Hello and welcome to this podcast brought to you by That's English!, the Spanish Ministry of Education's official distance learning English course. To find out more about That's English! go to www.thatsenglish.com or contact your local Official School of Languages. In the previous podcast we talked about traditional pub food, which was perfect for the cold winter weather. If you are visiting the UK during the summer and are wondering if there are any lighter dishes for the warm weather, of course there are a few. A ploughman's lunch is essentially a selection of cheeses with different types of bread and butter and salad - lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber, pickled onions and chutney, which is a sauce made of fruits or vegetables with vinegar and sugar, all served on a wooden board. The UK has a great variety of cheeses for you to try. You will also come across Scotch eggs and salad. Scotch eggs are hard-boiled eggs, which are covered in sausage meat and fried in breadcrumbs. And then you have Cornish pasties which are individual meat pies made from short-crust pastry and filled with steak, potato, onion and swede. According to the Cornish Pasty Association, it was "originally a good, calorie-filled, transportable meal for hungry workers – possibly even the first real ‘convenience’ food – [and] would have contained cheap ingredients such as potato, swede and onion without the succulent meat that is included today." Even though the Cornish pasty is thought to date back to the 14th century, it became especially popular in 19th century Cornwall as a staple meal for the tin miners who, according to the association, are thought to have given the pasty "its distinctive D shape [ ] – the crust [becoming] a handle, which was discarded to prevent contaminating the food with grubby, possibly arsenic-ridden hands." Let's now turn our attention to traditional puddings or desserts that you may find on a pub menu. In fact, the difference between pudding and dessert is in itself a source of debate. Pudding is the term we tend to use for more traditional and filling dishes that are often served hot, whereas dessert tends to be used for lighter dishes that are served cold. Maybe one of the most traditional puddings is apple crumble and custard. This is very popular, made with stewed apples and a crumble topping made with butter, flour and sugar. You will also come across blackcurrant, peach, rhubarb, gooseberry and plum crumbles. As is the case with other warm puddings, apple crumble is often served with hot custard, which is a sweet sauce made with milk and eggs. Another favourite is baked or steamed jam roly-poly pudding which is a roll made of a layer of suet pastry covered with jam. Spotted dick is very similar but, instead of jam, the suet pastry is covered with dried fruits. Both will be served with hot custard. Bread and butter pudding is another winter favourite, made with slices of buttered bread sprinkled with raisons, nutmeg and cinnamon over which a mixture of milk, sugar and eggs is poured. It is then baked in the oven. Trifle is perhaps the most traditional dessert in English cuisine and even though it is served cold, is likely to be found on menus all year round. References to this dish can be traced back to Elizabethan times, although it seems that it became especially popular in Victorian times. There are many ways to make trifle but the basic ingredients include a layer of sponge cake soaked in sherry, or sometimes brandy, which is covered with strawberry of raspberry jam followed by a layer of cold custard. Fresh fruit, such as raspberries or strawberries, is then added, although in winter, canned fruit is also used. Finally, the trifle is finished off with a whipped cream topping. Another dessert you will come across in the summer months is Eton Mess, which is a mixture of broken meringue, strawberries and whipped cream. According to writer Nicola Cornick, there are many legends about the origin of this dish: "One story suggests that it is the dessert traditionally served at the Eton versus Winchester cricket match, the first of which took place in 1796. Another story [ ] is that the dish was created one Eton Open Day when an over-eager Labrador dog sat on someone's picnic basket and squashed the strawberry pavlova." Whatever the origin it is a very appetising way to finish your meal. So here we come to the end of this description of traditional English food that you can find in a typical English pub, in the hope that the next time you come back from a trip to the UK and are asked the question: "What was the food like?" you will say "It was delicious!" If you have found this podcast interesting and helpful, please recommend this app to other people who are learning English. We hope you have enjoyed this podcast, brought to you by That's English! Please follow us on Facebook and Twitter. We look forward to hearing from you. Bye for now!