Food Favorites from England & Wales

We just got back from a 10-day trip to England and Wales and it was wonderful and the food was fantastic. Not totally healthy, but it was good break and so very tasty. We had the best fish 'n chips on the planet in a little town called Criccieth, Wales which is right on the coast. If you ever go there, check out the Castle fish and chips shop right near Criccieth Castle. They were fantastic! And only cost 4 pounds. We went there both night we were there. The second night they had a line about 20 people long - I guess the place has a reputation. Here's a picture after about 30 minutes and the line had died out quite a bit.

Last night I tried to make some fish & chips for our boys to try. They didn't turn out as good because the fish wasn't fresh (it was frozen cod), but it was a good recipe. I think it would have been perfect if you could get your hands on some fresh fish. I had a hard time figuring out how hot to get my oil on the stove because I don't have a fryer. I had it too hot at first and that made the batter just fall right off the fish, but when I finally got it right, they turned out really good. I thought the batter on this recipe that I used was amazing. When our fish was done we had some leftover batter and we stuck some of the chips (already fried) in it and fried them up - yum! Another trick that we found was to coat the fish in flour before dipping it in the batter. That made the batter stick to the fish a lot better. When it was time to serve them, we sprinkle the fish and chips with some popcorn salt (very very finely ground salt) and malt vinegar. If you let the malt vinegar soak into the fish & chips it gives it the most wonderful flavor - yum yum! Is your mouth watering yet? :)

In London we also had some yummy corn from a street vendor that we made last night. This is all it was:

Chili corn
Frozen corn
butter
salt
Chili powder (or other flavors would be good too - experiment!)

Just cook up the corn and then mix in the other ingredients. It gave the corn the most delicious flavor. Really good. More recipes to come...we had a lot of good food!! :)