The meal of the "good luck"

Perhaps you're thinking: “forfar bridies? It must be a mistake, probably they wanted to say for far that means para ahora , and the word bridies must be a mistake too, it would be brides that means novias in spanish. I have to say that I´m not mistaken.

A Forfar Bridie is a horseshoe-shaped meat product. It has a shortcrust cover and the filling consists of beef, onions and seasoning.

They originated in the early part of the 19th century. One story of their origin is that they were made for wedding meals (the Brides' meal) hence the horseshoe shape (for luck).
Another story is that the Forfar Bridie have first been created by a woman called a by Margaret Bridie from Glamis, who was a travelling food seller. She arrived to Forfar and sold them at the Buttermarket.

It was there where this pie was a sensation to its inhabitants and became famous in all the United Kingdom and then in the entire world.

Forfar is a small town in the county of Angus, which is easy to get to from the Kingdom as it's not too far over the Tay Bridge . The Author of "Peter Pan", J.M. Barrie, came from Kirriemuir, which is very near Forfar. Perhaps it was him who helped give the Forfar Bridie its world-wide fame by mentioning it in "Sentimental Tommy".

Don´t worry, it won´t give you a shock!!

This curious meal that we are offering you in our blog today is called BUBBLE AND SQUEAK, but don´t worry, because although the name might make you think that it´s some sort of Pokémon attack that consists in throwing bubbles and screaming at you, it´s just, of course, another of the many delicious, (some are tastier than the others) meals we offer you almost every day here.

It´s just a simple traditional dish, that has as main ingredients potatoes and cabbage, although some other vegetables can be added, such as peas, carrots or Brussels sprouts. All you have to do, once you have chopped the vegetables, is mixing them up with mashed potatoes in a pan, and after this you can start frying them!

But, where does this name come from? Basically it´s just the noise it makes while being cooked. The juice that is produced during the cooking process tends to bubble; what about the squeaking? Well, once the cabbage touches the hot metal from the pan, it always makes a screeching noise, so that´s why we advised you with the title of this entry, this noise won´t give you a shock!

When did this dish reach its popularity? Guess what? It was also during the Second World War (just the same as the faggot). This was due, of course, to the fact that they had to rationing, they had many soldiers that needed to be fed, and this was a perfect dish because it was made using leftovers, usually from a Sunday roast.

Enjoy!!

Do you want to eat a Faggot?

If you are in North America and you hear someone asking this question, you would probably think that this person is asking you to eat a homosexual man, as “faggot” is a pejorative word used in the United States against homosexual males. Don´t be scared, as this word, however, is just a strictly American English expression, as it does not have the same meaning in the United Kingdom.

In the Midlands of England mainly, we can find a traditional dish which is named in this particular way. It consists of some sort of meatball, the meat is normally pork, although you can exchange this sort of meat with any other types, although, of course it will never be the same.

As you could read before, British people traditionally use pork meat; they use it´s liver, the fatty belly meat and even its own heart. Sounds good doesn´t it?? Well, after having these main ingredients, you just have to put the meat in your hands and move it until you shape it as a ball…then all you have to do is put it in the oven and bake it. After doing this, you can also cook some peas in order to make a really popular dish, which is “Faggots and Peas”.

When did this “delicacy” reach its best years? Guess when… it was during the Second World War; it was used to feed the soldiers in order to not spending a big amount of money in food. At least it was better than nothing, don´t you think so?? Thank God there are no wars at the moment, and we can eat much healthier and better!!

Royal Icing: magic creations.

Looking at this marvellous cake, we would never think that it’s made with ice at face value, and we wouldn’t know what to say about why it’s called royal. The truth is that, although we probably don't know the reasons, they are somewhat obvious; so, I'm just going to clarify them below.

Well, to begin with “Royal icing” is a pure white icing made from confectioner sugar and egg white, which dries to a smooth, hard and matte finish. According to the book “The Joy of Cooking”, its primary value is decoration as it’s not as flavour as other icings.


The origin of this kind of cake is very simple; firstly, this gets its name “Royal” from having been traditional icing for fruitcake, which was the wedding cake of choice among English royalty, and then, among English population too. In fact, the very wedding cake of Prince William and Kate Middleton was confectioned with this technique; it was covered with cream and white icing and decorated with up to 900 delicate sugar-paste flowers.


On the other hand, the meaning of icing here it’s not to make ice, although in some sense it’s to freeze. It refers more accurately to decorate semi-solid food by applying it a creamy glaze that hardens, and all this is made through a process that allows creating amazing shapes. This technique has the advantage of sealing in freshness so that the cake can be made days in advance and it continues being tasty upon serving, but this cannot be stored for long; it should be used as soon as possible.

The problem with these wonderful shapes is that it may have health risks. They were traditionally prepared with fresh egg whites despite of the risk of salmonella that using raw egg whites presents, so that nowadays many people substitute them by meringue powder. Alternatively, ready-to-use pasteurized and refrigerated egg whites are sold in most grocery stores to provide some safety to the use of this ingredient.

Another instance of how spectacular and accurate this technique is, may be appreciated through Gingerbread Houses. They are made with thin gingerbread walls that are held together by means of icing. The houses are decorated with candies and this glaze, and tend to resemble the witch’s house found in Hansel and Gretel’s fairy tale. The World’s largest Gingerbread House was made in November 2006; Roger Pelcher built this gingerbread house inside the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota. The final result stood 67 feet tall and took up 1.496 square feet.


We have to thank all these people who find so lovely techniques and share them with the rest, allowing everyone to enjoy these fun and creative ways of cooking, and making happy anyone just for the sake of looking at the result.



I hope you've enjoyed it as much as I did!!

Sweet end

Marmalade is a fruit preserve made from the juice and peel of citrus fruits, boiled with sugar and water. The benchmark citrus fruit for marmalade production in Britain is the "Seville orange" from Spain, thus called because it was originally cultivated only in Seville, Spain; it is higher in pectin than sweet oranges and therefore gives a good set. The peel has a distinctive bitter taste which imparts to the marmalade. Marmalade can be made from lemons, limes, grapefruits, mandarins and sweet oranges or any combination.

In languages other than English, "marmalade" can mean preserves made with fruit other than citrus. For example, in Spanish the term usually refers to what in English is called jam (and "jalea" is similar to the English jelly).

Marmalade recipes include sliced or chopped fruit peel simmered in sugar, fruit juice and water until soft. Marmalade is sometimes described as jam containing fruit peel but manufacturers also produce peel-free marmalade.

The Romans learned from the Greeks that quinces slowly cooked with honey would "set" when cool. Greek μελίμηλον (melimēlon, "honey fruit") transformed into "marmelo"—for in Greek μῆλον (mēlon, "apple") stands for all globular fruits. A Roman cookbook attributed to Apicius gives a recipe for preserving whole quinces, stems and leaves attached, in a bath of honey. In 1524, Henry VIII received a "box of marmalade" from Mr. Hull of Exeter. As it was in a box, this was likely to have been marmelade, a quince paste from Portugal, still made and sold. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, "marmalade" appeared in English language in 1480, borrowed from French marmelade which, in turn, came from the Portuguese marmelada. The extension of "marmalade" in the English language to refer to citrus fruits was made in the 17th century, when citrus first began to be plentiful enough in England for the usage to become common.

There is also a legend about Mary Stuart, Queen of Scotland very connected with the marmalade. She was ill and, as a result of his court spoke in French, they said “Marie est malade” (Mary is sick) while her doctor was giving her honey and oranges to treat her sickness. This sentence would become in “Marmalade”. However, there are no evidences that support this hypothesis.

Nowadays, marmalade only refers to the one made of oranges while the word used to call the others flavours is jam.

The Scottish city of Dundee has a long association with marmalade. In 1797, James Keiller and his mother Janet ran a small sweet and preserves shop in Dundee; they opened a factory to produce "Dundee Marmalade", a marmalade containing thick chunks of Seville orange rind, a business that eventually prospered. However, the first time the word marmalade appears in documents is around 1480, much time before Queen Mary, so the most probably thesis is that there was an important trade of Portuguese products to England around 1495.

As a conclusion, the marmalade seems to be another sauce or food but it has more than 500 hundred years… Amazing eh?

The peanut, an identity crisis!

If you were a nut allergic person, would you eat “peanuts” or not? According to their name, you definitely shouldn´t but, as every name you will find in this blog, it is misleading. Let´s know the reason for this identity crisis!

Peanuts take their name from their resemblance to peas in a pod. However, for a proper classification of this food, we must first know the differences between a legume and a nut. At first sight they are not very obvious, as both of them consist of a simple dry fruit carried inside a pod or shell, but looking carefully at the details, you can prove that these two groups have significant differences.

In the strict botanical use of the term, nuts usually have only one seed (on rare occasions two), whereas legumes frequently contain multiple seeds. For instance, it is not uncommon for a pea pod to contain half a dozen peas. In addition, nuts are always indehiscent, that is, they won´t open on their own. In contrast, the majority of legumes are dehiscent, meaning that they open naturally along a seam on two sides. Again, the pea pod is an obvious example of this. Another difference is that the seed of a nut is never attached to the ovary wall, while legumes often contain seeds attached to their pods. And finally, nuts grow on trees, that´s why they are sometimes referred to as “tree nuts”, whereas legumes grow on bushes or underground.

Looking only at these common distinctions, it is still unclear whether a peanut is a legume or a nut, since it has characteristics of both legumes and nuts: it contains two seeds (as a legume), the pod is indehiscent (as a nut), the seed is not attached to the ovary wall (as a nut), and it grows underground (as a legume).

However, if we take into account a nut in culinary terms, it is any large seed which is used in food and comes from a shell. This definition is not exact because this way, we are considering nuts many of the foods that aren´t technically nuts, such as drupes, almonds, cashews, corn nuts, pistachios, and, of course, the peanut.

So while their physical structure resembles more closely that of the legumes, their use in diets and cuisines resembles more closely that of the nuts. We could say then that the peanut is a unique member of whichever family it belongs to, and we cannot exclude it from belonging to either, though many scientists affirm that peanuts are in fact legumes, despite the word “nut” is in their name and they have some similarities with nuts, because if you are nut allergic you can eat peanuts, unless you are also allergic to them.

In conclusion, a pea is a legume, a nut is a nut, and the peanut's identity crisis is readily apparent in its name, so for everyday use it's probably easier just to go with the broad culinary definition of a nut and leave it like that!

Hope you enjoyed it!

PD: Here it´s the nut consumption chart, so you can see how important knowing all this is.