Food Britannia

The latest addition to the recommended reading area of this blog, and taking pride of place on my coffee table this month, is Andrew Webb's Food Britannia.  Regular readers of this blog will remember that in 2008 Andrew Webb spent 7 months doing a tour of Britain for Channel 4, to create their Big British Food Map.  Sadly Chanel 4 seem to have dropped this project, which I thought was excellent.

We've waited a long time for his book to come out, but it's been worth it!  I had a day with Andrew in 2008, when I took him to places like A T Welch's café/museum, and Andrew Jackson's Great Tasting Meat Company.  In the book there's lots of "old friends" and foods that I've never heard of.  So if you want to learn more about Bosworth Jumbles (and where the recipe came from), or what a Coventry God cake or what a Dorset Naga is, I thoroughly recommend this book.  I think I might pass on the Love in Disguise though.

If you buy a copy, I'll even autograph page 310, where I get a mention opposite a picture he took when we popped into Staffordshire for some oatcakes.

Mind you the people in Stoke are still laughing about his suggestion that they should fill them with Gruyère cheese and sell them as gourmet snacks...