Britain's forgotten foods are back
From Yorkshire cheese pastries to Fidget pie and 150-year-old lemon curd buns...
REMEMBER when British food was ridiculed abroad and we Brits were pitied for our overboiled veg and lumpy puddings?
Well, no longer. a new poll by Elite Traveler magazine has put Britain third in a list of top culinary destinations in the world, (only the U.s. and France beat it), with eight of our restaurants making the list of the 100 Best Restaurants in the World.
Perfect timing, then, for M&s to launch its British-themed summer range, Tastes Of The British Isles. Unveiled exclusively here today, as the first of the new products go on sale (they’ll all be on the shelves by april 27), the range is designed to ‘put the British Isles back on the food map for 2015’, says M&s.
Its product developers have spent the past year travelling the length and breadth of the country, talking to small producers and poring over historical recipe books to find the most interesting, unusual and delicious foods they can.
some of them date back centuries: the shropshire Fidget Pork Pie, which contains apples, was invented 400 years ago. Others, like the Ploughmans-inspired Cheese & Pickle Burger, are a new twist on an old idea.
Recipes have come from all over Britain: ship’s biscuits flavoured with laver seaweed from Pembrokeshire, crab claws from Orkney, cheeses from Wookey Hole in somerset and tomato chutney from the Isle of Wight.
We went behind the scenes with M&s to discover its secrets...
JUMBO SAUSAGE ROLL
WHEN farmer’s daughter gill Ridgard couldn’t find a ready-made savoury pastry good enough to make pies with, she taught herself.
Word spread about the quality of her pastry, and in 2008 her company, Yorkshire Baker, was born in the pretty town of Malton.
In 2011, gill wrote to M&s saying she thought she could make better pastry for its sausage rolls and pies. a tasting was organised, the M&s food developers agreed with her — and now Yorkshire Baker produces a whole range of pastry products for the chain.
For the Tastes Of The British Isles range, gill has created M&s’ biggest ever sausage roll.
The Ultimate Pulled Pork sausage Roll is made with slow- cooked pulled pork (that’s been shredded with a fork), red onion jam and a sauce made with ale. Weighing more than half a kilo, it’s big enough for two people to share as a main course. serve it with a dab of mustard and a sharp green salad.
Ultimate Pulled Pork Sausage Roll, £7/540g.
THE 150-YEAR-OLD BUNS
In THE late 1800s, Elizabeth Botham, a mother of 13 children and stepchildren, was a familiar sight around Whitby in north Yorkshire. a talented baker, she was often seen with a basket of buns on her arm and a few children hanging onto her skirts as she dispensed her sugary treats to fishermen and their families.
In 1865 she opened a little bakery in skinner street, set a couple of streets back from Whitby harbour, and her lemon buns soon had such a reputation that people would flock there just for them.
a century and a half later, and the buns are still on sale in Whitby, where grateful customers appreciate them just as they did then.
now M&s is bringing them to the masses with its Lemon Curd Whitby Buns — soft buns made with sultanas and lemon zest, filled with a zesty lemon curd and hand- decorated with lemon- flavoured soft icing.
Lemon Curd Whitby Buns, £1.30 for two.
MEDICINAL LIQUORICE
ORIGINALLY called Pomfret cakes, after the norman name for the West Yorkshire town of Pontefract, these chewy rounds of liquorice date back to 1760, when a local chemist, george Dunhill, mixed liquorice (then seen as medicinal) with some sugar.
Dunhill, whose family rented the land where the old Pontefract castle had stood so they could grow liquorice, started producing the lozenges in a round shape with a picture of the castle stamped onto them, and they took off.
M&s believe these little black sweets will be huge this summer, and have found a small- scale confectionery company based in Pontefract to produce them.
Pontefract Cakes, £1.10 for a 160g bag.
JAM TARTS MADE BY SIX BROTHERS
NORTHERN Irish baker Joe McErlain and his wife Roberta began their business in 1968 with a bread cart in the hallway of their home in the town of Magherafelt, Ireland.
Roberta had a daughter and six sons, each of whom was put to work once they were 11, doing a couple of hours in the bakery before school.
now, astonishingly, all the children bar one ( daughter Joanne, who works in a different industry in Belfast) have elected to work for the family business. Each has a specific job, such as finance director or master baker, so there are no fallouts.
The business, now known as the genesis Crafty Bakery, produces jam tartlets with strawberry, raspberry, and lemon curd fillings for M&s. a traditional British treat that has
fallen out of favour, they are predicted by M&S to become a revived family favourite this summer.
Four Handcrafted Jam Tarts, £1.50.
CORONATION CHICKEN … BUT NOT AS YOU KNOW IT!
SOME of the team’s best ideas are new versions of old favourites, and its two inventions based on traditional coronation chicken are both fun and rather tempting.
Created in 1953 for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, this dish of cold poached chicken in a mildly curried mayonnaise became a British classic.
For its new summer range, Marks & Spencer wanted to bring it up to date, so it took the key ingredients of cooked chicken and spiced sauce and came up two new twists on the traditional dish.
Thus was born the Coronation Chicken Sausage Roll, flavoured with mango chutney and curry spices and wrapped in poppy-seed all-butter puff pastry; and its sibling, the Coronation Prawn Cocktail, in which juicy prawns are folded into a mildly curried sauce.
Coronation Chicken Sausage Roll, 59p each, Coronation Prawn Cocktail, £2.50 for 200g.
YORKSHIRE BLUE CHEESE
PHARMACIST-turned-farmer’s wife Judy Bell wanted to buy a flock of sheep to make cheese from their milk. But one problem stood in her way: her husband nigel’s dislike of sheep.
nevertheless, in the great tradition of wives everywhere, she got her own way, convincing him that there would be a market. and in 1989 she bought her sheep and started milking. over the next few years she finessed a range of cheeses named Shepherd’s Purse made with their milk, adding cheese made with local cows’ milk, as well. in 2013, she began supplying Yorkshire Blue to m&S, the first blue cheese to be made in Yorkshire for more than 30 years. now she and her daughters Katie and Caroline, who have taken over the family firm, are producing two more cheeses for the Tastes of The British isles range.
Bluemin White has a blue rind, a nutty flavour and smooth creamy texture, while Yorkshire fettle is a ewe’s milk cheese with a fresh taste and a soft, crumbly texture.
Bluemin White cheese, £4 for 180g; Yorkshire Fettle cheese, £4.50 for 150g.
THE WHITSUNTIDE PUDDING
WHIT SUNDAY is the seventh Sunday after easter, also known as Pentecost, when the coming of the holy Spirit to the disciples was celebrated.
The first holiday of the summer, it was traditionally a time for celebration; and in Yorkshire, villages used up their curds left over from cheesemaking to produce a curd tart.
made around Whitsunday, with shortcrust pastry filled with curds blended with lemon-soaked currants, it was a classic Yorkshire baked cheesecake. every family would have their own recipe, dating back to times when families had their own cow and nothing was wasted.
Yorkshire Curd Tart, £4 for a 405g pudding.