The South West of England

When I think of the South West I automatically think of fish, (and why not? It has hundreds of miles of coast line), and of course, Cornish pasties, cream teas, and cider, but that is only scratching the surface of what this region has to offer.

The saddest part of all this is that the West Country ought to be our version of the South of France. The South West attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors a year, so why are the ports and towns not full of cafes and small restaurants selling fish and locally produced food? Is the British public that far removed from great food? Yet they seem to have endless places selling cream teas. Just to put this into perspective, here are some of the region’s produce that is easily available:

Bath cheese, Benleigh blue, Cheddar, Cornish Yarg, Blue Vinney, Single and Double Gloucester, Sharpen, Vulcombe, Elver’s Smoked Mackerel, Bath Chaps, Fortnum black ham, Brawn, Cornish Pasties, Devon cattle, Devonshire ham, Dorset horn sheep, Gloucestershire old spot pig, Gloucester sausage, Mendip wallfish (Snails to you and me!), Cider, Perry, bath bun, Cornish fairing, Saffron cake, Dorset knob, Sally Lunn, Gin, Shrub, Tewkesbury mustard, Clotted cream, Whey, Curds, Game, all types of fruit and vegetables and hundreds of species of fish, both river and sea.

If we look in more detail at the history of Devon and Cornwall we see that they are very different from each other. Many people went West to avoid the Romans: something the Romans avoided because of its harsh conditions. Interestingly Saffron features in many Cornish recipes, which is in stark contrast to the simple produce of the region, as most people were poor and worked as miners (or Tinners as they were called), fisherman or on the land. So how did such a exotic ingredient find its way into such peasant food? The simple answer is shipwrecks; either natural or “created”. With the landscape surrounding the shoreline being so hazardous, once a ship was spotted floundering in severe weather conditions thousands of miners would gather on the shoreline to claim the goods; stripping the ship, crew and passengers of everything!

The Cornish pasty, one of the most famous of dishes still in existence was born from very humble means. It was created for the tin miners, and was a meal containing very little meat, if any, and there does not seem to be one particular meat used. They were also made from fish such as sardines (or as the locals would say, pilchards). The pasty would often contain a sweet part to it and most would have one end of the pastry with the initial of the owner on it. This would be done so that the pasty could be recognised by the owner, as many meal times would be interrupted due to the nature of working down deep mines.