Last weekend I decided to impress my French friends with some traditional English cooking.
On Friday, I made Somerset Pork, a delicious pork and apple recipe from Somerset not far from the region where I used to live in the UK. I served the Somerset pork with mashed potatoes and green beans from the garden.
I now realise where English food slips up – presentation! My presentation was appalling and thank goodness it tasted good otherwise English food would have taken another hit! I was too embarrassed to take a photo in front of my friends but I can pretty much describe my presentation: I created a layer of mashed potato, then added the pork chop on top of that and then the sauce. As the sauce was quite heavy with onions and apples it ended up looking like slop on a plate! But boy it did taste good and everything finished their dishes!
I didn’t have the proper recipe so I made up my own based on what I could remember doing before. Here it is:
Serves 6:
6 Pork Chops
1/3 Cider (brut not sweet)
2 Canada Apples, finely sliced.
2 Onions, finely sliced.
Sage
Chicken gravy
Brown off the pork chops in a little oil with the sliced onions. Place the chops in an ovenproof dish and continue cooking the onions until soft. When the onions are soft, poor in the cider and add the sliced apples. Add the sage and season to taste. Prepare some chicken gravy and add a little to the cider sauce mix to thicken it up. Cover the pork chops with the apple and cider sauce mix. Place in the oven at about 180 degrees Celsius and cook for 40 minutes.
On Saturday, I decided to bake a Victoria Sponge Cake to impress some more French friends with my English cooking. Again, I didn’t have a recipe and I tried looking on the internet and blindly picked a recipe which went something like this:
100 g caster sugar
100 g butter
100 g flour
2 eggs
whisk. Cook for 25 minutes at 180 degrees.
There wasn’t a picture on the site I choose but I’d imagined that my Victoria Sponge would look something like this:
Nope. It looked like this:
Victoria Sponge Cake Disaster
Oops! Have to make sure I do better next time!
At least there is English cooking. I mean, what is American cooking? A hamburger? I do love a good roast beef and Yorkshire pudding! You should make that for your friends/family come winter time. Hope Little Piglet is doing well!
LOL! I would say that Americans have perfected the hamburger and also things like ribs, chicken wings etc. How about Apple Pie or fried turkey? I admit I don’t know any other American dishes and even when I think of what I ate whilst there on visits I’m drawing blanks – shame.
Have already tried Roast beef, it’s a tough one as I like it well done and I always over cook it for my French guests
Have only tried yorkshire puds once, they were a soggy, gross disaster I’m afraid.
[...] reading here: English cooking for #French friends http://pigletinfrance.wordpress.com/2009/10/13/english-cooking-f… This entry was posted in Twitter, WordPress and tagged twitter. Bookmark the permalink. | [...]
hi I’ve cooked Roast Beef and Yorkshire pudding for French friends, to general bemusement – esp horseradish! And took a French friend to UK and we had Toad in the Hole with sage and onion sausages – French friend’s comment was more or less “why?” I find French people very conservative and often unwilling to try out none French stuff. I admire their unswerving belief that French is best in a way, However some quite like curries, if not too hot!
Btw, your Victoria Sponge recipe was correct, I always remember it as 4,4,4,2 in ounces and eggs. Couldnt see first picture but yours looks ok – could have put it in smaller tin to have more rise maybe. Also, dont whisk, beat sugar and butter til fluffy with wooden spoon, then beat eggs one by one and fold in flour with metal spoon.