http://greedydave.com Food & drink from Britain and elsewhere Tue, 16 Feb 2010 19:24:04 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Last month, in my home town of Manchester, saw the National Winter Ales Festival. Having missed it last year I really couldn't pass on the invitation this time around. So I hopped on a train out of Glasgow, met up with pals and, "Put my drinking trousers on," as one ... http://greedydave.com/national_winter_beer_festival I was chatting with a good friend a few weeks back and was told of a recent argument discussion she had about the confounding names of our British mealtimes. The essence of it being, "Do we eat lunch or dinner at midday, is it called dinner, tea or supper in ... http://greedydave.com/time_for_tea Oatcakes take various forms depending on which side of the Anglo-Scottish border you call home. The Scots make theirs as baked, savoury biscuits which can be served on a cheeseboard or with smoked salmon, but the English have a very different take on the oatcake. Even these vary from region-to-region ... http://greedydave.com/staffordshire_oatcakes Last week we learned the sad news that Cockney rockers Chas 'n' Dave have split up. As an homage to these perennial crowd pleasers I've decided to move the blog down to London, figuratively speaking, for a bit of Tommy Tucker (slang for supper). But it's not jellied eels, pie ... http://greedydave.com/london_particular I'm a huge fan of offal and have been for as long as I can remember. Back when I was very young, liver and kidney would feature frequently on the family menu and I thoroughly loved it, not a claim that the majority of children would make, I suspect. Offal ... http://greedydave.com/ffagod_a_pys About 4 years ago I decided to take up brewing my own beer as a serious hobby. By ‘serious’ I'm not talking about the 12% ABV gut-rotting death ale that many associate with homebrew, but brewing beers with faithful attention to style, strength, flavour and aroma. Beers that would stand ... http://greedydave.com/cool_box_mash_tun Go back to the 1980s and you'll find me, knee-high to a grasshopper, attending a small primary school in South Manchester. It was a faith school of only about 120 pupils but it was by no means exclusive. We still had our ubiquitous, 'girl who smelled of Spam,' (thank Lee ... http://greedydave.com/gypsy_tart_and_school_dinners A former work colleague of mine, native to Nandyal in Southern India, would jump at every opportunity to remind me that the food in our British curry houses isn't truly authentic fayre. I think we've all known this for quite some time, deep down, not least because two of the ... http://greedydave.com/bhuna_gosht Industry holidays in Britain, known as 'Wakes Weeks' in parts of Northern England, were one week in the year during the latter part of the Industrial Revolution when whole mills and factories would down tools and its employees would flock to the seaside and other resorts for a week of ... http://greedydave.com/hindle_wakes Okay, so this one's really going to separate the kids from the grown-ups, the wheat from the chaff, the Transformers from the GoBots.  There's probably no greater litmus test for food loves and loathes than Marmite. If you're not familiar with this foreboding brown spread, Marmite is a strong-flavoured spread ... http://greedydave.com/my_mate_marmite