Thursday 13: Holiday Food

I enjoyed the Thursday 13 posted last week by Pamela at When Good People Get Together, where she listed memorable foods from thirteen different places she had lived. I haven't moved around enough to copy her directly, but I thought I'd adapt it to favourite foods I remember from different holiday destinations. Working roughly in chronological order:

1. Cornish Splits and Clotted Cream (Padstow, Cornwall) 
My great-aunt and uncle lived in Padstow until I was six, and I remember sitting at the dining table there (funny that I can still picture that dining room) eating splits - kind of like a cross between scones and bread rolls - with strawberry jam and clotted cream.

2. Knickerbocker Glories (Isle of Wight)
As a child we went to the Isle of Wight for a summer beach holiday for several consecutive years. Going to a cafe for ice creams was a treat, and I remember often copying my mum and having her  favourite, the knickerbocker glory.

3. Cornish Pasties (St.Just, Cornwall)
After a spell in Norfolk, my aunt and uncle moved back to Cornwall, where I developed a taste for pasties.

4. Curd Tarts (Yorkshire)
Yes, that is curds as in Little Miss Muffet's curds and whey - mixed with currants and used to fill a pastry case. I love curd tarts, and have never seen them anywhere except Yorkshire. The best ever come from Hunters of Helmsley.

5. Moussaka (Corfu, Greece)
The first Greek island I visited was Corfu, back in 1979, which is where I discovered that Greek classic, moussaka. Yum.

6. Kataifi (Kos, Greece)
Next up on the Greek list was Kos, and lots of time hanging out at a cafe-bar that sold the most gorgeous cakes. Traditional Greek desserts are a lot like Turkish, with lots of nuts and honey. For me kataifi, made with a kind of shredded pastry (looks like shredded wheat), has the edge over baklava.

7. Gelato (Rome)
Italian ice cream. Enough said.

8. Turbot (Calais, France)
Back in our very early days together, Tevye took me on a day trip to Calais, where we ate at a restaurant recommended by a former colleague with gourmet leanings. I had a truly memorable main course of turbot, cooked to perfection.

9. Crab Sandwiches (Jersey)
While Tevye was recuperating from surgery on his back we spent a week on the Channel Island of Jersey. Most days we ate lunch in a little cafe overlooking a bay, where they sold the best ever crab sandwiches. Delicious.

10. Vegetarian / Vegan Food (Totnes, Devon)
When I was three months pregnant with Angel we spent a week in a cottage in Devon, which coincided with the beginning of the end of pregnancy nausea and the realisation that eating was at least an occasional possibility. My first real meals in a couple of months came from a vegetarian / vegan cafe in Totnes. For some reason they appealed to my frazzled taste buds where meat based meals just didn't.

11. Danish pastries (Weymouth)
Since Angel and Star were quite small we have holidayed regularly at a caravan park in Weymouth, Dorset. One holiday treat is to share a giant slab of Danish pastry from the Dorset Cake Company for breakfast.

12. Moules a la Normande (Normandy, France)
Mussels are a classic dish for northern France and Belgium, and apples are ubiquitous in Normandy. Combine the two and you get mussels cooked in apple cider and cream. 

13. Doughnuts (Thassos, Greece)
Our favourite Greek island is Thassos, in the north. A fixture on the beach since we first went nearly twenty years ago is the doughnut seller who strolls round at intervals with a tray full of chocolate doughnuts, jam doughnuts and plain rings. No prizes for guessing my favourite.