English Food We Like

Of course scones tops my list of English food that I like. Besides that the scone itself tastes good, it generally comes with an obscene amount of clotted cream and jam to smother on it.

Camille once ordered this treacle tart with whipped cream, and it was definitely worth eating. Despite not having brown sugar in the recipe, it has a sort of warm, brown sugary taste that mixes nicely with the whipped cream.

I was a little nervous about trying Scotch eggs. They don't look all that appetizing. Here's what it is though: boiled egg, wrapped in sausage, coated with bread crumbs and fried. How can you go wrong with that combination? Americans, get over how scary it looks and give it a try.

Sausage rolls to me are a little like hotdogs. I never crave a hotdog, but in just the right circumstances - camping, baseball game, possibly having gone shopping at Costco without eating dinner - they taste pretty good. The perfect circumstance for eating sausage rolls is a cool day at a castle or country house after walking around long enough to have worked up an appetite.

In England there are all kinds of savory pies. I've tried several different kinds that are generally some version of pot roast in a pie crust. Despite often being proclaimed "award-winning" or some such, I just haven't warmed to them. To me it tastes kind of bland having pot roast in a pie crust, no matter how flakey and perfect that pie crust might be. What I do like are pork pies. Yum! The only problem, however, is that English people seem to like them cold, whereas I only like them hot. So I can only order them from shops or farmers' markets and take them home so I can eat it the way I like. English people also seem to like Scotch eggs cold, which in my opinion are much better hot also.

Although not a shortbread fan in general, I find these cookies dangerously good. Resist the Walkers airport shortbread and track these down to try. If you happen to find yourself at a farm shop or tea shop that makes their shortbread on site, that can be very good as well.

Don't worry, we don't eat these three things together. Mike has developed a love for English mustard. He says it's really spicy, which he likes. Wilkin & Sons Tiptree makes really nice lemon curd and jams. They're now my favorite, except for maybe my mother's homemade.

Other foods to try here: piri piri chicken (not English, but very popular here), tandoor lamb kebabs, dark chocolate HobNobs or Digestives (kind of like a graham cracker with dark chocolate on it), sticky toffee sauce, good fish & chips (there's a world of difference between the average and the best), lemon cake (you can of course find this everywhere in the U.S. too, it just tends to be consistently good here) and as much cheese as possible.

English foods I haven't warmed to: pickled eggs, pickled onions, desserts with dried fruit in it (wrong, yet very prevalent), mushy peas (often served with fish & chips), Cornish pasties (bland), canned beans (there's nothing appetizing about how these look, smell or taste), Eton mess (dessert that's ruined for me by the presence of meringue)  and many meat dishes I've been too squeamish to try.