MARKETS : Tea and Comfort Food

A doorbell tinkles as you enter the Friar Tuck Shoppe. It signals that you’re leaving behind the honking traffic on Burbank Boulevard for a world of tea and crumpets, and bangers and mash, a place where you could imagine Mary Poppins holding forth on the proper hasty pudding. The place has the aura of an old-fashioned provisions shop on a winding English country lane.

Friar Tuck, which got its name because its owners also own the Robin Hood Pub next door (and because tuck is British slang for food ), is the English comfort-food zone for expat Brits in the San Fernando Valley. When you browse through the kippers and pork pies, the meat puddings and the English cheeses, visions of Mrs. Hudson shopping for Holmes and Dr. Watson come to mind.

Now, however, Mrs. Hudson would also find popular English supermarket products. Besides the English teas, some of Friar Tuck’s more popular items, says shop manager Sharon Laslett, are the English-style Heinz canned tomato soup and baked beans. Laslett explains that the English-made versions taste entirely different from the American ones. “A lot of these foods are what every British kid grew up on, and from time to time the need for them just comes over you,” she says.

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Even nursery comforts have been considered. Friar Tuck carries Nurse Harvey’s Gripe Mixture, an over-the-counter remedy for baby colic, and Farley’s Rusks, biscuits for teething babies.

But what makes Friar Tuck outstanding are the bakery goods made at the rear of the shop. The flaky-crusted meat pies and Cornish pasties will erase the popular notion that British food is irredeemably stodgy. Friar Tuck’s scones are downy-soft and filled with golden raisins. The rock cakes are crumbly and perfect for tea. There are also Eccles cakes, feathery rounds of puff pastry with a filling of currants, immersed in a buttery brown sugar coating.

Many of Friar Tuck’s regular customers also patronize Robin Hood Pub for its Sunday roast dinners or the afternoon tea served with finger sandwiches, scones with cream and homemade Battenberg cake. Then they come next door to shop for their favorite bakery goods, staples and deli items, including the pub’s Scotch eggs enrobed in a casing of coarse, well-seasoned sausage meat. “The pub and store are a good complement,” says Lorraine Williams, who started the business 11 years ago with her husband, Michael Williams.

The traditions of an English Christmas live on, even in Van Nuys, and Friar Tuck prepares for the holiday in a big way. They take orders for the rich mince pies they’ll be baking. A huge shipment of traditional fruit cakes will arrive; the large dome-shaped or smaller rectangular cakes bear the customary covering of marzipan beneath a sugar glaze. Along with plum puddings, brandy butter and hard sauce are beautiful “crackers,” the seasonal table decorations that pop open to reveal favors. More than any time of year, at Christmas, Friar Tuck lives up to its comforting image.

Shopping List

FROM THE BAKERY

* Savory Pies: The meat pie, one of Britain’s oldest traditions, was once a festival or fair food--a rare treat for the poor who could buy them from pastelers and street vendors for a penny (thus the name penny pies). Friar Tuck’s elegantly crafted pies have come a long way from this street-food fare.

The top of the line is the steak and mushroom pie, tightly packed with slices of round steak and mushrooms moistened with a juicy red wine sauce (not one of those gluey gravies that fill many commercial meat pies). Friar Tuck’s cooks also put up chicken with vegetable pies, curried chicken pies and steak and kidney pies. Each is an extremely generous individual serving.

Friar Tuck likes to sell its pies unbaked because, says Lorraine Williams, they are so much better freshly baked than reheated. But the shop will bake pies for anyone who wants to order them ahead.

* Cornish Pasties: The traditional noon meal of Cornish miners has always been the pasty, a pocket-sized pie usually filled with meat and vegetables. Friar Tuck’s version is a gorgeous little football-shaped thing made from puff pastry with a subtly seasoned filling of vegetables and very lean ground beef. The pasties are sold uncooked and frozen but, as with the pies, one can order them baked. People often do so for special gatherings, baby showers, wakes and other get-togethers, says manager Laslett. Usually the pub will have some baked pasties on hand too. (By the way, this pasty is not the same word that means “like paste”--it rhymes with nasty , not with hasty .)

* Sausage Rolls: These rolls of puff pastry formed around sausage meat are meant to be eaten out of hand like a pasty. They’re also made on the premises, and you can either buy frozen, uncooked sausage rolls or order them already baked.

* Scotch Eggs: Hard-boiled eggs, encased in a generous layer of sausage meat and deep-fried, are frequently found on pub menus in England, but they’re also sturdy enough, if accompanied by a slice of cottage loaf and pickled onions or Branston pickle, to make the main course of a meal. Friar Tuck’s Scotch eggs are made next door at the Robin Hood and may be purchased at the shop to go.

* Tea Pastries: Friar Tuck’s scones and rock cakes, barely sweetened and plentifully studded with golden raisins, are the best in the Valley--perhaps anywhere in the L.A. area. Friar Tuck’s also makes its own traditional vanilla slices. These flaky pastry rectangles layered with rich vanilla cream are cousins to the Napoleon.

* Eccles Cakes: This pastry gets its name from the city of Eccles in northwestern Lancashire. It isn’t what we call cake in this country; it’s a currant-filled round of puff pastry. Friar Tuck’s Eccles cakes have the perfect balance of sweet filling with savory pastry.

* Battenberg Cake: Think of it as a jellyroll arranged in a checkerboard pattern: pink and cream-colored strips of poundcake joined with strawberry jam and then wrapped in a thin sheet of marzipan.

FROM THE SHELVES:

* Branston Pickle: This dark, sweet-and-sour condiment is made from finely cut fruits and vegetables. In effect it’s a sort of chutney; the dates, lemons and spices that flavor it clearly point toward India. It’s as common on tables in England as ketchup is here and is considered essential with cold meats, Scotch eggs and plowman’s lunch (country bread and cheese).

* Baked Beans: “The consummate nursery food”--meaning what English kids eat when they don’t dine with their parents--is how one expat describes Heinz canned baked beans: “Everyone ate them heated up and poured over toast; kids love them.”

* Marmite: This is another nursery food, one every English person will tell you is highly nutritious. It’s a viscous extract of yeast and vegetables that can be made into a broth by the addition of hot water. Just as often it is spread undiluted onto toast, which is cut into strips called Marmite soldiers, presumably to make it more amusing for children to eat. Marmite, and its Australian counterpart Vegemite, both carried here, fall into the category of acquired tastes, especially in their undiluted form.

* Marrowfat Peas and Mushy Peas: Marrowfats are large, starchy field peas (the split-pea type of pea, as against the fresh green pea) that readily lend themselves to being mashed or pureed. Friar Tuck sells dry marrowfats, canned whole marrowfats and canned “mushy peas,” a puree of marrowfat peas that is a working man’s staple in the North of England. The last contain a touch of sugar and butter that enhances the peas’ subtly sweet flavor.

* Sponge Pudding: Sweet puddings, cold puddings, meat puddings, pease puddings--there are literally hundreds of puddings in England, where the name is applied to almost any mixture cooked in a water bath. Friar Tuck carries treacle sponge pudding, a dessert that comes in a can. You pierce the lid and place it upright in a pot of gently boiling water until it’s done, and then invert it onto a plate. The resulting soft, light cake is anointed with a veneer of Golden Syrup, a slightly caramelized equivalent of corn syrup, and eaten warm with custard sauce. (Friar Tuck sells prepared custard if you don’t want to make your own.)

* Heinz Salad Cream: While many British factory-made foods are worthy of a foodie’s scorn, one item that isn’t is Heinz Salad Cream. This smooth, creamy sauce, slightly less dense than commercial mayonnaise, gets its piquant flavor from vinegar and a touch of mustard powder. Salad cream makes sandwiches more luxurious and coleslaw addictive.

* Hard Toffee: To eat Walker’s English toffee, a rich, smooth caramel-like confection, you need to crack it into chunks, and to crack it, you need to chill it or freeze it first. So important is this ritual that Walker’s includes a small but very sturdy metal hammer in every large box. For smaller toffee appetites they also offer the “crack pack,” a 2x4-inch cellophane-wrapped package that you bang on a hard surface to crack. The toffees come plain, with nuts or with both fruit and nuts.

FROZEN MEATS AND DELICACIES

* Sausages: Martin Lunt, the owner of Jolly Good, a California company that supplies Friar Tuck with excellent English-style sausages, says bangers got their name during hard times when some sausages were made with too much water and bread. They would expand and pop with a bang in the cooking pan.

“A good butcher would be offended if you called his sausages bangers,” Lunt adds. “But we have to call ours bangers, because USDA insists that any sausage containing even a small amount of bread crumbs, which is how the British prefer them, cannot be called sausage.”

Whatever you call them, these links are delicious. Jolly Good’s pork bangers come in two sizes: One is about the size of a fresh Italian sausage, the other, called chipolata, is breakfast-link size. There are beef sausages too, also made with a touch of bread crumbs. These, according to Jolly Good, are preferred by Scots.

* English and Irish Bacon: The British call American-style bacon “streaky bacon”; they consider it an ingredient for cooking with. For breakfast, they prefer middle back bacon, which comes from the back and sides of a bacon pig, rather than from the belly. It is sliced thin from lean, smoked meat bordered with a narrow ribbon of fat. Friar Tuck carries Danish bacon, which is the kind most commonly eaten in England these days. It is cut, cured and smoked in the English style. Irish bacon, prepared in much the same manner, is leaner and has a slightly different flavor.

* Frozen Kippers: Cured cold-smoked herrings, known as kippers, don’t do too well in cans; they lose their firm texture and their flavor suffers. But because herrings are oily fish, they freeze well. Frozen kippers are thoroughly acceptable, whether you grill them or cook them in their heat-proof plastic bag with butter (most kipper experts prefer the fish grilled). In England, kippers are a favorite breakfast food. A grilled ripe tomato, along with tea and good bread and butter, is its best accompaniment.

CHEESES AND DAIRY GOODS

* Cheeses: Friar Tuck carries several English cheeses, including the blue-veined Stilton, often called the Roquefort of England.

After Cheddar, Cheshire is England’s most popular cheese. Crumbly and moderately hard, Cheshire tastes best when “toasted” or slightly melted. In the North of England, an orange color is preferred in cheese, whereas people from farther south want their Cheshire in its natural off-white shade. So this cheese comes either as white Cheshire and “red” Cheshire (the official term name for the orange-colored version). Apart from color, they are identical. Friar Tuck carries both Cheshires to serve with fruit and “biscuits” (what we might call crackers) or broiled on toast.

Layers of mild, mellow double-Gloucester cheese sandwich a thick layer of the noble Stilton in the much-sought Huntsman cheese. Purists consider this “invented” cheese a sacrilege, but its fans love the contrast between the salty Stilton and the creamy double Gloucester. Huntsman is just as good with the traditional Port wine and walnuts as plain Stilton.

* Cream: For your tea-time scones, Friar Tuck imports true double cream, which is exceptionally thick.

* The Friar Tuck Shoppe and Bakery, 13638 Burbank Blvd., Van Nuys, (818) 785-4814. Open 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily.