Winter comfort food . . . Welsh Faggots

[HubUK]

I can still remember, when I was six or seven years old, travelling down to Ponterdawe in South Wales for the weekend to see my Grandmother. We would arrive just in time for lunch on a Saturday. She had a Bullmastiff dog called Gellert. The problem was she had always fed him titbits from the table - a big mistake as this causes the dog to drool all the time.

In those days all little boys used to wear shorts!

Lunch would always be home made faggots with peas, all smothered in Bovril gravy with slabs of fresh white bread, thick with real butter. Of course, Gellert would take up station under the table, usually around my legs . . . but the faggots were great.

This is the recipe for Faggots from back then, real comfort food, which can be enjoyed just as much today as it was then . . . and it is a really easy, low budget meal to prepare.

You will either need a mincer or an electric mixer to do the preparation. I always cook my faggots ahead and then warm them up when I wish to eat them. This allows the flavours to intensify and makes the faggots richer.



Ingredients

1 lb (455 g) lambs liver
1/4 lb (115 g) onions
6 ozs (170 g) white bread crumbs
4 tsp dried sage
1 beef OXO cube
Knob of butter for each faggot
1/2 pt (330 ml) water

Method

• Make your bread crumbs by putting the dried bread in the mixer on a high setting until you have fine bread crumbs. .

• Put bread crumbs in large mixing bowl. .

• Chop onions in the mixer and add to the mixing bowl, this can be as fine or as coarse to suit your own tastes. .

• Chop the liver in the mixer and add to the mixing bowl, this can be as fine or as coarse to suit your own tastes. .

• Add the sage and mix thoroughly. .

• Shape the mixture into small balls (should make 8 to 10). .

• Place in a greased ovenproof dish or tin. .

• Put a small knob of butter on each faggot. .

• Make stock with OXO (beef) cube and water and pour around the faggots. .

• Cover with foil and bake in a preheated oven (180°C / 350°F / Gas Mark 4) for fifteen minutes. .

• Remove foil and cook for further fifteen minutes. .

• Remove faggots and when cool cover and keep in the fridge until required.

To serve:

• To reheat place the required number of faggots in a saucepan with beef stock (OXO or preferably Bovril) two-thirds of the way up the faggots. Bring to the boil and simmer for 5 to 10 minutes. .

• Thicken stock to make a gravy and pour over. .

• Serve with garden peas (or mushy peas) and thick slices of freshly buttered bread.

Makes 8 – 10

[notoriouslyKEN]

This topic made me laugh. Food looks good though

[Ashii]

oh my....
that will get your stomach a turn'in i have to try it!
might kill me tho... but oh well

[HubUK]

Originally Posted by Ashii

oh my....
that will get your stomach a turn'in i have to try it!
might kill me tho... but oh well

If you like pate then you are going to like faggots.

This is top class comfort food. I have all the ingredients in the house ready to make another batch in the next 24 hours. Mmmmm!

[Mezzaluna]

As others probably are, I'm curious about the origin of the name for this dish. Being that they're a Welsh dish the English translation probably won't do(faggot = bundle; a bundle of sticks; to join fabric pieces with a certain type of stitchery; and the colloquial definition I'll leave to Wikipedia). As I visited Wales in summer I didn't get to try this dish: http://www.welshholidaycottages.com/food/welsh-food.htm

Thanks for starting this thread, Hub.

[Jock]

HubUK, in case you aren't clued in to this, in the US "faggot" or "fag" are somewhat derogatory terms used to describe a gay man.

Jock

[HubUK]

Originally Posted by Jock

HubUK, in case you aren't clued in to this, in the US "faggot" or "fag" are somewhat derogatory terms used to describe a gay man.

The word faggot has the same meaning in the UK although it has fallen into disuse. It is really a bit like the word gay which we no longer use to describe someone who is happy. Who starts these things.

In the UK a fag has two meanings:

• a cigarette

• "Fag" was a term used for a junior boy who acted as a servant for a senior boy at British public schools.

I had to do that last one in my school days!

The various meanings are found on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faggot_%28epithet%29

[Jacaranda]

Traditionally Welsh faggots were wrapped in caul fat - identical to the South African meat dish called skilpadjes, or "little tortoises" (because the wrapped meatballs look like... er... little tortoises. Grilled little tortoises.).

There was extensive Italian immigration to Wales from the early 19th century onwards - which is why there are so many Italian cafes and ice-cream parlours in Swansea - and I guess aspects of the Italian immigrants' cuisine may to some degree have been adopted by the Welsh.

I reckon the name for the Welsh dish almost certainly comes from the Italian dish fagottini, which is minced meat wrapped in pasta: caul fat being substituted for pasta in Wales, where Italian immigrants would have been very hard-pressed to find durum wheat flour to make pasta. The name was even transliterated into the Welsh language as ffagod.

To be fair, its earliest use to describe a meatball is in the early 1850s - predating its use as a rude name for a gay man by some 70 years.

[HubUK]

Traditionally Welsh faggots were wrapped in caul fat

This is correct but since caul is almost impossible to get hold of these days it has been dropped from the recipe.

I don't know about the origins or the Italian name but I did receive an email some years ago about Fegatelli.

This was what the email said:

What memories!

I used to eat faggots at my Nan's house too. My father was Welsh and I spent the first four years of my life in Caernafonshire. I never knew they were made of pig's livers! Nan and Tad died when I was very young, so I couldn't ask them, my mother didn't know (she is a Londoner of Spanish and German descent). Then we moved to Italy and I forgot about faggots!

Pigs liver is a popular Italian winter dish. It's called Fegatelli (from the word fegato meaning liver).

We cut the liver into 3 to 4 inch strips, salt and pepper it, then on each strip we put a bay leaf and a sliver of garlic, some sprinkle aniseed on it too, but I don't. The strips are separately wrapped up in a piece of "rete" (netting), this is the membrane which holds the pigs intestines (known as cawl in the UK). Now don't say "ugh", it's not yucky! It is washed and dried before you buy it and is nice and white and dry to the touch, it also is very tasty!

We brown the strips on both sides in good olive oil and then add a glass of white wine and simmer for about 20 minutes. We serve it with grilled slices of polenta (corn mash). Pigs liver is a lot stronger than cows liver, so it is not something you would eat every day. But on a cold, wet day it is the right thing to eat in front of a blazing fire accompanied by a robust glass of red wine (Barolo is ideal or Lambrusco if you like sparkling red wine).

Thanks for the memories!