It’s the first Pieday Friday of 2015 and, rather than sharing a recipe this week, my blog post is inspired by an idea I heard about on the Celebrity Cruises website: the #tasteoftravel. As someone who loves food (I literally wait for meal times to come around each day!) I was very keen to get involved and it really made me think about what meals I would choose for my ultimate menu.
Okay, I love too many dishes to list them all today, but meals that I’ve discovered while visiting new destinations always stick in my mind and remind me of the special holiday that I took. In fact, I sometimes revisit the same resort because I loved the food so much and I want to go back for more! So I’ve had a think about the local ‘delicacies’ and meals that I love the most and I’m sharing them in my ultimate #tasteoftravel menu below.
Starter I’m not someone who has travelled abroad much but the few times that I’ve left the UK I’ve been super-excited to try out new foods and always bring some tasty treats back with me. I loved the bread in Germany and hubby couldn’t stay away from the mussels in France, so we’d probably order a combination of these starters along with my absolute favourite dish – garlic bread. Some of the best meals that I’ve enjoyed while in Europe have been Italian, so I would start my menu with a delicious garlic bread; with melted mozzarella, dripping in olive oil and studded with rosemary. I’d love to add a rocket salad and goats-cheese pizza to my menu but I fear that I wouldn’t have room for my main course!
Main course I couldn’t choose just one main course dish because there are two meals that I would always choose when I go away on holiday here in the UK; one is from the north west and one from the south west and both are pastry-based! My favourite ever meal is a butter pie and it is only really found in the Lancashire. In fact, I make sure that I travel to the area at least once a year so that I can indulge in a butter pie or two during my stay. If you’ve never tried one, it’s like a meat and potato pie but without the meat, so essentially it is slices of potato with onion and butter in crisp pastry pie crust. It sounds like it would be dry and boring, but it is the most amazing flavour – almost cheesy – and very indulgent! I’ve even taken a box of butter pies home to the south to share with my family but some of them didn’t understand why I loved the pies so much so I guess it’s an acquired taste!
The second option for my main course would be the traditional Cornish pasty from my favourite UK coastal holiday destination. My husband and I like to visit Cornwall to celebrate our anniversary so have been a handful of times over the years – and each time we have both eaten Cornish pasties for breakfast, lunch and dinner. With all the flavours and fillings available in Cornwall, it’s very easy to eat a pasty for each meal, but I especially love the traditional beef and veg filling, and other “Cornish” pasties just aren’t the same outside of the county. So the only time that I get to enjoy a pasty is when I am actually staying in Cornwall, and the 8 hour drive from home to St Ives is well worth it for that traditional flavour! I’ve found some photos of the trip to Cornwall that we enjoyed for our first wedding anniversary and the food that we ate always reminds me of this special holiday, where we toured around the coastal towns and visited the Eden Project for the first time.
Dessert Without doubt my favourite dessert is ice cream. Whether it’s Italian, French or British, it is always a winner and I prefer fruit flavours, although I can be persuaded to go for a rich chocolate occasionally! I found another old photo of me enjoying an ice cream on our honeymoon in Paris over 11 years ago and it’s still my top choice for dessert, whether we are in a restaurant or have just finished a bag of chips at the seaside. In fact, one of the best Valentine’s Day meals that my husband and I shared was on a trip to the great British seaside, where we took our own buttered bread with us to make delicious chip butties followed by an amazing clotted cream ice cream, yum.
Our honeymoon was in August 2003, and that year France suffered from a heatwave – just as we arrived. People were actually becoming ill from the heat and the city sold out of oscillating fans everywhere. Undeterred, we still wandered around Paris everyday, seeing the sights and hopping from one fountain to the next. There were water misters all the way along the Seine to cool down visitors and I remember eating an excessive amount of ice cream – it was essential to keep us cool, so it was practically medicinal!
What would your ultimate #tasteoftravel menu be? Please tweet me @Cassiefairy or leave me a comment below to share your favourite foodie memories with me 🙂 I would also like to challenge some of my fabulous blogging pals to do the same and share their ultimate #tasteoftravel menu – Glitter Daze, Cherishing the Cherry Blossoms, The Blue Rinse and La Vie Sophie – I know that these bloggers have been on some amazing travel adventures so I’d love to hear what they come up with!
