British food / Британская еда

Foreigners often laugh at the British. They say "In Britain you get chips with everything!" But even the British don't eat chips. Instead, they eat the English breakfast, pancakes, roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, haggis and many other kinds of food. Let's start with the traditional English breakfast.

In a real English breakfast you have fried eggs, bacon, sausage, tomato and mushrooms. Then there is toast and marmalade. There's an interesting story about the word "marmalade". It may come from French "Marie est malade" or "Mary is ill". That's because a seventeenth-century queen of Scotland, Mary Queen of Scots, liked it. She always asked for French orange jam when she was ill.

British people eat pancakes on Shrove Tuesday in February or March. For pancakes you need flour, eggs and milk. Then you eat them with sugar and lemon. In some parts of Britain there are pancake races on Shrove Tuesday. People race with a frying pan in one hand. They have to "toss" the pancake, throw it in the air and catch it again in the frying pan.

Roast Beef and Yorkshire Pudding is the traditional Sunday lunch from Yorkshire in the north of England. It is now popular all over Britain. Yorkshire pudding is not sweet. It's a simple mixture of eggs, flour and milk, but it's delicious. Two common vegetables with roast beef and Yorkshire pudding are Brussels sprouts and carrots. And of course there's always gravy. That's a thick, brown sauce. You make gravy with the juice from the meat.

Haggis is the traditional food from Scotland. You make it with meat, onions, flour salt and pepper. Then you boil it in the skin from a sheep's stomach — yes, a sheep's stomach. In Scotland, people eat haggis on Burns Night. Robert Burns (Scottish people call him "Rabbie" Burns), was a Scottish poet in the eighteenth century. Every year the Scots all over the world remember him and read his poems.

Each of the dishes we told you about is very tasty and really makes people healthier.

Словарь

mushroom (s) — гриб, грибы

pancake (s) — блин, блины

Shrove Tuesday — вторник на Масляной неделе

flour — мука

roast beef — жареная говядина

delicious — очень вкусный, восхитительный

Brussels sprouts — брюссельская капуста

gravy — подлива

haggis — шотландское блюдо из сердца и других внутренних органов овцы, порезанных и сваренных в коже овечьего желудка

to boil in the skin — кипятить, варить в коже

a sheep's stomach — овечий желудок

the Scots — another name for the Scottish — шотландцы