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Hatepe (R.I.P.)
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 Posted -
15/12/2004
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22:11
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Does anyone remember the oatcake man who had a shop at the bottom of Barkerhouse Rd., Nelson and who hawked oat cakes round Kelbrook, Earby and Barlick, mainly in the pubs and clubs for that wonderful drinking man's delicacy "STEW and HARD"????
My father-in-law kept the Stone Trough Pub for over 21 years and the racks in the kitchen were festooned with soft oatcakes drying to make the "hard" for the stew and hard.
The "Stew" was a concoction of meats, pigs feet or a cow's foot and a touch of gelatine, peppers and salt, that were boiled for ever and ladled into basins to "set".
Commercial Travellers would congregate daily at dinnertime for a Gill of ale and a stew and hard and walk out smacking their lips.
My mouth waters at the thought of an oatcake with thick slices of stew and raw onion and a pint of Tetley's bitter beer. Food of the Gods!!!
Unfortunately we cannot get oatcakes in New Zealand, but from time to time I make the "Stew" and eat it with an oat biscuit similar to "hard", the missus thinks I've got summat wrong with me, just shakes her head and says "Who the hell eats that kind of tucker....???"
Aye Hatepe
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Stanley
Local Historian & Old Fart
36804 Posts
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Posted - 16/12/2004 : 06:21
I agree with BBob. Wonderful stuff and I often toy with the idea of making a cast iron hot plate and making my own oatcakes. I used to have it in the Craven Heifer at Kelbrook. It went down well with ale. At one time there were many bbackstone bakeries. See the LTP, Jim Pollard's tapes, his mother and father had a bbackstone on Redd Lion Street in Earby. I suppose the last outcake maker in Barick was Stanley's Crumpets. (Don't even think of going there Comrade....)
Stanley Challenger Graham
Barlick View
stanley at barnoldswick.freeserve.co.uk  |
melteaser
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Posted - 16/12/2004 : 07:04
Would these oatcakes be the same as our local delicacy?
We eat them with bacon/sausage that kind of thing.
They look like a pancake, have a similar texture but taste different.
Stanley - have you ever tried them...you've visited these parts?
Mel
http://www.briercliffesociety.co.uk |
Stanley
Local Historian & Old Fart
36804 Posts
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Posted - 16/12/2004 : 12:16
Not sure what you're talking about Malty. Oatcakes are soft oatmeal pancakes when cooked but very thin. When dried they become what we called 'Hard' in other words hard oatcakes. They were often dried on the clothes airer hung from the ceiling in the kitchen.
Stanley Challenger Graham
Barlick View
stanley at barnoldswick.freeserve.co.uk |
melteaser
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Posted - 16/12/2004 : 12:38
They sound completely different Stanley. The Staffordshire Oatcake are remain soft and filled with your choice of savoury fillings.
They really are a delicacy here.
Many of the Stokies who have left for foreign climes crave for the oatcake and not the area (can't blame them really...Stoke is one hell of a dive!)
Mel
http://www.briercliffesociety.co.uk |
Another
Traycle Mine Overseer
6250 Posts
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Posted - 16/12/2004 : 13:04
Move to Barrowford, its very exclusive here. Even get stew and hard in the nearby pubs - rising Sun at Blacko.
Nandy, I saw a customer in the take-away yesterday - but still not serving food. Nolic
" I'm a self made man who worships his creator"  |
melteaser
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Posted - 16/12/2004 : 13:12
I love Barrowford..I think it's such a quaint little place. Unfortunately we can't move North. The trips imindoors makes to Battersea already take about 3 hours. He's do his nut if he had to set out even earlier, he's off again within the hour. All for 10 minutes work!
Mel
http://www.briercliffesociety.co.uk |
Stanley
Local Historian & Old Fart
36804 Posts
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Posted - 16/12/2004 : 13:56
We never did get to the bottom of Valentino's job and a piccy did we?
Stanley Challenger Graham
Barlick View
stanley at barnoldswick.freeserve.co.uk |
handlamp
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Posted - 16/12/2004 : 15:41
Halle Hartley used to deliver his oatcakes once a week to our house in Earby where Mum put them at one end of the clothes rack in the kitchen to `mature', and as Bob and Stanley say, harden. I preferred 'em soft loaded with treacle (not from the mines). At the other end of the rack was a basket where the eggs were similarly matured.
Ted |
Stanley
Local Historian & Old Fart
36804 Posts
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Posted - 16/12/2004 : 18:38
Ted, I've never heard of this! What's this about maturing eggs? I was always brought up to believe that the fresher an egg was the better. Do you mean to say that some people kept them for a while before eating them?
Stanley Challenger Graham
Barlick View
stanley at barnoldswick.freeserve.co.uk |
andydiamond
Hairy Horologist
424 Posts
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Posted - 16/12/2004 : 20:25
Bob, to answer your original query, which no-one has done up to now,
I well remember the little tubby chap with glasses
and his little floury wife. I can't think of their names just now, but they should come back to me eventually.
B.J and me had the vacuum cleaner shop across the road in the seventies, and they used to bring something remotely resembling a vacuum every couple of months, and we removed a stone or so of flour from it and took it back !!
If they came across for it we only got paid.If we took it back we got paid and came back with an armfull of free oatcakes as well.
We also could stand and watch the strange and secret processes going on in the little hovel that they used for a bakehouse.
The oatcakes were then delivered out to the area in a Reliant Robin three wheeler, a bit beaten up and an interesting shade of flour in colour !!
A couple of years later, perhaps late seventies or early eighties,He tried to sell his business, I think due to ill-health, but despite articles in the Nelson Leader about the imminent closure of the last hot-plate bakers in Lancashire, there were no takers and the business shut down for good.
I tried to describe the place to my mate, who is the local environmental health officer, and he had a fit just off the description !!reckon the place would not stay open like that for more than 24 hours nowadays.
Funny thing is, nobody was ever ill eating the oatcakes . . . . .
Andy.
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Hatepe (R.I.P.)
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Posted - 16/12/2004 : 20:26
The Chinese like 1000 year old eggs or so the menu in a Chinese Restaurant says. They are boiled eggs - the white has gone almost black/purple and when you cut them they look like a piece of marble. In my travels I have tried them but I'll leave them to the Chinese (mustn't say the word "CHOWS or I'll have Marcia round my neck!!!!).
Aye Hatepe
R.W.King |
Hatepe (R.I.P.)
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Posted - 16/12/2004 : 20:31
Many thanks Andy, you have described the shop and the people exactly as I remember them, I think there was a Bookie's shop almost next door to the "hovel" as you called it.
Aye Hatepe
R.W.King |
mporter
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Posted - 16/12/2004 : 23:15
Micheal and Barbara Town who used to keep The Fanny Grey did the best Stew and Hard. I was and still am friends with their eldest daughter and it was my favorite food when I went to visit them.
Margaret Porter
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Stanley
Local Historian & Old Fart
36804 Posts
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Posted - 17/12/2004 : 06:40
The thing that always fascinated me was the conveyor belt arrangement they used to throw the oatcake on to the back stone at Stanley's Crumpets. There are pics of this somewhere and I have an idea the Dalesman did an article on them.
Stanley Challenger Graham
Barlick View
stanley at barnoldswick.freeserve.co.uk |
handlamp
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Posted - 17/12/2004 : 15:45
I agree Stanley, the fresher the better, but my Mum kept them there all her married life and I never heard of a bad un. Mind you I suppose they were straight from the nest so they wouldn't be there long enough and bear in mind houses wern't as warm as they are nowadays.
Ted
Ted |
Stew and Hard
