A Bolton chef has poked fun at the 'substantial meal' rule by coming up with some creative and delicious looking 'cheat meals'.
Gareth Mason, the executive chef of Retreat, has used previous lockdowns to take on some interesting cooking challenges including making appetising meals with ingredients found at the back of the cupboard, as well as using Irn Bru as a major ingredient.
His most recent effort follows discussions on whether pies and Scotch eggs would constitute a 'substantial meal' on their own or whether they would need to be paired with sides.
Gareth's own take on the Scotch egg is the Lancashire egg - made with black pudding and turkey and served alongside a salad and cranberry sauce to give it a festive twist.
He said: "It was a bit of a mick-take on the tier system.
"Obviously it's all over the media at the moment that a Scotch egg is a substantial meal if it's served with a side salad so we made the humble Lancashire egg instead with a Panko breadcrumb and stuffing coating."
Keeping with the Lancashire theme, Gareth also made Chorley cakes with Caramac ice cream.
However the pièce de résistance is Gareth's 'three-tier' fish, chips and mushy peas pie.
The Smithills-based chef admitted that some of the food could very well make its way onto the takeaway menus for his restaurants in Bolton, Bromley Cross, and Adlington.
"It's a Wiganer's dream come true, that one," he laughed.
"There's three tiers so we made the pie three tiers.
"If we put a lid on it we wouldn't have been able to see the inside of it properly so we used chips as a pie lid instead.
"We had no idea how it was going to look. Luckily we managed to pull it off."
