A guest list, by Martin Butler; stand-up comedian, gourmand, and Adrianne‘s room mate).
My dad is British. He’s used to eating weird, disgusting food with strange names. Here’s a list of 8 favorites (or, favourites, as he’d spell):
8. Bubble & Squeak. A fancy type of leftover vegetables, if you call pan-frying boiled cabbage and carrots fancy. To this day, this is usually my old man’s Monday dinner, in addition to cold cuts of leftover meat. He enjoys his Sunday roast, but I think he likes the leftovers better. He still thinks he’s rationing for the war effort.
7. Eggs & Soldiers. A breakfast dish. You take a soft boiled egg (the aforementioned “egg” in the title) and place it in an egg holder so it stands up. Crack the top the egg with the back of your spoon and peel enough of the top shell and cooked egg white away until you’ve exposed the runny yolk. Then you dip strips of buttered toast (the “soldiers”) into the yolk and enjoy. When the toast and yolk is all gone, you peel the rest of the egg and eat it, too. Unless you’re a child, in which case you’re likely to leave the egg white behind. I did.
6. Ploughman’s Lunch. A staple British pub lunch. All it is is a piece of crusty bread, a wedge of sharp cheese and some sort of chutney. Have you ever met an actual Ploughman? No, because they all died of starvation or malnutrition. This is something you’d whip up at home when you were out of actual foodstuffs, nothing you should seek out at a genuine foodservice establishment. No matter how many ales you’ve consumed.
5. Black Pudding. In the history of misleading names for British dishes, this one wins. It’s not really pudding. It’s dried blood sausage. Yes, dried blood. In a natural sausage casing. Just dried blood. Served like any pork sausage, minus the pork. Unless it’s pork blood.
4. Marmite on Toast. Outside of Britain and former British colonies, no one really knows what Marmite is and no one really cares. So here’s a quick primer on Marmite (or Vegemite, in Australia. Same thing). It’s a by-product of the beer-brewing industry, officially a yeast extract. It’s a deep, deep brown tar-like substance that could just as easily be the by-product of a smoker’s lungs. It has a very savory taste; think soy sauce or Maggi sauce. Very strong stuff. My dad smears this stuff on buttered toast and loves it. In his honor, I’m going to invent a Marmite steak sauce for him to enjoy.
3. Toad In The Hole. The “toads” are sausages. Preferably pork sausages; feel free to use black pudding if you want to be disappointed. The toads are baked in their “hole,” which is a batter that turns to a cooked dough when heat is applied, like most good batters should. I suppose, lacking a photo, the best way to describe Toad In The Hole would be like Pigs In A Blanket, if all the Pigs decided to lay on top of their Blankets in a communal setting, like a slumber party or an Independence Day firework display.
2. Spotted Dick. You’ve already heard of this one and giggled at the name, but have you ever heard of…
1. Faggots and Gravy. Yes, this is the name of a real British dish and not the name of an improv troupe. Faggots, as a food item, are ground meat items usually made with the least-desirable parts of an animal, traditionally hogs. Maybe a bit like hot dogs, but with livers and hearts, and often times made into meatballs with onions and breadcrumbs. My dad says the best faggots are incredibly tender (I know, stop it!) and served in gravy, like Swedish meatballs.
On a final note, despite England’s notorious love of beef, all the aforementioned dishes do not include beef. That doesn’t mean beef should necessarily be excluded from any above meal; in fact, a quarter pound of quality deli sliced roast beef and some horseradish would turn the Ploughman’s Lunch into one hell of a sandwich.
