Welcome back to engVid. So, getting to know a country is not just about speaking the language.
We... We want to understand the food, because people are always going to be passionate about
food, so it's good to be able to talk about it. I know we're not in France, I know we're
not Italy, but there is some fine food to be found around the United Kingdom. So I'm
going to be showing you, via my slightly distorted map here, some of the highlights that you
Okay, I think we'll start right up here in the top. Scotland, known for such things as
the deep-fat-fried Mars bars. Okay? They also have "haggis". Haggis is sheep's stomach.
Mmm, tasty. They also have black pudding, which in... Sort of another strange bodily
part of an animal which is used in a sort of cooked breakfast. "Kedgeree" is perhaps
slightly healthier and tastier, this is... It's kind of like a... It's not a fish pie,
but it's... It's kind of like fishy, ricey type thing. It's really quite yummy. You have
it in a bowl. Yum-yum. "Dundee cake", so this is like a fruitcake, raisins, it kind of looks
brown. It's okay. "Pease pudding", this is in Northumberland. This is made with sort
of mushed up peas with meaty flavours, mushy peas with a decent flavour up there in Northumberland
where you have Hadrian's Wall and some stunning coastline. I've marked out Bradford here on
my map in Yorkshire. It's not typical British food, but as a melting pot of Asian cultures,
that's probably where you'll find the best curry in Britain.
Here in Derbyshire... Derbyshire, of course, on the map from my eccentric Britain video
in which we learnt that toe wrestling originated here, also is the birthplace of the "Bakewell
tart". I personally find it quite inedible, that means I can't eat it, not able to eat,
Bakewell tart, but it's a pudding with strong almond flavours. The "pork pie", obviously
made from a pig, so Muslim friends probably not going to be the best for you, but it's,
you know, pork with a sort of hard, crusty pastry. Quite satisfying snack. You can get
We're here in Norfolk. This part of England is called East Anglia, "Anglia" after the
Angles and Saxons who came from Denmark, Norway, those people over there. They came here and
they landed in this part of country because it was nearest, so this is now East Anglia.
This is where most of the Turkeys in the UK come from.
I've also pinpointed this little town, here, seaside town called Aldeburgh, that was also
in my video: "Difficult Places to Pronounce in the UK", "Aldeburgh" because it's spelt
funny. Let me just write it down one more time because it's a lovely place to visit.
Aldeburgh, great fish n' chips, have them on a beach, and a seagull comes and steals
them all, but very tasty. This is Suffolk here. I won't tell you a joke about Suffolk
and Norfolk, but you might be able to work it out, looking carefully at the sounds of
the words and the spellings. This is where sausages and bacon are, you know, there's
a lot of pig farms there. Very tasty.
Down here on the south coast... The south coast generally you're going to find pretty
good seafood. I haven't quite finished this one off. "Jellied eels", mm-mm-mm. Personally,
I've never eaten this in my life, but if you want to, you know, really get the authentic
British experience, then jellied eels is for you. Dover, the stunning, iconic... That's
a good word for you to have. "Iconic" means something that... An icon is like an image
that you remember, so the iconic Dover cliffs are maybe a very famous site of the UK. Here
in Dover, the "Dover sole", "sole" is a type of fish, it's a very flat fish, very good
with a little bit of lemon. I've put London here. Yes, I know there are some other fabulous
cities in the United Kingdom; Britain... Bristol, Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds,
to name just a few, but I've put London here because I know it better than the other cities,
other than next, down here. London has some fabulous restaurants where you'll find world-class
cuisine, as you will in lots of other places in the United Kingdom. Now, the thing about
British food, if you just go to your local supermarket, if you just go in someplace and
go: "All right, so that's British food", you're not going to get a true understanding of the
food. You need to go somewhere where they take a little bit of pride in their cooking,
and then you're more likely to get a positive experience from it. I've heard of people staying
with host families in language schools, and often they don't experience very good food.
You've got to be quite adventurous. You've got to go out and go: "Ah, that looks a nice
caf�, I bet they do some good food." Okay? Get out there, go explore. Okay, south coast,
as I was saying, we have lots of fish, so "kippur" is lovely fish to have. Traditionally
you'd have it at breakfast. Okay.
Cheddar, this is actually a town, a small town in Somerset where they make excellent
cider as well. Lots of homegrown beer around the country is made. Here, because there's
lots of apples, they make cider. Cheddar, this is the home of cheddar cheese. The cheddar
is matured in these caves to give it a very mature taste. That's traditional cheddar cheese.
This is where I'm from, Devon. Actually Cornwall tries to steal a lot of our good ideas, so
Cornwall goes: "Yeah, yeah, we invented the pasties." They didn't. First made here. So
a pasty is like a meat pie in a kind of strange sort of oval shape, and someone's gone like
that around the edges. You find it in sort of railway stations around the UK. Actually
originates here in Devon where we also came up with "clotted cream", which is this really
thick cream and it's lovely to have with a cream tea with a scone, so a warmed up sort
of... It looks like kind of a funny bread-type shape, really quite sweet and tasty. You put
it in half, put a bit of clotted cream on, a bit of jam on top, and you have a cup of
tea. Mmm. Wonderful thing to have. So we often have, like, a cream tea if there was, like,
a game of cricket going on. Very traditional.
Cornwall, I have to give them some credit, they're quite good at ice creams and Rick
Stein has put "seafood" firmly on the map in the town of Padstow down here, very good
Okay, Wales, doesn't look great here, Wales, probably have to give them a bit... A bit
more sort of geographical space, but there we are. You'll see that my area of the country
has become bigger because I focus more on it. Wales, famous for "cockles", as in the
song about Molly Malone in Dublin in Dublin's fair city where the girls are so pretty. I
hear it's about a fishmonger who sells cockles and muscles, types of shellfish.
Okay, in the middle here we have some "oat cakes". Oat cakes are sort of brown biscuits
which are good for having cheese on. We also have... Yup, there we are, "Red Leicester",
that's a red type of cheese, probably more orangey than red, but we'll call it red anyway.
"Steak" and "kidney pie", so yeah, it's beef steak and a pot of kidney. If you think about
it too much it doesn't sound very nice, but don't think about it and plow in, and it's
quite a satisfying, hearty meal. A "Lancashire hot pot", so this is a traditional working-class
dish, bung it all in, warm it up. I don't know specifically how the Lancashire hot pot
is made, but I'm sure it's very delicious. "Scouse", scouse like... Sorry, apologies
if you're from Liverpool, couldn't help it. So, a scouse is like a nickname for someone
from Liverpool. A "scouse lamb stew" is a traditional Liverpudlian lamb stew.
Over here in Northern Ireland, famous for making "soda bread" which is a healthy brown
variety of bread. I don't know much about the other types of foods from the Republic
of Ireland. If you know, why not...? Let's have a really interesting thread of ideas
of other foods from the United Kingdom. Tell us: What comes from the Republic of Ireland?
Up here, some other things in Scotland, "porridge", what an excellent way to start the day than
a bit of oatmeal and water warmed up. Okay? You're going to be hardcore and healthy, you
don't put milk in it, you don't put sugar in it, you just have your pure porridge. It's
what my son eats, he's doing pretty well. He's a healthy chap. "Short bread" as well,
this is a... Traditionally comes round and you slice it up, it's a biscuit, it's a delicious,
There we are, the UK's food as taught by Benjamin. Hope you enjoyed that. Do let me know of other
good food experiences you have had in the United Kingdom, and I'll see you in the next video.