#peas

[ID: A sandwich of battered potato and a few mashed peas, cut in half. End ID]

Smack barm pea wet (Wiganese sandwich)

When trying to replicate convenience-store food, takeout, or street food from regions other than my own, I'm often faced with something of a contradiction. Using readymade, readily available, or cheap ingredients usually means not adhering to the typical composition of a dish. Yet the closer I come to accuracy in terms of ingredients and method, the further I stray from the ethos of the dish: it becomes increasingly fussy, labour-intensive, time-consuming, and expensive.

This trade-off is inevitable, and it's a welcome reminder about the nature of the "authenticity" often touted on recipe blogs, in guide books, and in travel writing. It is an event horizon that one aims at, rather than something that can be reached—and the decision to aim for it in the first place is not inevitable, but in fact has a history and an ideology of its own. These are the kinds of things I was thinking of while shelling and drying a bunch of English peas, only to then immediately rehydrate them. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The dish

Smack barm pea wet is a common order at chippies in Wigan (a town in Greater Manchester, England). The syntax of this order may need some explaining. A "smack" (in other regions called a "scallop" or a "potato cake") is a battered and deep-fried potato slice. "Barm cakes" are soft, enriched rolls which were traditionally leavened with "barm," or the froth from the top of a fermenting vat of beer—though bakeries today use active dry yeast. Thus "smack barm" is a noun-noun compound, where "smack" gives the specific type of "barm," or "sandwich on a barm cake," that's being described.

"Pea wet," or "pey wet," is another noun-noun compound. It describes a condiment that, as far as anybody can tell, is completely specific to Wigan: the liquid, or "wet," off the top of a batch of mushy peas (though a few solid peas may make their way into the ladle as well).

This sandwich was arguably brought to the attention of the internet at large five years ago, when JOE on YouTube posted a video called "We ate a Wigan kebab - the weirdest meal in the north?" JOE is a variety channel of the "we had very old people try extremely sour candies" sort. But despite the estranging, clickbait-style title, the video's Liverpudlian host is fairly even-handed. The pea wet may look "fucking minging," but it tastes "quite nice."

The history

The explanation for the carb-and-starch-heavy style of food in Wigan chippies (another common order, the "Wigan kebab," consists of a meat and potato pie on a buttered roll) is hinted at in the video itself. The host's attention was initially drawn to the "smack" because it was the cheapest thing on the menu, at 40 pence; the owner of the chippy, in explaining to him the concept of "pea wet," was sure to note that "it's free." People in the north of England have been impacted disproportionately by the privitization and austerity measures instituted throughout the 20th century, and are, on average, significantly poorer than their southern counterparts. This is the Wigan version of the Italian cucina povera.

Some commenters on Wigan chippy meals speculate that they emerge from World War 2-era rationing. But several of the ingredients used in modern smack barms and Wigan kebabs were rationed (namely, butter, lard, meat, and milk), while several ingredients that are notably absent (namely, fresh vegetables) were not. The explanation may instead lie in subsidies: meat, potatoes, milk, and bread were the commodities that were the most heavily subsidized by the British government in 1942 and '43, allowing their prices to be controlled at levels that were affordable to "all classes." The government also set goals for the usage of agricultural acreage that vastly increased potato production. The Wigan kebab and smack barm pea wet are made almost entirely of these subsidized foods (especially if we consider pea wet as only a by-product of mushy peas).

Smack barm pea wet is thus a symbol to some Wiganers of a sort of rugged self-sufficiency. An image of the dish posted on r/badfoodporn is, of course, met with the raillery that the subreddit calls for ("Hey what the fuck"; "Roughly the nutritional value of wet cardboard and dry leaf"; "I really don't think there's any hope of rehabilitation here")—but the meal also has its share of defenders. One commenter in particular writes that "so much [of WW2-era food culture] has remained [...] because its a symbol of our resilience and resourcefulness in the face of insurmountable odds." Or, as Wiganer Stuart Maconie writes in Pies and Prejudice, "[e]very economic and political cudgel had been used to bring these people to their knees and they simply would not submit."

Yet the availabiilty of dairy, meat, and bread in wartime England was increased by the ability of the wartime British Empire to extract food and resources from their colonies in Africa, Asia, and Oceania. Much of the meat that was sold in Britain, for example, came from Canada; much of its dairy came from New Zealand. This came at immense human cost for many of the colonies, which were faced with inflation, shortages, and famine as a result of the decreased availability of locally produced food. But this is not usually part of the picture when people think of WW2-era Britain, or the impacts of this era upon the food culture, economy, and regional mythology of northern England.

Part of the problem may be the common opinion in England that the British Empire has a positive legacy, having left its former colonies better off than it found them; the reality of the extraction of wealth and labor, to the Empire's benefit and the colonies' (and other occupied nations') expense, is thus elided. Writers may also have difficulty expressing a narrative that is neither one of absolute prosperity, nor of absolute victimization.

The recipe

Back to the peas. For mushy peas, you'll need marrowfat peas, which are mature peas that are allowed to dry in the field. Fresh or frozen garden peas won't give you the right texture. Dried split green peas will do in a pinch. This recipe also includes homemade barm cakes; but any soft roll you have will work just fine.

The sandwich as a whole is delicious. The smack is creamy and tender on the inside, and crispy on the outside (even with the pea wet, and even after I had finished photographing). The curry powder and mustard in the batter make it a bit earthy and aromatic, while the malt vinegar topping uplifts and sharpens the starchy potato.

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Recipe under the cut!