If you're salivating over 'essential' delicacies from home then you're not alone.  Thousands of nostalgic expats feel the same way. For some, help is on the way.

Vanya Rainova

When I lived in San Francisco, I would take public transport across town, from lower Nob Hill to outer Richmond to shop at a run-down Russian grocery store, which, to my absolute delight, sold liutenitsa (a roasted pepper, tomato and eggplant dip), lukanka (a dry sausage), tarama haiver (fish roe mousse) and kiselo zele (lacto-fermented cabbage). These staple foods in my grandmother's kitchen were a rare find, and this in wonderfully diverse, food-conscious San Francisco. Don't get me wrong – I love California cuisine – but when you're living abroad for years, you get nostalgic for what once seemed dispensable. So I can very well understand why Andrew Sowray's cell phone rang off the hook after he sent a short email message to his expat-dominated mailing list. “Dear all,” it read, “I have received a consignment of groceries, please find attached my price list. If you would like to order some of these goods or from my range of sausages please either send me an email or call me on 0885 205553 to arrange collection or delivery.”

What's on the list, you ask? Well, everything from Heinz Chocolate Sponge Pudding and Tetley tea bags to favourite brands of peanut butter, cranberry juice, cereals, gravy and sauce mixes, Indian ethnic foods, and everything else you're likely to find in your average British kitchen.

As for the sausages, Sowray will be the first one to assure you that they are “made out of real meat” following a traditional British recipe. “I believe that some people care about what they eat and so my plan was to make sausages from traditional British recipes and not to skimp on the quality of the ingredients,” he says. “Therefore I only use whole pieces of pork shoulder meat, freshly ground spices, seasoning (salt & pepper), water and rusk (galeta). That's all I use, I don't add things like soya or artificial colourings, flavourings or preservatives.”

When he first negotiated the production of a modest 20kg at a meat factory, they nearly laughed. The laugh was on him when 10 days later he came back to increase the order to 100kg weekly.

The next challenge was to make British-style bacon, which differs from Bulgarian and continental European bacon in that it is made from the loin (back meat) of the pig and not the belly meat. Traditionally, in Bulgaria, pork loin is considered to be too expensive to use for bacon, but not so in the UK and Ireland. “Also the way of making it is different,” Sowray says. “We just rub a salt mixture into the flesh and leave it to cure in the old fashioned way for about three weeks. This results in a product which has great flavour and texture, perfect for English breakfasts.”

In a way, Sowray has come full circle. He is a farmer's son from Yorkshire in the North of England, “I left the farm when I was 25 years old and spent the next 23 years travelling around the world selling alcohol, so I'm back where I started producing quality foods like we used to,” he says. “It's a comfortable place to be.”

While he's working on setting up his website, andysfoods.com, you can email Sowray at andrew@andysfoods.com or call him at +359885205553 to obtain a grocery price list and place your order.

Source: Month2Come