Public Service Announcement

[venta]

Bakers Oven Vegetable Pasties:

Don't do it, kids. They're horrible.

Comments

[mirabehn.livejournal.com]

Still???!

It's been so long since I've dared go into one. I remember there was a time about ten years ago when they're food was gorgeous, and then it all went horribly wrong, possibly about the same time I began to cut down my meat intake.

Surprised they're even still going. I'm fairly sure the one in Hitchin bit the concrete years ago. To be replaced with a Thorntons, I seem to remember...

[venta.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm not dissing Bakers Oven pasties in general. Their chicken and mushroom is OK, and the cheese and onion really quite nice. My one gripe is that the vegetable ones (which I only tried today) are grim.

Oh, and my other gripe is that they don't do cornedbeef pasties.

And my other one is that they don't do japs.

Ahem.

Among my many gripes are that the vegetables pasties are nasty, the cornedbeef pasties absent, requests for japs meet with blank looks and that the iced buns have terrifyingly PINK flavoured icing.

I love bakers

[maviscruet.livejournal.com]

They make such great food. A warm susage roll can turn a day bright.

But what the hell is a Jap?

And I've never really tried a corned beef pastie before.

And Iced buns should be yellow, and lemonay.

Re: I love bakers

[venta.livejournal.com]

Japs seem to be a northern thing, I expected you'd have 'em in Leeds.

They're small, round cakes - bout 3" high and 3" diameter. Imagine two layers of light biscuity stuff, with very thick layer of soft halfway-between-mousse-and-cream chocolately stuff between them. Cover the whole thing with pale-coloured chocolate cream and vermicelli.

They really are quite unlike anything else, which is why I miss them. No idea why they're called japs either.

You're right about the iced buns. This one had white icing with pink stripes which were sufficiently pale I didn't notice them. They tasted cerise, though.

If you have a Greggs nearby they should do cornedbeef pasties.

[lathany.livejournal.com]

But do they do good quality Millionare's Shortbread ?

[venta.livejournal.com]

No idea, I'm afraid. Bought Millionaire's Shortbread always tastes slightly crap to me, as it never lives up to the standard of the stuff my mum bakes, so I don't buy it.

Re: I love bakers

[http://users.livejournal.com/elle_/]

Pasties? Ew. Covering something in pastry does not make it suitable for human consumption.

However... japs sound extremely yummy. Mmm. That sounds like a good quest for the weekend! :)

[mirabehn.livejournal.com]

Vegetable pastry products can be problematic. Too many seem to be cooked by those who are sufficiently inexperienced in the ways of vegetarian food, and indeed food in general, to really have no clue as to what vegetables go well together.

Reading service station tends to do a horrible vegetable pie, accompanied by equally horrible and entirely unsuited roast vegetables. I've had to have it a couple of times and it's the most disheartening food imaginable.

Pink flavoured icing? How pink are we talking? Because light pink icing can be nice, but from your capitalisation I'm guessing we're not talking a delicate pinky white colour here...

[venta.livejournal.com]

Not being of the vegetarian persuasion, I only tend to eat things like vegetable pie if they actually look appetising, so have so far avoided this particular evil.

The icing looked a delicate pinkywhite colour. But it tasted of... er... PINK. Sort of halfway between non-specific red-fruit esters and cheap rose flavour.

Re: I love bakers

[venta.livejournal.com]

If you find anywhere down here that sells them, tell me!

[lathany.livejournal.com]

<squeak>

Any chance of a recipe ? Pretty please ?

[mirabehn.livejournal.com]

Not being of the vegetarian persuasion, I only tend to eat things like vegetable pie if they actually look appetising, so have so far avoided this particular evil.

Now that's clever of you. :) I've got to say that even as a vegetarian I try to operate on the same principle, but it isn't always possible.

I should point out in fairness that the vegetarian cafe at Avebury used to do the most fantastic mushroom and ale pie known to humankind. Their organic beers weren't bad either. They seem to go more for conventional veggie cafe fare now but still done pretty well.

The icing looked a delicate pinkywhite colour. But it tasted of... er... PINK. Sort of halfway between non-specific red-fruit esters and cheap rose flavour.

Gah! How horrible!! And there's *no* excuse for that...

I have to say I like white icing best on iced buns. Proper crisp icing too. Ah! like my parents used to buy me in Tobermory when I were a lass.

*has sudden attack of feeling old...*

[venta.livejournal.com]

Sure, it's not hard to make. I'll badger my mum tonight, and bring it down at the weekend.

(Assuming you mean the same stuff I do ? Shortbread, caramel stuff, chocolate ?)

[lathany.livejournal.com]

Assuming you mean the same stuff I do ? Shortbread, caramel stuff, chocolate ?

That's the stuff.

Re: I love bakers

[maviscruet.livejournal.com]

I've asked around and Japs do not appear to exist in Leeds, not under that name at least.....

The cloest the natives can come up with is a "wafer slice".

Sigh, unfortunetly bakers are so not allowed to a man trying to lose some weight.... one day I might get my weight back down again and be able to walk into a bakers without crying...

Re: I love bakers

[venta.livejournal.com]

"wafer slice"

Oooh, no, I don't think so. Not wafery at all.

I wonder... jiggery_pokery, are you listening ? Do you know what a jap is ? If not, will you pop into your local bakery and ask for one ?

Re: I love bakers

[http://users.livejournal.com/elle_/]

No problem... for a small fee, of course. ;)

(assuming I have any joy, of course... but I'm quite determined)

[maviscruet.livejournal.com]

Hmmmmmmmmmm

Come on venta post the recipie. I fell like torturing me self....

condensed milk at the ready

[venta.livejournal.com]

Will post asap once I've extracted it from the parent.

Re: I love bakers

[broadmeadow.livejournal.com]

> They're small, round cakes - bout 3" high and 3" diameter. Imagine two layers of light biscuity stuff, with very thick layer of soft halfway-between-mousse-and-cream chocolately stuff between them. Cover the whole thing with pale-coloured chocolate cream and vermicelli.

That's a fat wagon wheel covered in bits, isn't it?

Re: I love bakers

[venta.livejournal.com]

fat wagon wheel covered in bits

Much nicer. Much lighter biscuit. Less jam.

And despite my description, japs really aren't very chocolately. It's quite a faint flavour (and actually, you can get coffee ones, too). I wish someone would come and help me out describing the damn things.

Re: I love bakers

[broadmeadow.livejournal.com]

Well, they do exist. I found this:

http://www.botham.co.uk/wordsearch.html

- a wordsearch game, with "chocolate jap" as one of the phrases. Also "ecliar" (and it's spelled that way in the letter grid too!)

Botham's are based in Whitby.

You can buy them online from India:

http://www.wengerspastry.com/shop/view_item_details.asp?CatID=35&ItemID=517&Category=PASTRIES

and there's a hint about how you might make them here:

http://www.deliaonline.com/deliaatlife/messageboard/view.asp?postid=993&topicid=8

Only other reference I could find online was someone referring to them in a Manchester newspaper. But I asked my Mancunian wife if she'd ever heard of them, and she hasn't either.

Re: I love bakers

[venta.livejournal.com]

Mmmm.... Botham's japs are great. I checked earlier, and their online shop only does non-immediately-perishable things :(

I don't think I'd want one after it had come from India. Not that I've anything against Indian japs, just I think it'd go off in the post.

[(Anonymous)]

Sounds suspiciously like something I was feed in Germany under the alleged name of 'Niggerkusse'(!).
They had coffee flavoured ones and melted quickly in the car as I recall. Not very nice, even given the chocolate componant.
Germany + national cooking expertise =no comments...though they may be of an originally Turkish origin.

cakes (no ale?)

[(Anonymous)]

Mum's recipe for millionaire's shortbread going into your eastwick e-mail instanter. Japs are, or were, basically almond-flavoured and the "biscuity stuff" is baked in a layer, something like a cross between almond meringue and ratafia biscuits, then cut into circles which are stuck together with goo, as you say, then the whole thing is covered in goo, rolled in toasted coconut and finished off with a chocolate button on top! Recipe for those available, too, but it's a right clart to do. Spelunca

[uitlander]

The cheese ones are bearable - and its always funny to watch the shop assistant in Woodley attempt to flirt with kharin

[voratus.livejournal.com]

I don't know if you're aware of this, but in America, "pasties" are things that girls put over their nipples so they can be topless legally, and look (from a distance) completely topless.

So then reading this I was wondering if some weird company decided to start making them from vegetables.

Imagine my dismay to find out you're talking about food.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Hello, Mystery Guest.

Very melty does sound about right, and to be honest I could imagine people not liking these, they are a somewhat unusual taste/texture.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

Aaaaagh I grew up there. Flippin' 'eck. I remember going to Freelance and then going next door for cream buns when I was little.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I wasn't aware of that, no. Sorry to disappoint.

What do you call what I call a pasty, then ? Do you have them ?

Sort of like a pastry envelope with stuff in ? Looks a bit like this (http://kenanderson.net/pasties/cornish.html).

Re: cakes (no ale?)

[venta.livejournal.com]

I didn't believe a word of this coconut nonsense, and a brief chat with the mother confirms that the traditional thing to roll it in is the crumbs left from cutting out the biscuit discs.

I think I've bought ones like that, or ones rolled in vermicelli.