Part of our vision for The Sporkful has always been to create a clearinghouse for innovations in the field of eating. Some day we hope to bring all this collective knowledge together to found Sporkful University, motto: Ruminate, Masticate, Promulgate.
With these lofty aspirations, you can imagine that it's especially fulfilling when we get emails like the one we received recently from Mary Ann Sturdy in Quesnel, British Columbia, Canada. For those of you keeping score, that's about 450 miles north of Vancouver, and maybe 900 miles south of Juneau, Alaska (as the crow flies, at least). Mary Ann and her husband Don are gold miners (natch), and she wrote to us in response to our butter episode:
HAD to tell you about the chip butty, the best way to deliver butter that ever there was, coming to you indirectly from my Manchester, England, in-laws...* Take a slab of your favourite bread.* Slather it thickly with as much butter as your stomach can handle.* Take chips (French Fries to you Yanks) fresh from the deep fryer and lay them carefully on top of the thick slab of butter.* Add salt and pepper to taste.* Lovingly roll the edges of the bread around the chips and you’re about to taste Butter Heaven.Our favourite way to have a chip butty is with beans and an egg. Not only is it a cheap meal, its nourishing and very yummy. Please be sure to spell the “chip butty” the proper way or you’ll have people writing in!
Mary Ann's husband Don models a homemade Chip Buddy above, and there are more pics on Google Images. There's even a Wikipedia page, although Mary Ann cautions, "Don’t put anything on the butty, like ketchup or HP or whatever these Philistines at Wikipedia are suggesting. This is a Butter Delivery System, not a vehicle for condiments."
First off, having lived in England for a while, I can say that this dish could only have been invented by the English. Second, as you may have noticed, I did not spell "Chip Buddy" correctly. That was by design. With all due respect to Mary Ann's in-laws, I want more people to know about this dish, and I think it would become way more marketable if it was called a Chip Buddy. Doesn't that sound friendly? Who would turn down a dish like that? It's true that the word "butty" comes from "butter," so it is an appropriate name, but I like to consider butter to be my buddy, so I'm sticking with Chip Buddy.
Mary Ann closes her email, "I'm back out to the mines. Praying for snow and ice so we can shut down! I'm getting tired." Well Mary Ann and Don, we're praying for ya. Get inside and get yourselves some Chip Buddies! /dan
