Food, Beer and Culture - Fielder Adventure Holidays - Active Adventure Holidays in The UK, Sweden & Spain

British food is not at all well known around the world. Largely because it is difficult to define. It is certainly so much more than fish and chips! (NB: All meals are included in the price of the holiday).

British food in general has so many influences, from our history around the world, that even the British have largely forgotten what British food is! There are many regional dishes and more than 700 locally made cheeses. The most popular meal in Great Britain is actually curry. A word invented by the British probably as a misinterpretation of an original Indian word. Much of the meal "curry" was the invention of Bangladeshi chefs, who opened their first "Indian" restaurants in London. They adjusted the original dishes to appeal to the British taste, and devised a system based on five basic pots which could be mixed in various proportions, to produce the extensive and varied menu found in nearly every "curry house" in Britain today. The most popular dish - Chicken Tikka Masala - sells 23 million portions a year in British Indian restaurants - and it doesn't even exist in India!

Whilst we sell our holidays in the UK too, we specialise in showing Danes the things they never knew existed in the UK. So all our meals have some UK history and a little story to go with them. The food is "English" but reflects the multi-cultural influences that have resulted in Indian, Far Eastern, Middle Eastern, Caribbean and European dishes being as much a part of an English family's menu as fish and chips.

The actual menu will vary, but listed below, are a few examples of what to expect. Click on each item for more information.

• Breakfast
  • The Breakfast Buffet
    • Most mornings we will have the breakfast buffet - help yourselves to a selection of cereals, toast, rolls, cheese, jam and other toppings.
  • The English Breakfast
    • Very few English people actually eat an English breakfast every day. For most of us it is really a special treat reserved for that morning after a good night out!  However, it is still traditional for most building workers to start work at 08:00 and then stop for half an hour at 10:00 for breakfast. All over the UK you will find cafes full of builders at 10:00. These are always the cheapest and the best places to get a real English breakfast.  Most of these cafes serve "breakfast" all day. Always with bacon and eggs and with various other additions including baked beans, fried tomatoes, mushrooms, "bubble and squeak", black pudding, fried bread or toast and a big mug of tea.
• Lunch
  • Build your own
    • Each morning, after breakfast, we will provide a selection of bread, toppings and fillings, fruit, snacks and sweets for you to have your very own choice of packed lunch. We will include a couple of traditional English specialities too.
  • Cornish Pasties
    • A short-crust pastry parcel filled with meat and potatoes and flavoured with herbs. In the 1800's they were very popular with the tin miners from Cornwall. They are baked with a large pastry crust along one side originally intended as a "handle" so the miners could hold this side with their dirty hands and throw that part away afterwards. In those days pasties were baked with meat and potatoes at one end and fruit at the other - so you could have your whole meal in one convenient package!
  • Scotch Eggs
    • A hard boiled egg surrounded by a pork meat coating then covered in breadcrumbs.
• Snacks
  • To keep you going till dinner
    • Just in case you come in from the mountains feeling too hungry to wait until dinner at 19:00 - there will be a few snacks waiting in your own kitchens.
  • Freshly Baked Bread
    • There is nothing nicer than the smell of freshly baked bread after an active day outdoors.
  • English Cheese Selection
    • There are over 700 varieties of British cheese. Here you will get the chance to try a few of them.
• Dinner
  • Starters
    • Broccoli and Stilton (cheese) Soup
      • A thick creamy broccoli soup flavoured with blue Stilton cheese.
    • Leek, Potato and Smoked Salmon Soup
      • A traditional English recipe with the addition of smoked salmon. It was the Vikings that first introduced the techniques for smoking fish to England.
    • Aubergine dip, Humus and Taramasalata
      • Like the people of many ex - British colonies, some of the people of Cyprus have come to settle in the UK, especially London, bringing with them recipes from Greece, Turkey and the Middle East, like Humus - a dip made from Chick Peas and sesame seed paste, as well as some specifically Cypriot recipes such as Taramasalata - a dip made from smoked cod roe.
    • Spanish Tapas
      • Beginning in the 70's Spain became the most popular country for English people to go on holiday. First of all we just went for the sun and to eat in the cafes that sold "English Breakfast" and "Fish and chips". Now we go for the food and culture too, and many English people have a favourite Spanish dish. Our "tapas" consist of Manchego cheese with fresh rosemary, chorizo sausage, spicy chilli and garlic prawns, olives and tortilla.
  • Main Courses
    • Chicken and Bacon Casserole
      • Chicken, Bacon and leeks, cooked in white wine and cream, and flavoured with bayleaf.
    • The Sunday Lunch
      • Usually provided by us as a weekday evening meal - as we are too busy with activities during the day. Consisting of roast beef, Yorkshire pudding (a form of pancake mixture baked in the oven until it rises) and various roast vegetables and potatoes.
    • Aubergine and black olive penne
      • Many European countries have their communities of Italians. The UK is no different - and, of course, they brought their cooking with them. Italian food is actually the second most popular in the UK after Indian. This is a pasta dish, in a sauce made from grilled aubergines, tomatoes, onions and garlic together with fresh basil and black olives.
    • The Take-Away Curry
      • A whole selection of Anglo/Indian specialities too numerous to mention here - provided for us by the local Bangladeshi family owned restaurant. For more details visit The Curry House.
  • Deserts
    • Selection of fruit and ice cream
      • Various fruit depending upon what looked nice this week - and we always keep a selection of ice cream in the freezer.
    • Bakewell Tart/Pudding
      • Made of short crust pastry with a filling made from eggs, raspberry or strawberry jam and flavoured with almonds. The Bakewell Pudding was invented by accident at the The White Horse Inn (now The Rutland Arms Hotel) in the centre of the nearby town of Bakewell. The cook misinterpreted instructions and poured egg mixture over the jam instead of mixing it in the pastry and what should have been a tart was now a pudding. Incidentally, the hotel is also famous for being the place where Jane Austin wrote "Pride and Prejudice".
    • Rhubarb crumble
      • Cooked rhubarb topped with a crunchy, crumble layer made from butter, flour and sugar.

There are also over 2000 traditional beers produced in Great Britain. The traditional brewing process produces a very special "live" beer that is difficult to store and very difficult to transport. Consequently it is rarely found more than a short distance from the brewery. So, although these breweries often make a bottled version for transport abroad, the original recipe can often ONLY be tasted in a British pub.