Oxton sausages, herby mashed potatoes, onion marmalade, seasonal greens and gravy at Ye Olde Bridge Inn, Oxton, Nottinghamshire

Searching the UK for acceptable pub food, what I would call true comfort food, is proving a tough challenge.

Once one could rely on a pub cook to make a decent steak and kidney or steak and ale pie. No more. Their pies now seem to come from some horrid central commissary where robots are programmed to insert the minimum of meat into the maximum of pastry shell. It’s all about the economics. Failing that, a pub cook will stick a hat of pre-cut frozen puff pastry onto a sloppy stew and call it a pie. Not in my lexicon, it ain’t.

In a pub in Oxford, which shall remain nameless as it is mere steps from my middle daughter’s new home, I have a simply inexorable example of chain pub pie, hidden under lashings of gravy and mushy peas. Not for nothing does Trip Advisor call this the “worst pub” in Oxford. However, we are here to see the annual Oxford vs Cambridge boat race on the big sports screen, which is exciting even though Oxford looses again. That’s fun and the food is really irrelevant. But how nice if both the experience and the grub had matched expectations.

There’s another ubiquitous food in Britain: fish and chips. I always used to look forward to an enjoyable serving of this once top-of-the-list take-away and as usual I end up disappointed. Again, it must be the economics. What you usually get is a great bulk of batter with a tiny bit of unidentifiable white fish inside. As a result, I peel off most of the batter and pick at the inner offering indifferently. Thank goodness the chips and mushy peas are usually reliable.

In the so-called “best” fish and chip restaurant in York, we are shown to a tiny table behind a pillar in a back room with indifferent service. If the grub had been fair, I would have put the experience down to bad luck, but no, the battered cod should have sued for assault. No wonder tikka masala has overtaken fish and chips as the number one take away in Britain.

The next day in Whitby, having learned my lesson, I have the best and freshest oysters I’ve ever tasted from a simple harbourside stall.

So, having dismissed chain pub pies and fish and chips from my list, what else is there?

Comfort food must give comfort not heart burn, so the only safe choice left is usually bangers and mash. I’ve written about this before (in Bangers and Toads, about toad in the hole) but it’s worth repeating. It’s hard to beat a couple of bangers on a mound of fluffy mashed potatoes covered in a rich onion gravy. Of course, they can mess it up with bangers left too long in a warming oven, lumpy mashed and packet gravy, but fortunately that’s mostly a thing of my boarding school past.

Speaking of toad in the hole, a few weeks ago it was British Food Fortnight, here in the UK. A local farmer, famous for growing Marfona potatoes, has opened a very successful diner in one of their barns, with the lovely slogan: ‘From field to fork.’  On offer at the Arrow Farm Café during the two weeks were bangers and mash and toad in the hole, the first time I’d seen the latter on a menu in years.

Lest you think I am limited in my comfort foods, let me hasten to add my other favourites, all in my last cookbook, Market to Table: apple crumble; boeuf bourgingon; cauliflower cheese; chili; cottage pie; eggs benny; Cumberland fish pie; English trifle; French onion soup; mac and cheese; rice pudding; scrambled eggs; spaghetti Bolognese; roast turkey; and more.

What makes all these dishes memorable, is that without exception I can recall, with pleasure, the places I first had these dishes and why they bring comfort.

Does the smell of a certain dish cooking bring back happy memories?

Does the scent of an herb or spice immediately bring to mind a meadow or marketplace? Somewhere fanciful, or exotic, or strange?

Does the delicious flavour, just a bite or a mouthful, of a particular dish remind of the fun you were having that night you first tasted it?

Work started this week on a new cookbook, my third, and as yet untitled. It will focus on all my favourite comfort foods. If you, dear reader, have a comfort food dish you think should be included, please use the “Comment” button to let me know.

Town House, Bawtry, Yorkshire, Cumberland sausage

The Rose Cottage, Rufford, Nottinghamshire

The Highway Inn, Burford, Oxfordshire

All the sausages were consistently excellent and well cooked. Mashed potatoes were equally tasty, although sometimes the modest serving of potatoes were hiding and sometimes there were more than a reasonable person could eat. Common to all offerings was a good rich onion gravy, although occasionally the amount left a little to be desired. Presentation, as the photography shows, seems to run to the current trend of stacking food high, with more or less veggies offered, and sometimes water cress or pea shoots as a decoration.

In Canada, the Loblaws grocery chain offers pork bangers which are almost as good.  They admit to ‘toasted wheat crumbs’ and ‘natural seasonings’ in the mix. In the US, most jurisdictions won’t allow more than two per cent ‘grain,’ which doesn’t get close to the recipe for a genuine banger.

Bangers and mash is an easy dish to prepare, simple food, simply made and simply delicious.

The recipes are included below for those who might have missed them the first time around.

Featured image: grilled bangers, home -made mashed potatoes and onion gravy (all photos by Nigel Napier-Andrews)

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This is Nigel’s 261st blog on Gentleman’s Portion. The SEARCH function at the top works really well if you want to look back and see some of our previous stories.