato, bread and butter, HP Sauce, and of course, tea with milk. Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a gentleman, and supper like a pauper.

Yorkshire Pudding

Not an easy one to reproduce back home. I’m still trying to get the right amount of oil to the right temperature in the oven. But this is how it’s supposed to look. Best served with  a traditional Sunday roast.

Shepherd’s Pie

An English dish that needs no introduction. Traditionally put together with leftover lamb from the Sunday meal. The one I helped make was made with ground beef, so technically it was a cottage pie.

Cornish Pasties

Although I’ve never been to Cornwall, the Yorkshire version was quite delicious. These convenient, pocket-sized pasties were originally made by women for their menfolk to take down into the tin mine. Filled with beef, onions, and potato, they are perfect right out of the oven.

Cask Ale

Find the best in Yorkshire. Cask ale, or real ale, is unfiltered and unpasteurised beer which is conditioned and served from a cask, usually without additional nitrogen or carbon dioxide pressure. There was a movement started back in the 1970’s to promote and revitalize these real ales that continues today. The best I tasted was Black Sheep’s Best Bitter or those from Theakston Brewery

Toad in the hole

This one I didn’t eat until I returned home and was served up by some Anglophile friends in North Carolina. It’s a simple dish: just sausages with Yorkshire pudding cooked around it…. What could be better than that? But no one seems to to know where the name comes from.

Fish and Chips. England has the best fish and chips in the world. Yorkshire has the best fish and chips in England. Whitby has the best fish and chips in Yorkshire. There you have it, the best fish and chips in the world. Go to Whitby.