BS: Fish & Chips - 150 years old today

Subject: RE: BS: Fish & Chips - 150 years old today
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 17 Jan 10 - 11:59 AM

2d, Bonzo? Where was this disgracefully overcharging clip-joint?

Subject: RE: BS: Fish & Chips - 150 years old today
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 17 Jan 10 - 11:21 AM

I used to buy two penny bag of chips on my way home from cubs in the mid 1950s!

Subject: RE: BS: Fish & Chips - 150 years old today
From: GUEST,Jim Martin
Date: 17 Jan 10 - 06:42 AM

"The scraps, near us, were called 'scratchins' - I remeber asking for 'an 'aypurth of scratchins when I were a lad." - we used to call them crinklings in S.Beds.

Subject: RE: BS: Fish & Chips - 150 years old today
From: Bluegrassman
Date: 16 Jan 10 - 08:30 PM

I am surprised that no one has commented on the demise of Hammonds Chop Sauce, this was our favourite brown sauce and apparently ceased to be produced when a fire burned down the factory some years ago. Rumours are that some other company has taken over the recipe and is about to reproduce it, hope so :)

Subject: RE: BS: Fish & Chips - 150 years old today
From: Dave MacKenzie
Date: 16 Jan 10 - 07:12 PM

No way John. Southwold is too far south for the Broads.

Subject: RE: BS: Fish & Chips - 150 years old today
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 16 Jan 10 - 05:42 PM

For a little variety, serve the french fries or chips with this:

Steak tartare

2 pounds sirloin, finely ground
1 egg
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
1 tablespoon onion, finely chopped
1 tablespoon capers, drained
Dash Tabasco sauce
1 teaspoon Lea & Perrins Worcestershire
2 tablespoons virgin olive oil
2 teaspoons finely chopped parsley
Salt and white pepper to taste.

Mix egg, onion, capers, mustard, Worcestershire, Tabasco.
Add olive oil and mix thoroughly.
Add meat and parsley, season with salt and white pepper.

Serve with a good red wine.

A French recipe but the Worcestershire adds an English touch.

Subject: RE: BS: Fish & Chips - 150 years old today
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 16 Jan 10 - 04:36 PM

Why do fish and chip shops only sell the same 4 or 5 fish, why not bream, red mullett, are you there John Dory are you there?, hake etc, and why is it always caked in fatty batter? I once asked for my fish to be cooked without batter - on a Friday no less, and they did!! It brought immediate silence to the tracksuit bottomed queue. Mind you, it was McDermotts the championship winning fish & chip shop of the south east!

Subject: RE: BS: Fish & Chips - 150 years old today
From: EBarnacle
Date: 16 Jan 10 - 02:46 PM

As long as the newspaper is The Sunday New York Times, it works...even though the print version has shrunk from the days when you needed a hand truck to carry it home,

Subject: RE: BS: Fish & Chips - 150 years old today
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 16 Jan 10 - 10:32 AM

I thought it was just broads, Dave :) ☺☻

Subject: RE: BS: Fish & Chips - 150 years old today
From: Dave MacKenzie
Date: 16 Jan 10 - 10:27 AM

I knew there was a reason I preferred broadsheets.

Subject: RE: BS: Fish & Chips - 150 years old today
From: ossonflags
Date: 16 Jan 10 - 09:41 AM

witches, cut fish, chat haddocks and patties, ah!!!!!!!! nostalgia

Subject: RE: BS: Fish & Chips - 150 years old today
From: Les from Hull
Date: 16 Jan 10 - 08:35 AM

It must have been the pint. It'd take a massive newspaper to wrap Dave!

Subject: RE: BS: Fish & Chips - 150 years old today
From: Paul Burke
Date: 16 Jan 10 - 07:25 AM

Dave, was it you or the pint of Adnam's that was wrapped in newspaper?

Subject: RE: BS: Fish & Chips - 150 years old today
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 16 Jan 10 - 06:17 AM

Thanks Ruth - but it wasn't Arthur Treacher's; I am pretty sure coz recall that, as well as inappropriate posh logo of bowler & rolled umbrella, had equally unsuitably posh name, like Lord Somebody's English Fish & Chips, or some such: they really had got the class vibes most hilariously wrong — half-deliberately, I suspect, if you follow what I mean — ambivalently posh-attractive & tongue-in-cheek at once: sort of self-guyingly trying·too·hard for the upperclass anglophile image.

Subject: RE: BS: Fish & Chips - 150 years old today
From: manitas_at_work
Date: 16 Jan 10 - 05:08 AM

I've never heard of Malim's of Bow, the original Malin's was in Cleveland Street in Stepney. Not too far away but I'd be surprised if there was a connection I'd never heard of in over 50 years in East London.

Subject: RE: BS: Fish & Chips - 150 years old today
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 16 Jan 10 - 04:24 AM

Mousethief: brown sauce is not a million miles from A1 sauce. Similar, but different, if you see what I mean.


Mthe GM, someone mentioned Arthur Treacher's. That might have been the chain you remember. We had one for a while near where I grew up. They wrapped the fish and chips in greaseproof that was printed to look like The Times.

I remember the fish being uniformly triangular, like those portions you get from a supermarket freezer in the UK. To give you a further indication of their authenticity, they sold side dishes like hush puppies, which are a Southern American type of fritter. Why, I don't know - presumably because they were also fried.

Subject: RE: BS: Fish & Chips - 150 years old today
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 16 Jan 10 - 02:03 AM

Brown sauce, m·thief, is a table sauce - various well-known brands here include OK, HP, Daddie's Favourite - 'malt vinegar base blended with fruits & spices' acc to Wiki: brown in colour as against the customary red of tomato ketchup, to which some prefer it as an adjunct to chippie-type dishes &c.

Subject: RE: BS: Fish & Chips - 150 years old today
From: mousethief
Date: 16 Jan 10 - 12:45 AM

MtheGM: H Salt Esq?

All: What is "brown sauce"?

Subject: RE: BS: Fish & Chips - 150 years old today
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 15 Jan 10 - 10:34 PM

I recall from my first visit to USA nearly 40 years ago a chain of fish&chip songs - forget the name but they all had 'English Fish & Chips' on a sign swinging pub-style under a bar representing a rolled umbrella & bowler hat: which struck my wife & me as a very funny [deliberate or innocent?, we wondered] misunderstanding, as the rolled-umbrella class & the f&c-eating class are, of course, not one & the same.

Subject: RE: BS: Fish & Chips - 150 years old today
From: EBarnacle
Date: 15 Jan 10 - 09:35 PM

When Arthur Treacher's Fish and Chips first came to the US, they claimed that their recipe was licensed by Malin's of Bow, presumably the Malin's mentioned in the citations.

Subject: RE: BS: Fish & Chips - 150 years old today
From: Lox
Date: 15 Jan 10 - 08:38 PM

Oh God ...

... I'm Hungry ...

Subject: RE: BS: Fish & Chips - 150 years old today
From: Dave MacKenzie
Date: 15 Jan 10 - 07:23 PM

The best fish and chips I ever had was in the Harbour Inn in Southwold washed down with a pint of Adnams, especially when wrapped in newspaper. Nowadays, whenever I make it to the sessions in the Glan yr Afon (just outside Holywell) they serve some excellent chips -even edible cold!

As for sauce, well, being an Edinburgensian, there is no substitute for "sauce" (mixed brown and vinegar).

Subject: RE: BS: Fish & Chips - 150 years old today
From: Ebbie
Date: 15 Jan 10 - 07:08 PM

red sauce
salad cream
brown sauce
scrappies
steak and kidney pie/pudding
lamb suet pudding
scallops (in reference to fish)
boiled babbies yeds
surprise peas
mutton pies
holland pies and puds
dollopygollops
mushy peas
Jamaica Patties

And we wonder why UKers and USAians sometimes don't understand each other?

But at least this sounds good (lol):
"Fish and chips, London, 1970s style- heavy rock salmon, tasted like lorry inner tubes fried in engine oil and encased in rockwool insulation. Mountains of inedible razor- tipped "chips", case hardened for at least 24 hours. Pies that grunted when you bit into them, you didn't dare lift the crust. Gravy apparently a product of dysenteric cows. With free added fag-ash."

Subject: RE: BS: Fish & Chips - 150 years old today
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 15 Jan 10 - 07:04 PM

In terms of regional variations, the weird, undoubtedly deadly, but totally addictive orange chips of the Black Country surely reign supreme. They have this very thin batter on them that looks kind of like an industrial accident. It's amazing on every level.


Black Country orange chips

There's a great chippy in Pelsall that does them.

Subject: RE: BS: Fish & Chips - 150 years old today
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 15 Jan 10 - 06:41 PM

We had fish and chips in an Irish bar in St Louis - It was fish goujons and crisps - Honest!

Best pace near us (Salford) is the Lancastrian Supper Bar on Bolton Road, Irlams o'th' Height. Best ones I have had though must be in Whitby. The Magpie is good but the place over the bridge has the edge I think - Nobles?

Funiest experience was getting thrown out of a chip shop in Skipton for dancing in singing 'Harry Ramsdens, Harry Ramsdens. Ramsdens, Ramsdens, Harry, Harry.'

DeG

Subject: RE: BS: Fish & Chips - 150 years old today
From: Bert
Date: 15 Jan 10 - 06:25 PM

If you want the best plate of fish and chips ever. Come to Colorado Springs and go to Oscar's on Tejon when my son Chad is cooking there.

Where it the best place in your town?

Subject: RE: BS: Fish & Chips - 150 years old today
From: Lizzie Cornish 1
Date: 15 Jan 10 - 05:14 PM

So, tonight, I went and wished my chirpy chippy a Happy 150th Birthday and my young lad and I had fish and chips. As he was cooking them he was telling me that oop north he'd heard there used to be a coal fired fish and chip range, dating back to the 1920's...and that it was still in use today...

Apparently, the ol' fella who originally owned it used to stoke up the fire then put the fish in to cook, black coal on his hands and all... :0)

And sure enough...here's some info about it:

Coal Fired Fryer Range...

And here's the very shop, still going, in Lincolnshire....

Suttons....Fish'n'Chips'n'Coal

Oh...and today is National Fish'n'Chip Day....and he was wondering why that was..Now, he knows. :0)

Subject: RE: BS: Fish & Chips - 150 years old today
From: Les from Hull
Date: 15 Jan 10 - 02:13 PM

Fish 'n' chips, Q! Where was Jefferson's fish? Anyway, the chips were most likely cooked by one of his slaves.

Subject: RE: BS: Fish & Chips - 150 years old today
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 15 Jan 10 - 01:59 PM

Thomas Jefferson served deep-fried slab cut potatoes at the White House in 1802; there is discussion of them as far back as 1680 in Belgium.
How old is the fish fry?

Trust the English to cop a good thing.

Long ago I was staying in Seven Oaks and commuting to London. Coming back to Seven Oaks at night, I always stopped at a fish and chips place on the way to where I was staying.
The best I have ever had! Yes, with the newsprint wrapping.

Many years ago, midwives working in the ghetto or country were advised to cover the birthing board (or bed) with newspapers; the greasy inks were germicidal.

Subject: RE: BS: Fish & Chips - 150 years old today
From: GUEST,biff
Date: 15 Jan 10 - 01:54 PM

anyone ever have fish and chips at St. Andrews?? Went to a place there in 1979 and (actually cheated) had the pizza and chips rolled up in a paper wrapper. It was one of the best meals of my life. Ok, it wasn't the fish, but the place was locally famous. Don't know its name. Near the coast.

Subject: RE: BS: Fish & Chips - 150 years old today
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 15 Jan 10 - 01:26 PM

Giok - patties from Brixton market. Oh yes. I lived in Tulse Hill, and used to walk round the market on Electric Avenue on my way to work.

Subject: RE: BS: Fish & Chips - 150 years old today
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 15 Jan 10 - 01:17 PM

John MacKenzie - PM
Date: 15 Jan 10 - 10:37 AM

"Why don't you piss off with your doggerel to your own boring thread, you egotistical tosser?"...why don't you stop deluding yourself?

Subject: RE: BS: Fish & Chips - 150 years old today
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 15 Jan 10 - 12:46 PM

those tomato squirty things....now what you are forced to use those tiny plastic packets thingies....hate the buggers.===

LoL - esp when that marked bit in the corner just WON'T bloody tear off & you are left cursing with words you didn't even know you knew.

Subject: RE: BS: Fish & Chips - 150 years old today
From: Bill D
Date: 15 Jan 10 - 12:35 PM

I am suddenly reminded of the story of actors auditioning for a play being asked to read the line: "She stood at the door of Miss Smith's Fish Shop, welcoming him in."

Those who carefully managed the 1st part were tripped by the last.

Ok...carry on.

(I 'think' I have had good fish & chips over here in the colonies, but never having been to the UK to compare, I am not sure.)

Subject: RE: BS: Fish & Chips - 150 years old today
From: Paul Burke
Date: 15 Jan 10 - 12:12 PM

Fish and chips, London, 1970s style- heavy rock salmon, tasted like lorry inner tubes fried in engine oil and encased in rockwool insulation. Mountains of inedible razor- tipped "chips", case hardened for at least 24 hours. Pies that grunted when you bit into them, you didn't dare lift the crust. Gravy apparently a product of dysenteric cows. With free added fag-ash.

Subject: RE: BS: Fish & Chips - 150 years old today
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 15 Jan 10 - 12:05 PM

You ain't lived till you've had one o' dem Jamaica Patties, from the bakers, just beside the entrance to Brixton Market.
Now when you say "Blow the wind Southerly", this produces a really hot wind ☺

Subject: RE: BS: Fish & Chips - 150 years old today
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 15 Jan 10 - 12:01 PM

HP?! Ooooohh noooooo! Daddies all the way, pet.

Subject: RE: BS: Fish & Chips - 150 years old today
From: GUEST,Jim Knowledge
Date: 15 Jan 10 - 11:48 AM

I `ad that Ruth Archer in my cab the other day. She looked well pleased with `erself and she `ad this little parcel in her `and. It was `er evening meal all wrapped up in a copy of "The Times".( None of your old "Sun" at "Fred`s Fried Food & Fish".)
I said, "Blimey Ruthie. If that`s your dinner it don`t `alf pen and ink. What you got in there? A Bit of rock and chips?"
She said, " S`right Jim. I just love that dogfish, `specially with some good old Sarsons vinegar and HP Sauce."
I said, "Dogfish? You sure `e `asn`t run out of fish and fried `is pet mongrel instead?!!"

Whaddam I like??

Subject: RE: BS: Fish & Chips - 150 years old today
From: Les from Hull
Date: 15 Jan 10 - 11:38 AM

David el Gnomo - 'an 'aypurth of scratchins? They charged you for scaps? And they say Yorkshiremen are tight!

Of course you have to travel to the East Riding of Yorkshire to experience a patty. The Patty Triangle extends between Goole, Bridlington and the coast.

Subject: RE: BS: Fish & Chips - 150 years old today
From: MikeL2
Date: 15 Jan 10 - 11:29 AM

hi

What a good thread !!

I can smell the fish and chips .......

Around here we have steak & kindney puddings in all of our chippies.
We don't call em babbies yeds....but I live in Cheshire and it's a bit posh here....lol

Years ago I used to play rugby and when we played " oooooop north" we got babbies yeds....I was very disappointed when I found that they were the same as our steak and kidney puddings.

At my folk club we used to have Lancashire Evenings and we used to put on steak & kidney puddings and pies.......and bucketfuls of mushy peas. Me and my missus used to make the peas....yum yum...blow ye winds southerly....lol

Lizzie I remember those tomato squirty things....now what you are forced to use those tiny plastic packets thingies....hate the buggers.

When I was very small we had two chippies fairly close to us and at that time I used to run errands for my grandma who lived around the corner.
She used to make me get the chips from one shop and the fish from the other.....my gran was very fussy....lol

We used to have fish and chips every Friday as kids.

We are having fish tonight but it is smoked cod with poached eggs as we are starting our annual cut down on fatty grub after the festivities which at our house go on until the 14th January as that is my good lady's birthday.

regards

mike

Subject: RE: BS: Fish & Chips - 150 years old today
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 15 Jan 10 - 11:26 AM

Hey - Our nearest place has a traditional English 'range' on which they do great chips; a pizza oven which I have never tried; One of those unrecognisable meat things on a turntable that produces some stuff to be eaten only when pissed; a griddle for burgers, which are surprisingly good and, finaly, some cardboard boxes full of southern fried cardboard...

Talk about decisions!

:D (eG)

Subject: RE: BS: Fish & Chips - 150 years old today
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 15 Jan 10 - 11:16 AM

... & we haven't even started yet on what to call those lovely big gherkins - almost pickled cuke size - that the best chip·shops keep. As I am a Londoner, they are 'wallies' to me.

There's a gr8 chippie right here in my home village of Haddenham between Cambridge & Ely [not to be confused with the other of same name in Bucks, tho we are fraternally linked by charity walks &c]; called Choys, becoz it doubles - wait4it - as a genuine (& xlnt) Chinese takeaway. So if you feel like a change, you can have pineapple·duck·in·orange·sauce with a go of mushroom·fried·rice instead. Oh, bum — decisions decisions!!!

Subject: RE: BS: Fish & Chips - 150 years old today
From: GUEST,buspassed
Date: 15 Jan 10 - 11:05 AM

'Tracies Plaice' a chippie on Kirkstall Rd. in Leeds do[did?] a deep fried slice of fish between slices of potato. Never managed to finish one but the remainder was always good for rubbing into your Barbour jacket t'keep rain out! Of course this type of fish cake does differ from the native Hull pattie which does or does not contain fish. Discuss! [Should you have enough time left in your life!]

Subject: RE: BS: Fish & Chips - 150 years old today
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 15 Jan 10 - 10:59 AM

I'd guess that anything they sell in chippies must be mass-produced and micro-waveable?

Untrue! Babbies Yeds are still kept in a double boiler in chippies near us and pies are cooked in the oven and kept warm in glass fronted case above the range. The pies can get a little dry after a while but put a good ladle of gravy or curry (with raisins!) on and they are fine again:-)

Cheers

DeG

Subject: RE: BS: Fish & Chips - 150 years old today
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 15 Jan 10 - 10:49 AM

"I am a brown sauce person as well but did get into the habbit of having mayo on chips when I was in Belgium - Different kettle of fries altogether though."


Agreed - my first trip abroad was to Bruges and Brussels one year (not the usual spring break destination of choice for the American university student, but I had friends with eccentric tastes). After several hours drinking Kriek beer in smoky little bars each night, we'd go out to these little green wagons and have frites with vinegar and mayonnaise. It was a revelation.

I don't like English chips with mayonnaise - the chips are the wrong texture, and brown sauce cuts through the greasiness. But with restaurant chips that are more like french fries, vinegar and mayo is just the ticket.

The day after Sidmouth finishes, I like having moules frites at the Bedford, and I always ask for vinegar and mayonnaise. I like eating it and looking out at the sea - it's one of my favourite meals.


Red sauce vs tomato sauce: I think it might be a bit of a north/south thing.

Subject: RE: BS: Fish & Chips - 150 years old today
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 15 Jan 10 - 10:37 AM

Why don't you piss off with your doggerel to your own boring thread, you egotistical tosser?

Subject: RE: BS: Fish & Chips - 150 years old today
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 15 Jan 10 - 10:14 AM

Enjoyed these chips...

Poem 187 of 230, A SOUTH SHIELDS WALKABOUT - AUTUMN 2001

Out of the museum-and-gallery
(Wiser on Cookson and the local way),
Down Ocean Road with, to the right of me,
Its eateries and, left, neat places to stay;
Before, on either side, Marine Parks -
The southern-one a most beautiful place,
Teeming with moorhens, swans, grebes and mallards
In a small lake at a scenic-hill's base.

Then (holding chips from the parade's cafe
And, thus, a flock of gulls squawking above)
Onto the South Pier I made my way:
Seeing seaweed over rocks - like a glove -
And high-and-dry sands held from transgression
By growth of grass and the weaving of wood,
Plus, in the dim light of a sleepy sun,
Fishing boats returning to Tynemouth's hood.

From http://blogs.myspace.com/walkaboutsverse(e-book)
Or http://walkaboutsverse.sitegoz.com (e-scroll)
(C) David Franks 2003

Subject: RE: BS: Fish & Chips - 150 years old today
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 15 Jan 10 - 09:57 AM

Red sauce is Tomato Ketchup. It's called red sauce by us lot out in The Backwoods in order to distinguish it from brown sauce, which is a different colour and a completely different kettle of sauce. :-)

Ruth, I've not seen Babbies 'Eads in chippies either - just on the ships and at home. I'd guess that anything they sell in chippies must be mass-produced and micro-waveable?

Subject: RE: BS: Fish & Chips - 150 years old today
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 15 Jan 10 - 09:35 AM

Does it not need a certain amount or reds or browns to be called red or brown sauce then?

:D

Subject: RE: BS: Fish & Chips - 150 years old today
From: Lizzie Cornish 1
Date: 15 Jan 10 - 09:08 AM

I'm glad you don't 'eat' me anymore, John... :0) x