Local products

I must apologise. Either I have already blipped about Holland's so I apologise for the repetition and if I haven't I must apologise for keeping from you one of the gastronomic secrets of the universe.

As some of you may have deduced I am not from round here. I was fortunate enough to be born and brought up in a small fishing village which sits on the confluence of three rivers; the Irwell, the Irk and the Medlock. When I was a bairn we had far more "localised" foods; products which were only available near the point of production because of problems carrying them large distances or because of limited production or simply because the local market was as much as they wanted. I could fill your screen with a list of products which were only available within a cock's stride of London Road fire station and here I have an image of one. 

Holland's are based in Baxenden which is about 20 miles from Manchester and was a pie supplier to many fish and chip shops. A Holland's meat & tatty pie or steak & kidney pud with a portion of chips and lashings of gravy was a meal fit for a king after watching a game at Maine Road or in preparation for an evening supping Chester's mild or Wilson's bitter. After I moved away from home my mum would buy and freeze the pies and puddings; they were not available frozen at that time, and I'd carry them back to wherever I was living like treasure trove. I remember one evening cooking a few pies to share with some exiled Mancunians in Salisbury before we went to a beer festival where there were some northern beers available. Holland's were the "go to" providers of pastry-based comestibles.

Another local brand was UCP. In the 1950s they had more than 100 sites across Lancashire and the north and people would queue for a seat in the restaurant. UCP were the place to go for tripe. A real treat was having some tripe in the "sit down" at UCP rather than buying it, wrapped in paper, to take home on the bus.

The world turns. Logistics improve as does the transport network and the Internet is invented and leads to the world wide web and now Holland's have a jolly good website. Their products are available across the UK; they have a "pie finder" on that site. And the quality has remained constant - that's very important in these things. One of the products I would have enjoyed while growing up was bought out by a multinational, marketed widely and enjoyed tremendous sales for a while but the recipe was changed and anyone who had a pint of Boddingtons after 1990 didn't taste the beer that had a cult following when I was a nipper.

All that from me finding a pud in the freezer........