Proving a point

I'm involved at a cafe designed for international students to meet and get to know people. More and more often on Wednesdays this is involves food from various countries, depending on who fancies cooking. This clearly inspires conversation about how that food is made, and what food is like in people's home countries (further proof, incidentally, that food allows people to connect together on a really basic level).

Anyway, all too often, people wonder at my extolling the virtues of good British food, given its inherent blandness, and my obvious enjoyment of the Chinese/Spanish/Japanese/Persian/Indian/etc food I've just eaten. (Although I think some people assume I enjoy it so much because the concept of flavour in my food is a new one for me...)

Now, I've long suspected that so many of them believe this because of a couple of reasons:
a) what people think of in other countries when they think of British food is fish and chips, full English breakfasts* and not much else
b) the fact that so many British students can't/won't/think they can't afford to/think they don't have time to cook decent traditional meals.
c) if they aren't fed by friends who can cook british food, they might decide to try it at a restaurant. Unfortunately, most "British" restaurants are pubs, thereby immediately counting that out for an awful lot of my friends, especially the muslim ones. Those that do go might try something at Wetherspoons or similar, which, although it has its place, is hardly a great place to go for really excellent cuisine. Very few would even know where to look for decent pub grub.

I also have theories on the development of food, and cookery in this country that I feel probably do not help matters - e.g. the fashion for low-fat cooking that hit from (I think) sometime around the 80s, the increasing popularity of supermarkets, and the increasing detachment and squeamishness about food.

However this impression has been formed, I set out to prove to some of these people just why I love good, home cooked, British food, and most of all, to prove that the one thing it is not, is bland.

N.B. From this point onwards when I refer to British food, I mean British food cooked well. As with any food, it is entirely possible to do it badly.

British food at its best for me is about using simple, fresh, local ingredients, wasting as little as possible (hence sausages, stew to use the tougher cuts, crumble, corned beef hash...) and cooking them in a simple, unfussy way. It should be flavoured and seasoned well to encourage the flavours of the meat and veg, but not overpoweringly.

This does not mean I don't use non-native ingredients. But British cooking has long relied on imports of ingredients, especially spices. It's been limited at times by the cost, but, for example, ginger, black pepper, mace pepper, black and green cardamon, nutmeg, cumin, coriander, cinnamon, and myriad other spices would have been easy to get for those that could afford it since at least the time of the Roman empire. That's a good 2000 years. And if it's available, people are going to use it.

We also have, of course, many herbs, including many that, I bet, 100 years ago would have been commonly foraged but now have fallen out of use because we have no idea what they are.With all these sources of flavouring available to us, the idea that British food is bland is, frankly, ridiculous.

So, to prove all my hypotheses, I designed a British menu for today's Global Cafe, that used mostly ingredients that have been available in the British Isles for hundreds of years to a greater or lesser degree. The exception is things like oxo cubes, marigold vegetable stock powder, and Bisto gravy powder. I think that most of it has been widely availabe for at least the last 30 years. I had to provide for vegetarians, and I also wanted a dish to prove the heritage of British cooking, as well as a (relatively) more recent dish, the sort of thing that is absolutely classically British.


The menu was as follows:

-Beef stew
Using cubed stewing steak, fresh rosemary, garlic, onion, swede, carrots, parsnips, cabbage, mushrooms, leeks, and probably some other bits of veg I've forgotten about.
-Rosemary Dumplings
I use Jamie Oliver's recipe from Jamie cooks, which is great because it doesn't use suet and therefore I always have the right ingredients in. Makes great dumpings though.
-Potato Mash
With whole grain mustard
-Mashed Celeriac
Those that don't know - this is the root of the celery plant. I like it mashed with a little milk, and a lot of pepper and butter.

-Spicy yellow vegetable soup
Including squash, sweet potato, swede, carrot, onion, garlic, grated ginger, and again, probably some more veg I've forgotten about.

-Medieval Gingerbread
Made of breadcrumbs, honey and spice. Don't get me wrong, it might have been around since before the 15th C, but this amount of spice and honey would have been expensive. This is a dish for showing off your wealth, not for the commoners. None the less, shows the heritage of gingerbread.

It's not a great pic, especially of me, but it's the best I've got. As I didn't actually sit down until I ate I wasn't able to take any myself.

 


I'm glad to say I convinced most people, in particular two of the guys that were most convinced that British food is bland. The day has been a success!



It's just a shame I couldn't introduce people to British beer while I was at it, but you can't have everything.



*The two things listed by my spanish friend Juanmar when I asked him what he thought of when British food was mentioned, confirming my suspicions for a few people at least.