The characteristic products
While some culinary specialties and practices have been imported from neighboring Britain, Welsh cuisine remains primarily the product of the skills of Welsh workers, largely due to their isolation from outside culinary influences and the need to source food according to the limited ingredients they could produce. The Welsh Celts and their more recent descendants originally practiced transhumance, moving their livestock to higher altitudes in summer and then back down to the plains in winter. Sheep farming is widely practiced in Wales, with lamb and mutton being the meats most commonly associated with the country. Don't leave the small Celtic nation without tastingWelsh lamb, with its delicate tenderness and distinctive taste appreciated by connoisseurs. The PGI (Protected Geographical Identification) label was awarded to Welsh lamb in July 2003. Beef has long been a rarity, with cows bred primarily for their milk. Fishing is common and seafood is widely used in Welsh cuisine.
Vegetables, beyond cabbages and leeks, were historically rare, and the leek has become an important component of many dishes. It has been a national symbol of Wales for at least 400 years, and Shakespeare even refers to the Welsh custom of wearing a leek in the play Henry V. The astonishing craze for this particular vegetable honors St. David, who evangelized the country and, during a 6th-century battle fought in the middle of a field of leeks, is said to have asked the soldiers to hang some on their helmets before fighting in order to differentiate themselves from the Anglo-Saxons. We don't know if the Welsh victory that day was due to the leek, but the vegetable has become an emblem of the country. Otherwise, potatoes, carrots, squash, turnips and rutabagas are also used.
Although the size of Wales means that there are no major regional variations, there are a few local peculiarities. Ingredients were historically limited by what could be grown: the wetter climate of mountainous regions meant that crops were limited to oats, while the more fertile lowland areas allowed for the growth of barley or wheat. Coastal dwellers - particularly on the Gower Peninsula, cut off from the rest of Wales until the 20th century - were more likely to include seafood or seaweed, while those living inland completed their meals with berries, game and wild herbs.
Wales has an important dairy industry, offering some interesting cheese specialties. The best known is Caerphilly, a hard, white cheese from the Caerphilly region of South Wales. Almost white and crumbly, it is made from cow's milk, and is generally 48% fat. Its taste is mild, but its most striking characteristic is its high salt content. It is said that this cheese was intended to enable local coal miners to replenish their salt reserves lost during the ten hours of hard labor they spent at the bottom of the mine. Other varieties include tintern, produced in the village of the same name, a cheddar flavored with shallots and chives. Pantysgawn, a slightly aged goat's cheese, originates from the town of Blaenavon. Finally, y fenni is a cow's milk cheese similar to cheddar, flavored withale (dark beer) and mustard seeds.
As for eating habits, the Welsh generally start their day with a hearty breakfast (which today bears a strong resemblance to the English breakfast), often offered in hotels and B&Bs. This includes a bowl of cereals, followed by a plate of bacon, eggs, sausages andbaked beans. Enough to keep you going until lunch. Lunch is often a lighter meal: sandwich, salad or soup. The main meal is served early in the evening. Many establishments, particularly outside the big cities, no longer serve after 9:30pm. Since the 1970s, the number of gourmet restaurants and pubs in Wales has increased considerably, and there are now five Michelin-starred restaurants in the country.
The classics of Welsh cuisine
Among Wales's most famous dishes is the Welsh rarebit, a hearty snack consisting of a slice of bread spread with mustard, then topped with cheese fondue (cheddar or chester) and beer. The whole thing is baked au gratin and sometimes topped with a fried egg. Cawl is also one of the best-known dishes in Welsh gastronomy, often considered the national dish. Halfway between a soup and a stew, this specialty is made with lamb, leek, potato, carrot and rutabaga. Common throughout the UK, shepherd's pie resembles our mince pie, but is often prepared with lamb. Faggots are pork meatballs generally made from the leaner parts (fat, giblets, etc.), usually served with peas and a brown onion sauce called gravy. Be careful to use the term faggot only in restaurants when ordering this dish, as it's also a particularly crude insult, the meaning of which we'll leave you to find out for yourself. Tatws pum munud, whose name in Welsh means "five-minute potato", is a quick-cooking stew made from thin slices of potato simmered in a broth with bacon.
Soups are equally popular, the most common being cawl cennin (in Welsh), a creamy leek and potato soup. For the hungry and the budget-conscious, Clark's Pie is an ideal snack for those on the go. This crunchy turnover - often sold for around £2 - is emblematic of Cardiff and is filled with a mixture of beef, vegetables and gravy. More than a dish, Sunday Roast is above all an experience. Very popular, Sunday Roast is often the occasion for a meal with friends or family. Usually served between noon and 4pm, this classic dish consists of roast beef, vegetables, Yorkshire puddings (a kind of puffed turnovers), topped with a succulent gravy.
But the cuisine of Wales, with its wide-open seas and many rivers, has been able to incorporate many different species of fish and seafood. Once landed, fish was usually wind-dried, then smoked or salted. Herring, a fish that lends itself well to salting, became a much sought-after catch. Mackerel, trout, salmon and sea trout are the main fish found in Welsh cuisine. Salmon was common even a century ago and therefore a staple food for the poor, traditionally served with fennel, which grew wild in abundance in the region. Lobsters and crabs are also caught - notably in Cardigan Bay - as are bucardes, a close relative of cockles. And if there's one dish the British and Welsh love, it's fish & chips. In 1838, Charles Dickens wrote about warehouses of fried fish in his novel Oliver Twist. The first real outlet is thought to have appeared in Mossley, near Oldham, England, in 1863. At the beginning of the 20th century, fish, French fries and mashed peas were a rich and affordable diet. Fish & chips was the only non-rationed takeaway during the Second World War. Today, there are almost 8,500 fish & chip restaurants in the UK - twelve times as many as McDonald's! They're everywhere, and you can eat at any time of day for around £5. The fish is breaded and served with a portion of French fries seasoned with salt and vinegar. Finally, laverbread is a seaweed fondue - rich in iodine and calcium - which the Welsh eat with bread or meat.
Desserts and drinks
Welsh desserts include bara brith, a thick, nourishing type of cake with currants and spices. There are also crempogs, a type of pancake, and welsh cakes- also known as bakestones - thick, chewy cookies topped with raisins and dried currants. There are many good-value tearooms where you can enjoy local pastries and other British cakes: carrot cake, victoria cake, lemon bar, muffins and more. Unsurprisingly, tea, as in the rest of the UK, is widely consumed, as is beer, by far the most popular alcoholic beverage in Wales. Here, beer is top-fermented, which means it contains less carbon dioxide than bottom-fermented beers. This brewing method considerably alters its taste compared with French or Belgian beers. Tasting is done at room temperature, which can be surprising at first, but you soon get used to it. Despite the Temperance League, a 19th-century movement to limit excessive alcohol consumption in Britain, Wales' passion for beer has remained. The Wrexham Lager Beer Company opened in 1881, as Britain's first producer of lager. Felinfoel Brewery - meanwhile - became the first brewery in Europe to put beer in aluminum cans.
The Welsh also have a long history of whisky production, in a similar way to other Celtic peoples such as the Irish or the Scots, but on a smaller scale. Distilling began on a commercial basis before the mid-18th century, by families who later emigrated to America and helped found the whisky industry in what is now the state of Kentucky. Still a niche industry, by the end of the 19th century the main whisky production in Wales was at Frongoch near Bala, in the north-west of the country. The distillery was bought by Scottish whisky companies and closed in 1910 as they tried to establish brands in England. Penderyn single malt whisky was the first whisky to be produced commercially in Wales for a century, in 2004.
Finally, while the British Isles are rarely seen as a wine-growing region, Wales does maintain a small wine production. Thanks to the Gulf Stream current, summers and winters are relatively mild, with few climatic extremes. Welsh vineyards were first planted by the Romans, but production remained modest, even insignificant, for much of the country's history. In the 1970s, modern vineyards were planted in South Wales with the intention of creating Welsh wine. Despite a slow start, by 2005 there were 20 vineyards in Wales, producing 100,000 bottles a year, mainly white wines, but also a few reds. And to sip your beer, nothing beats the warm, rustic atmosphere of a pub. It's hard to find a Welsh village without one! It's worth noting that while in France pubs are primarily bars with an Anglo-Saxon ambience, in the UK they are also restaurants. The quality of their food is sometimes very uneven, but they usually serve rich, hearty fare, especially in the evenings.
