Local food for St George's Day

Apr 17 2009 by Jane Hall, The Journal

THE Irish celebrate St Patrick’s Day by downing copious pints of Guinness and going green with their food. The Scottish come together on Burns Night and St Andrew’s Day. And St David’s Day is marked with nostalgic tradition with the wearing of leeks and a family feast featuring food that reflects Wales’s wild landscape of moors, mountains and craggy coastline.

In England, however, St George’s Day comes and goes with barely a whimper. Fewer than one in five people marks the occasion, with any show of patriotic fervour seen by many as being in bad taste.

Yet there is much that is mouthwatering about April 23, not least the excuse to eat your way around an abundance of tantalising and traditional North East recipes.

Perhaps the most famous dish is pease pudding, which according to the rhyme “some like it hot, some like it cold, some like it in the pot, nine days old”.

Dating from at least medieval times it used to be sold by street vendors in Newcastle as a cheap and nutritious snack. Traditionally made with yellow split peas, why not serve yourself up a lunch-time treat by teaming it with ham in another great North East delicacy, the stottie cake?

Pan haggerty is also a well known recipe whose fame has now extended beyond the region, thanks in part to food writer and educator David Hall featuring it as one of his dishes when he appeared on the BBC’s MasterChef Goes Large in 2007.

A Northumberland concoction made with potatoes, Cheddar cheese and onions, it is cheap, nutritious comfort food at its best.

Beef is regarded as England’s national dish, but combined with brown ale it takes on a uniquely North East twist. Then there’s Alnwick stew, in danger of dying out and now officially on the endangered list of regional recipes.

Or how about singin’ hinnies, bacon floddies, fat rascals, celery cheese, Whitley goose ( nothing to do with real geese), Newcastle pudding, courting cakes, Felton spice loaf, Northumberland twists, Holy Island syllabub, North country tart and kipper paste?

The list of traditional North East foods is as bountiful as the game, beef and lamb on the craggy hills of the west and the fish that come from the rivers and sea.

David Hall from East Boldon, South Tyneside – who thanks to reaching the final of MasterChef was able to give up his job in IT to take up cooking professionally – says St George’s Day is a fitting occasion to indulge in the best North East dishes and produce. Not that we should need any prompting to get a taste of the region.

“As a nation I think we are losing our heritage and traditions and we are forgetting some of our regional dishes.

“When St Patrick’s Day comes along, every Englishman claims to be Irish and drinks Guinness and eats Irish stew. Englishmen celebrate Burns Night with haggis and whisky, but we do nothing food-wise for St George’s Day. Why?”

David describes pease pudding as “the quintessentially North East dish”, and says when he lived in Leeds for a time people used to make fun of him for eating it.

“But it’s a fantastic dish, and like pan haggerty has been borne out of people’s need to survive on very little.

“A lot of North East dishes are based on leftovers. Take pan haggerty – it uses leftover potatoes and onions, but in fact can be as humble or as luxurious as you want.”

The correct way to make pan haggerty is the source of much debate, however. David recalls the ear-bashing he got from his own mother after making it on MasterChef.

“My mam rang me immediately after watching it, not to congratulate me on reaching the semi-finals, but to berate me for making it incorrectly.

“’It should have corned beef in it and be cooked in a little water for hours on end,’ she explained. I couldn’t argue, as this was the very food I ate every week when I lived at home. And I didn’t want a clip around the ear.”