12. Food and gastronomy - P

The Czech evening meal is not so nutritious if people have a hot meal for lunch. It may be salami, ham, cheese, eggs, bread or rolls and some vegetables. Some people prefer a hot meal, too. They may have pancakes, potato pancakes, pizza, stews or goulash with bread, casseroles, risotto or pasta with meat sauce. Some people may have a similar dish as at midday except for soup, although some thick soups with bread may be a separate evening meal.

The Czech cuisine has many specialities to tempt the visitors. Our national dish is roast pork, sauerkraut or stewed cabbage and dumplings. Another popular dish is roast sirloin of beef in cream sauce again with dumplings. Czechs often eat meat loaf and many kinds of smoked-meat products. Wiener schnitzel, which is a pork steak coated in flour, eggs and breadcrumbs and fried, is a popular dish as well. Fruit dumplings with cottage cheese are served as the main course or a dessert. Sweets and cakes are popular too. Most of them we can buy in shops or we bake them at home – doughnuts, stuffed cakes, apple pies, apple strudel, marble cakes, Christmas cakes or Easter cakes. We can boast excellent Carlsbad waffles or Pardubice gingerbread. Sponge cakes are also popular.

Some of the beer brands are world famous, but both white and red wine, Carlsbad Becher Liqueur and Moravian slivovitz can be recommended. The traditional Christmas dinner consists of fish soup, fried carp and potato salad. As a dessert homemade Christmas sweets, cookies and apple strudel are served, There us a superstition about New Year’s Day dinner. You should not have any poultry on that day, otherwise you will have bad luck in the next year, Lentils, on the contrary, should bring you a lot of money.

Britain

According to a joke, the British should be cooks in hell. Some people say that the British cuisine is nothing but overcooked vegetables. The best meal of the day is breakfast. Every part of the kingdom has its own traditional dishes. In England they have roast beef with gravy (thickened juice from meat) and Yorkshire pudding made of flour, eggs, and milk and baked in the oven. Scotland has haggis, which is made of sheep’s internal organs. Northern Ireland is not that bad, they have smoked salmon there. Wales is a bit worse, it’s lamb with mint sauce.

The British are known for their full breakfast which includes fried bacon and eggs, sausages, fried tomatoes, dry (not fried) toast and marmalade (made of citrus fruit, especially oranges, bitter in taste because an orange peel is added), a bowl of cereal with milk, porridge or cornflakes with milk and sugar. They drink a glass of juice, a cup of coffee or tea-strong, milk is added.

In the middle of the morning they have elevenses (morning snack), which is usually not more than a cup of coffee and biscuits.

The midday meal is generally called lunch and is usually fairly light. Now few people have lunch in canteens. They like eating sandwiches either prepared at home or bought in a bakery, sandwich shop, café or pub. The fillings vary. The popular ones include ham, beef, cheese, eggs and fish. At least one internationally famous fast food dish was invented in Britain. There is a legend that explains how the sandwich was invented. There is a town in Kent called Sandwich. The Earl of Sandwich was a great gambler and one night, when he was playing cards, he enjoyed the game so much that he decided not to stop for dinner. He asked his servant to bring him a piece of meat between two slices of bread and the idea caught on. Another well-known British speciality that you can have for lunch is fish and chips. The traditional image is fresh fish from the sea, steaming hot chips, served with salt and vinegar and wrapped in yesterday’s newspaper. Now the fish is frozen and the containers plastic.