Monday 14 July 2008

Clangers

Living in Newport Pagnell, there aren't any famous traditional foods which originate on my doorstep - there's nothing as high-profile as Yorkshire pud, Lancashire hotpot, Cheddar or Stilton cheese, Melton Mobray pork pies, Bakewell tart or Cromer crabs around these parts. In fact, in the six-odd years I've lived in the area (and some of them have been quite odd), I've only heard somebody talking about a local recipe once.

I was talking to a part-time builder and retired rocket scientist from Wolverton at the time (had to name-drop that one, although I don't usually move in such eclectic circles), whose elderly neighbour decided he was looking a bit peaky one day and decided to cook him what she called a "Bucks clanger". This local delicacy seems to have been a sort of suet pudding with a bacon filling. I've never got round to cooking a clanger (which can only help you to lose weight as part of your calorie-controlled diet) and was looking for a recipe recently, when I found out that it's more of a generic dish of East/Central England than one specific to the county - most references I can find to the dish are to a "Bedfordshire clanger". There are also variations in the ingredients - apparently the more up-market versions of the dish used steak or pork, the bacon version being the clanger of the common people. In the original clanger recipes, the suet was studded with fruit, like a spotted dick.

The clanger also evolved over time, later versions having a meat filling in one end and a sweet one at the other, providing a complete meal in handily portable form for hungry farm labourers. There's a recipe here, which I've yet to test-drive.

And for the nostalgically inclined, here are some more clangers from rather further away. Just to clear up any confusion, Oliver Postgate once gloriously explained that:

The Clangers are not in any way alien. They are a perfectly ordinary family living in a detached residence. Nor, in reality, do they hoot or whistle. As there is no atmosphere to carry sound they converse in NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance) which is not audible. So we had to fabricate an imitation as best we could.


Now it all makes sense....

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