A rainy evening in London calls for staying in, editing video and working through a few festive snacks. For Vlogmas Day 12, I picked up canapé-sized versions of familiar dishes to explore some of the peculiar names on British menus. From pigs in blankets to spotted dick, the names give surprisingly few clues about what is on the plate.
This is an archive of my video published on 12 December 2015. It is a relaxed tasting of supermarket party food, rather than a set of recipes. The products and packaging shown belong to that Christmas.
Watch the festive food video
Cheese on toast and Welsh rarebit
The first plate contains miniature cheese-on-toast bites: some with cheddar and others with ham and cheese. They prompt a conversation about Welsh rarebit and the French names croque monsieur and croque madame.
These are simple party snacks, so I am not presenting them as definitive versions of those dishes. That is part of the point of the evening: small, convenient bites provide a way into the names without cooking a succession of full meals.
Pigs in blankets
Next come Marks & Spencer cocktail sausages wrapped in smoky bacon. Once cooked, they have a crisp outside and a soft sausage centre. I serve mine with tomato ketchup and carry on editing between bites.
In this British version, the blanket is bacon. The video also touches on how the same dish name can mean something different elsewhere, which makes showing the actual food much more useful than relying on the name alone.
Yorkshire pudding and mini toad in the hole
Before trying toad in the hole, I show a Yorkshire pudding to explain the batter connection. The frozen Aunt Bessie’s packaging carries a Mrs Patmore’s Downton-themed design, a little detail that places this supermarket shop firmly in its time.
The mini toad-in-the-hole canapés contain Cumberland sausages in sage-flavoured batter with caramelised onion chutney. I plate them with a Yorkshire pudding and English mustard. They turn out crisp outside and soft in the middle; no toads are involved.
Mini beef Wellingtons
The next packet promises beef and creamy mushrooms inside buttery puff pastry. I cut one of the little Wellingtons open to look at the filling before tasting it.
They are enjoyable, but the amount of pastry rather overwhelms the beef for me. A full-sized beef Wellington is one of my favourites, and these miniature party versions do not quite deliver the same balance.
Devils and angels on horseback
Devils on horseback bring prunes wrapped in smoky bacon to the table. For a comparison, I swap some of the prunes for tinned smoked oysters to make my own quick version of angels on horseback.
I have not tried the smoked oysters before. Their flavour is quite different from fresh oysters, and the bacon brings it out nicely. The sweet prune and bacon combination works well too, giving two distinct snacks from a similar starting point.
Christmas pudding and mince pies
The final part of the evening turns to sweet dishes. I show a Christmas pudding and read through its fruit, nuts and other ingredients, but save it rather than cook and eat it in this video. I explain why badly dried-out puddings have sometimes put me off, despite the appealing ingredients.
The mince pie does get tasted. Breaking into the pastry reveals the sweet fruit filling, with currants and sultanas visible inside. It is another example of a name that could leave someone unfamiliar with British Christmas food expecting something quite different.
Spotted dick with double cream
To finish, I heat up spotted dick, a pudding I associate with school dinners and have not eaten for years. It arrives on a saucer, gets a generous helping of double cream and rounds off the tasting.
The currant-studded pudding is better than its rather dry first appearance suggests. After an evening of strange names and small plates, it makes a comforting final snack before returning to the editing.
Originally published as Vlogmas Day 12, 12 December 2015. All photographs are stills from the original Roberts London video.
