Thursday, March 17, 2011

So very very wrong

In general, I love epicurious.com. I am a long-time, loyal user and it led me in turn to the wonderful product Tastebook. And in general, I think Americans are smarter about other cultures' food than Brits are (with a few exceptions.) I have had a few rants about the inedible piles of crisp cookies and unmacerated strawberries that are passed off as "strawberry shortcake" and the weird misconception Brits have about tuna and sweetcorn being quintessentially American, when I have never seen it in the States anywhere. British Italian food is less authentic even than American Mexican food. Britain is awash with Thai food, some of it pretty bad, but Vietnamese is almost impossible to find. And so on.
Thus, when I saw in my email feed from epicurious.com that they had a Bakewell tart recipe, I had high hopes. Which were crushed, not once but twice. First big fail - this recipe was presented as the dessert for a St. Patrick Day Irish-themed dinner. Bakewell Tart is not Irish, not even close! The village of Bakewell, where the tart supposedly hails from, is in the Peak District in Derbyshire (pronunciation guide for Americans: "darby-shur") and a more English village you could not hope to find. But most disappointing of all, when I looked at the recipe, it wasn't Bakewell Tart, again not even close. Here is a proper recipe for Bakewell Tart, and you will notice that the pastry is shortcrust, not puff (and by the way, how did they get it to look like a pie with puff pastry? Something is really wrong here.) And the filling. What is this - it's like a custard with no vanilla or other flavour and flour added. It sounds really vile.
Please, whether you are Irish or American, or a little bit of both, DO NOT follow epicurious.com's recipe for Bakewell Tart. The real thing is too nice.

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