Christmas In The Good Old Days
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Pie 'N' Mash Needs To Be Protected, Says Essex Mp
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//An Essex MP is to lead a parliamentary debate calling for traditional pie 'n' mash with liquor to get protected status, like champagne and Cornish Pasties.
Richard Holden, the Conservative MP for Basildon and Billericay, said the dish was "part of that Cockney diaspora", describing it as "the original fast food".
He will lead the debate in Westminster Hall at 16:00 BST on Tuesday to stop producers claiming it - but with a different recipe.//
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'Pie Mash' if you please Mr Holden - no Londoner worth his salt would ever call it Pie 'and' mash - but apart from that I'm with you on this one. Having long ago left London I've not eaten it for years but to me it always has been the food of the Gods.
Love it or loathe it - or have you never tried it?
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"Dont suppose people on here will be behind it though they hate anything Cockney it seems."
I'm not quite a cockney. But I was born within the sound of the bells of a church which is probably within the sound of the bells of St. Mary-le-Bow (if the wind is in the right direction).
But I hate Pie Mash and (especially) the licquor with a vengeance.
I lived in Stoke Newington, North London and in nearby Dalston, F. Cooke had one of his (I think four or five) shop/restaurants, in Kingsland Road. The tables were in fixed booths and were marble topped. Hanging from the outside of the shop, overhanging the pavement were a couple of tanks about six inches deep, containing the eels. There was little water in these tanks, just a mass of slithering eels. It was by no means unusual for one or two of them to slide over the edge of the tank and fall to the pavement. These eels were for sale raw and you could choose them from the tank. The assistant would take them out and decapitate them for you before your very eyes, so you knew they were fresh! You could take them away either whole, or they could be chopped up into manageable lengths for you.
I found the pies just extremely unpleasant. I don't think there was anything particularly wrong with them. I would eat all sorts of meat pies but they just left me cold. My mates and my family all loved them but I always had something else when they were on offer.
The eels? I love virtually all sorts of fish and seafood, but eels are an absolute no-no. I don't know what it is about them. Not far from where I lived Cooke's had a small lock up. In there they stewed and jellied their eels for sale in the shop. Inside were three or four large vats which would steam all day, accompanied by most awful smell.
"'Pie Mash' if you please Mr Holden - no Londoner worth his salt would ever call it Pie 'and' mash "
This is interesting. Although not particularly interested in the fayre, I always knew it as "Pie n' Mash". I wonder if "Pie Mash" stems from "Pie, Mash & Licquor"? Interstingly Cooke's (who are still trading) and Manze's (where my mates would call in on the odd occasions we strayed south of the river) seem to be with me:
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The Cooke's website is interesting. It explains that some of its shops are now listed buildings and also menttions the live eels at their Dalston outlet.
Anyway, whether its Pie Mash or Pie n' Mash, I wish Mr Holden well with his attempt to have it protected.
//Mamyalynne told me about black peas - I'd never heard of those either.//
Oh but Mamyalynne was a Bolton lass and black peas used to be quite popular in my youth there, they would be sold on fairgrounds during winter. I was never much of a fan but proper mushy peas are wonderful, but marrying a foreigner, ie from across the Pennines, I was also introduced to pickled red cabbage as an accompaniment to pies.
Pie and peas could be more or less any pie or even a pasty, Churchgate Bolton if they're still there did good ones.
We have gray pays (peas) and bacon here
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Born and breed Londer here. Never had pie n mash in my life. Well, indoors I have, but never from one of the shops. It doesn't look too appetising to me. There's a shop in my town that always has queues to get in along with a regular visit from a very famous football player who travels there to get his pie n mash.
The liqour looks particularly disgusting.
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