English Style Dinner...
 

I want to cook an English style dinner for my SO....we are going to England next year, as a teaser for the holidays, I thought I would prepare a dinner that stars English type fare! (PS...I also bought her an England Tee Shirt...corny)

Would anyone have any recipes you would recommend?

Any help would be sooooo appreciated!

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Toad in the hole!! My favourite. With onion gravy and peas.
(In case you don't know, it's a kind of Yorkshire pudding with sausages in).

http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/da...ni_74201.shtml

Trouble is- what do you mean by 'English'?? In a recent survey of people in the UK, 'chicken tikka masala' came nunmber 1. Yet if you ask overseas students what they consider to be a typical English dish, they always say 'fish and chips'. English food tends to be regional e.g. typical Lancashire food (Northern England) fish and chips; Lancashire hotpot; Rag pudding
typical London dishes- eel and mash; pie and chips; jellied eels
Still the idea's a good one. Do tell us what you do cook! LOL

She's talking about dinner, not supper.
I'd start with some smoked salmon (in England, it would probably come from Scotland ;-))

I'd follow it with a roast, probably beef, with yorkshire pudding and roast potatoes.
You could add roast parsnips if you wanted to.
Go to Delia online http://www.deliaonline.com/
and search under "roast".

Now, if there's something that English cuisine is really good at, it's puddings.
My Scottish husband says forget Common Law, Parliamentary Democracy and the Industrial Revolution, England's contribution to civilisation is sticky toffee pudding.
If you go to Delia's site and search under "sticky toffee", she has a nice recipe for little puds.

I rather like Bakewell Tart/Pudding
There's a recipe at http://thefoody.com/pudding/bakewelltart.html
I use shortcrust pastry myself.
You can always used frozen pastry if you want to cheat.

If you go to http://thefoody.com/pudding/index.html
there are lots of good puds.
If you want something lighter after your Sunday roast, try syllabub

When I was in America, I found that treacle tart wend down well too.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/da...art_8191.shtml

You can get golden syrup in some American supermarkets

MissPrism - I thought dinner was supper? Well down South it is. It's the evening meal.

cwojo99-
Roast beef and Yorkshire pudding is very English but I must warn you, Yorkshire pud is very difficult to get right! Believe me I have tried unsuccessfully for years.

Now, an easier dish would be English Beef Pie. Made properly - totally delicious! Recipes vary on the net.

I think that there is a difference between dinner and supper.

To me, supper is more like high tea.
It's a two course meal probably without wine.
Our usual evening meal is supper.

I'd say that dinner is a more formal meal with three courses and wine.
Lunch is at mid-day.

Of course in some places dinner is the mid-day meal.
Yorkshire puds aren't that difficult.
Perhaps your oven isn't hot enough. The fat has to be really sizzling before you pour in the batter.
I make the little ones in bun tins.

Supper is a very light meal taken before you go to bed.

2 courses it ain't

I always thought that supper is a late meal, as AlanRow said.
I've heard people refer to dinner as tea; as in "we're having fish fingers for tea tonight". That used to confuse me when I first moved to the UK.

Delia Smith is a good recommendation; the best English food, easy to follow recipes. Potted shrimp for starters perhaps. Roast beef for main course. Trifle is another good one for pudding.

My favorite to fix is steak and ale pie, which we love to order in pubs in Britain.

I used this recipe as my inspiration: http://www.toomanychefs.com/archives/001180.php I bought top sirloin steak and made it in a tall round pie dish instead of the individual dishes. I didn't do the baby onions (just chopped onion) but used two kinds of mushrooms. For the ale, I used Newcastle Brown Ale from England.

This is a great do-ahead dish. I serve it with mashed potatoes and a vegetable. I need to find a sticky toffee pudding recipe for dessert!

Kathy

>>>>>>
I've heard people refer to dinner as tea; as in "we're having fish fingers for tea tonight".
<<<<<

very common...especially as you go north and/or into council estates.

IIRC, the English have

Breakfast about 08:00
Elevens's about 11:00
Lunch about 12:30
Tea about 16:00
Dinner about 20:00
Supper about 23:00

correct?

((I))

Also familiar from the reputed Scottish greeting "You'll have had your tea..?".

But this doesn't help cwojo99 much.

I'm tempted to say, batter some frozen fish, deep fry it with chunky potato chips, and serve it wrapped in pages from a scandal-mongering newspaper whose most salacious stories are on the pages you haven't got.

But try instead:
http://www.toweroflondontour.com/recipes/index.html
http://www.brianturneronline.co.uk/recipes.asp
http://www.justuk.org/uk/recipes/

Traditional English style dinner:

Opener: can of sardines

Main: cold roast mutton with overcooked Brussels sprouts and mashed potatoes with cold glutinous gravy

Dessert: some sort of a pudding that has been allowed to cool (if not actually cold) topped with a thin whitish sauce that tastes almost, but not quite, like creme anglais.

((I))

Ducking

For Christmas dinner my ex Grandmother in law would put the vegetables on the boil a few days before and serve up a luke warm joint of pork, that had seen the inside of an oven for about 20 minutes.

Geez, if someone said they wanted to fix a really American dinner for an SO, would we be subjected to the history of hours and styles of American dining or would people just say "hamburger" or "fried chicken"?

Go with the roast beef if you can figure out how to make a Yorkshire pudding. Or do a steak pie of some sort (kidneys optional). But if you don't look up and follow a recipe for sticky toffee pudding, you've missed the best part.

Roast Lamb is also very popular, and a bit more out of the ordinary than roast beef. But be sure to serve it with mint sauce NOT mint jelly which is horribly sweet. I second the suggestion for trifle - I have made it for several American friends and they love it. Heavy on the sherry!

>if someone said they wanted to fix a really American dinner for an SO, would we be subjected to the history of hours and styles of American dining or would people just say "hamburger" or "fried chicken"?<

There is more to American cooking than hamburgers and fried chicken.

Traditional American Meals:

Breakfast 07:30
Orange juice
Toast and/or biscuits and/or pancakes.
Hot or cold cereal
Eggs with bacon or ham or sausage or steak.
Salt
Coffee or milk
In the South, grits.

Lunch at 12:00
Soup, sandwich (tuna fish, chicken salad, egg salad seem to be preferred), cake or pie, iced tea or soft drink.
Salt

Dinner or supper at 18:30
Salad - iceberg lettuce and "vine ripened" tomatoes with dressing from a bottle.
Steak with baked, French fried or mashed potatoes. Ketchup or canned gravy. Vegetables are optional. Ketchup may be substituted for vegetables.
Salt
Cake or pie.
Iced tea, coffee and or sugary soft drink.

About 4400 calories per day
Included are 3x the fat, 3x the sugar and 4x the salt needed.

((I))

....nd serve up a luke warm joint of pork, that had seen the inside of an oven for about 20 minutes...

Does your tapeworm have a name?
There are regional and class differences about what you call meals and courses in such meals.

For example, I was always taught that the sweet course is called "pudding" whatever it consists of.
"Dessert" is a course of fruit and nuts which is served after the main meal.

Sorry, Ira..but for some of us that "traditional" breakfast hour is waaaaay before 7:30.

The "typical" American meal? How about thick grilled steak and either a baked potato or fries?

And when I say "thick" I am not talking about those skinny "steaks" one gets in many parts of Europe.

Cwojo99....you would have gotten slighly fewer diverse answers if you had asked a much easier question such as:
"Should I go to Paris or Venice?"

Ira

You crack me up, your an absolute howl!!:)

I got a great English Dinner menu from Bon Appetite quite a few years ago. You may be able to do a search. Also to make it really fun I bought a Murder Mystery kit and invited other couples over for a full on dress up English Dinner and Murder Mystery. It was a blast!

Ira after a few months of this site for once I disagree :-) custard is critical centre to UK life.

Cwojo99

I see three routes are you trying to give a dinner party so that your SO ??? understands that part of dining or are you trying to get her/him ready for street food or English restaurant food.

A dinner party is kinda formal and will normally amount to at least 3 stages. Entree something like smoked salmon, soup, garlic bread. Main would be a wide range of things depending on ethnicity or dietery habits but based on the massive list above chicken tikka or toad in the hole fits in perfectly. Dessert would be one of UK's best puddings which includes corny old creme brullee to spotted dick and various seasonal regional stodgy pudding with say cream, icecream or HOT CUSTARD on it. Finally an extra course of cheese occurs normally after but sometimes before the pudding.

Wine through out normally £5 to £10 "red" or "white" ( the three worst words in the english language)and occasionally something good. Add heating and 4 hours of fun and you can drunkenly go home. The UK wine market is the most widely ranging in the world so you really will find stuff from Uruaguay to Alsace.

Street food..... Think expensive versions of USA chains though smaller portions and less fat/sugar. You know chips with everything. Fish in the street is interesting as the type of fish, batter and fat it is cooked in varies widely. Luckily UK does not follow the Belgiums in cooking in horse fat but depending on area everything from Olive oil to Beef dripping can be used. Batter is designed to soak up the fat so what kids get out of it is a massive fat soaked, salt darked crisp batter with a bit of un-identifed fish in side it. What kid could turn that down.

Restaurants... low cost £10 a sitting, leave it in the street
>£10 chose a nation (Italian/Chinese/"Indian" (means meat based Pakistani for majority/ Thai/Vietmanise/French/Australian/English) and visit the restaurant. Note that while having a license to sell wine can be won by most restaurants some ethnic groups do not drink hence the wine waiter in a Pakistani restaurant may never have tasted the acid stripper he pours into your glass. The concept of carry-in or corkage is seldom seen but can occur where no license is held (EG the Kashmeri in Bradford. It is also possible to dring beer in restaurants though normally lower price. Beer comes in various types so while the USA type lagers are available worth looking out for warm flat beer with local tastes.

There are some other fodor lists in the system on food

When I did a Hogwarts Christmas Feast for my book group we had roast beef with Yorkshire pudding, mushy peas, roasted potatoes, roasted carrots, and treacle tart. It went down a treat.

Yorkshire pudding is not that hard.
A few keys to remember: Use beef fat in the bottom of the pan (or popover bakers); heat whatever you're baking it in WITH THE FAT in it...and make sure you've made the batter a few hours ahead of time ...
(I've had to cheat once or twice or twenty...and have kept the fat from say, another roast, just in case the roast I'm doing doesn't make enough "juice" to make my gravy, roast a carrot or two in AND make my Yorkshires.)

SuzieQ- Oh!Honey, I have had every TV Chef from Great Britain showing me how to make Yorkie Pud and believe me I've tried!
Some say 'rest the batter', some say add an extra egg white, others say equal quatities of milk, flour & eggs.
Fat, Lard, oil.......all as hot as Hades.
From Keith Floyd to Brian Turner to Gary Rhodes.........I still failed!

I agree with Bilboburgler and Miss Prism. So I suggest a starter such as smoked salmon or soup and a main course of roast leg or shoulder of lamb, mint sauce, roast potatoes, boiled potatoes, two or three other fresh vegetables, (parsnip is good with lamb) boiled just to the moment a fork goes in, gravy from the lamb liquid. If you serve lamb you need not battle with Yorkshire pudding, nor for perfect crackling. Now comes pudding (you saw me smile). In summer probably sherry trifle (please no jelly in it) with cream, in winter a pie, sponge or crumble, with custard. You guide is what is in season, so you can stand in the fruiterer’s and choose what looks good among rhubarb crumble, cherry pie, raspberry sponge, plum pie, apple pie (made of such cookers as Bramleys, with to cloves), or sultana sponge (with the sultanas soaked six hours or so in red wine). Please serve things hot, on heated plates or bowls, and keep food in serving bowls in or on a low oven, or on a moderate hotplate if you have one. It helps to appoint people to carve, look after wine, and even to skivvy between oven and table.
The heart of the meal is good, fresh, produce. I like what the French do with sauces, but my cooking says that what is on the table are the natural tastes of the food. So one leaves things alone. The joint goes into a pan and into the oven, the vegetables boil to the perfect moment (so you have to know by experiment their cooking times before you start), the pie is flour, butter, water, fruit, and sugar. The English have no mysteries. Rather, both nations put love into their cooking: you will have noted that all of these are good food for growing children.

Ben Haines, London
[email protected]

tod, maybe you've done better than you think. I've had Yorkshire pud that English people around me raved about, but it still tasted like a bunch of tasteless, greasy dough to me. But then I think the same thing about those popovers that some people rave about.

A good Yorkshire pudding is basically a popover cooked in drippings. Here's the Sticky Toffee Pudding I've made. I don't even like dates but I love STF. Also like a good Banoffee pie.

http://tinyurl.com/y7zmz6

If you google "nigella lawson recipe search easy sticky-toffee pudding" the first result is an incredibly easy and reliable recipe for a British stodgy pudding. (I haven't put a link in because the address is long - I'll find out about tiny urls one of these days). I've used it for a couple of dinner parties and it has wow factor with zero effort. You can serve it with custard or double cream.

To second Ben Haines' comment - trifle is very English, but to be good must contain lots of sherry and NO JELLY. Also proper whipped cream and not the horrid squirty kind.

Gosh so many replies. I am english and I don't think you can go wrong with bangers(sausage) & mash. It really depends on how fancy you want to go.
Fish n chips served in packing paper is fun w salt & Vinegar of course.
Roast Lamb or beef with yorkshire pud is great if you like cooking.
Trifle is quite easy to make. I recently searched the net until I found a really simple recipe. It was GREAT and my AMerincan inlaws loved it.
I love Delia recipes and someone gave you the website for that. good luck

Try some sort of pie... on my trip to England I had a Chicken and Broccoli pie that was amazing. Then take your SO to Porters in London and see if your meal met the English standards.

Porters? The place that exists for tourists who arrive with all their coupons and freebies with package theatre deals? That's the only way that place is able to stay in business. I sure hope your attempt is better than theirs!

Banoffee pudding?

As for Yorkie Pud, that could get PETA after you.

A 'popover' - what's that? Is it something you buy at a supermarket and then go home and cook it again in fat - then it becomes Yorkshire (Note Underhill) pudding?
NeoPatrick thanks for the kind encouragement. We get perfectly 'inflated', hollow inside, crisp outside Yorkshire puds at a hotel a few miles away, but when I try to do them everything always comes out of the oven resembling muffins?! Sort of spongy.
Oh well, sigh.............

I have my paternal grandmothers Yorkshire Pudding receipe. Although I haven't prepared it in years it is fantastic. Wish I could cook it for you Patrick.

Tod, one of the tricks to getting nice crispy "inflated" Yorkshire puds is to make sure the pan and fat are smoking hot before pouring the batter in.

LoveItaly - Maybe you could let me try it?
hanl - I think it may be my oven. Or the position of the rack? High up or low down? What'yer think?

Hello tod, I am happy to share my paternal grandmother's receipe which goes back generations in her family.

After cooking the roast (whatever kind); actually prepare the batter during the last say 10 minutes that the roast needs to cook.

1 cup flour
1 teaspoon of salt
2 eggs well beaten
1 cup of milk
1/4 cup of beef drippings.

Sift together flour and salt.
Combine eggs and milk.
Add the liquid (eggs and milk) to the flour mixture and beat thoroughly until batter is smooth.

Pour the beef drippings, bubbling hot into a pan (8" X 8"). Next pour the batter into the same pan.

Bake in a preheated oven at 425 degrees for 30 minutes. The rack in the oven should be in the middle of the oven. The pan should be uncovered.

Cut into squares and serve hot with the roast beef. Enjoy!!!

Yorkshire puddings are notoriously difficult to get right, so one way out in the U.K. is to buy frozen ones. "Aunt Bessie's" is a well-known brand (www.trytonfoods.co.uk/), but I think there are own-label and other versions. They are better than most home-made ones. It might be an idea to set up a business to export them to the U.S., but there is the exchange rate to consider ... The dollar seems to be doing down faster than most people's Yorkshire puddings.