It's funny how it's always the food

I've been feeling quite homesick lately.  It's not, as some have suggested, because of the short days and long nights.  I don't mind those.  You are more than compensated in the summer, when it hardly goes dark at all, or not when I'm up to see it.  And there are somethings which, in my view, are primarily winter activities.  Doctor Who is best watched when it is dark and cold outside!!

No. It has been because of people telling me about the crayfish they have been eating (I lerv crayfish) and the proper meat pies they've been having for brunch and numerous other foodie tales coming from South Australia, Victoria and (oddly enough) Queensland.

It does tend to be the food that people miss most.  The British travel the world and crave marmite; Australians Vegemite. The British miss twiglets, the Australians twisties. For some it's penguin biscuits, for others it's timtams.  I miss Australian meat pies (British meat pies simply don't cut it), coffee scrolls (Chelsea buns are pleasant, but not the same) and vanilla slices (millefeuilles are not even close).  Amongst other things!

I have learned to make meat pies which are very close to Australian ones.  I can make something very similar to coffee scrolls. I have almost perfected vanilla slices (and apple slices).  Although sometimes it would be nice to be able to buy them.  What I can't do, though, is flake fried in an Australian style batter.  You can't get flake. I can't figure out the batter.  And you can't buy calamari rings and scallops and dimsims in British fish and chip shops.

I can't do flake.  But I can do calamari rings.  So calamari and chips is what we had for lunch yesterday.

I read in a magazine (I think it was the BBC's Good food, but I might be wrong about that) a while back, instructions on how to do once fried chips.  They put the chipped potatoes in a pot of cold oil then slowly brought them to a simmer and then to a boil and fried them until they were crisp.  I was a bit suspicious about this but decided to give it a go - and found that it made lovely chips, nothing like as oily as I had been expecting.  I also found that they needed a second fry to make them properly crisp - and have made them this way ever since.

Yesterday I used Highland Burgundy Red potatoes, which are quite floury and make lovely chips.  I fried them in the cold oil, bringing it up to a nice hot boil.  I sliced the squid into rings and dipped them in flour,  egg and breadcrumbs to which I had added black pepper and lemon juice and once the chips were cooked I put them in the oil and fried them until they were crispy.  Then the chips went back in for a final fry. We had them not with salad, for it is the middle of winter here and a green salad is not, in my opinion, a winter food, but with garden peas (really from the garden, but via the freezer).

It was a delicious lunch.  (But it would be nice, sometimes, to be able to buy calamari rings)