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Re: British food heritage
Posted: Wed May 05, 2021 12:27 pm
by Bird on a Fire
lpm wrote: ↑Thu Apr 29, 2021 12:47 pm
Bird on a Fire wrote: ↑Thu Apr 29, 2021 12:04 pm
On (2), I suspect (as is generally the case) that educating kids will be part of any solution.
Since we're doing anecdotes, here's mine. I was raised by a single mum in a low-income family, after my dad died when I was 5.
As a result of this, from a very early age I and my younger sister were involved in food prep - not just setting the table and doing the dishwasher, but preparing meals. Certainly by the time I was 8 my mum could have a night or two off a week where I would take charge of putting some stuff from the fridge onto the table, microwaving leftovers, etc. When I was a little older (say, 10), my mum could go to work some evenings and leave us to do our own dinners. Ditto lunches during school holidays.
Most of it was nothing fancy - a lot of ready meals, tubs of coleslaw and sandwiches. We shopped in the supermarket after school. But it did mean by the time I was a teenager I could handle doing a week of food prep, or a week of supermarket shopping if my mum was ill. When I started uni I was able to teach various people, of both sexes, how to do stuff like boil pasta, use an oven timer, or chop up a bell pepper, that they'd never learned at home with both parents.
So in my particular case, being in a time- and money-stressed home with a single, grieving woman actually resulted in my taking an interest in food from a young age. I'm sure that's not typical, but it suggests there are options. The basics of meal planning, nutrition and practical kitchen skills would be a useful thing to teach in schools, for instance.
Yes, interesting post, but doesn't this show how valuing food heritage is something that promptly gets sidelined under time/money stress? Your post is full of words like microwave, ready meals, tubs, sandwiches, supermarket, pasta... A world of convenience and easy answers, nothing like the vision of seeking out proper bacon from proper bacon butchers and getting carrots that are better than the 60p bag at Tesco and stewing the hotpot for several hours.
Now as an adult you have the skills and experience to get more into food and have an exploratory culinary life. But another person with the same experience might have no interest in food and just carry on making a bacon butty with watery Tesco bacon and sliced bread. They are quite happy with a vegetarian pasta dish that is actually boiling some pasta from the cupboard and chucking in a jar of Dolmio sauce. And the Indian food they want is whatever arrives to the door on a moped.
I'm not sure anyone's addressed the interesting question of (1) Do we care? Why bother with British heritage when we've got the world heritages to pick and choose from? I think the question has been blurred in this thread with the desire to get away from low-quality high-convenience industrialised foods from the big British supermarket chains. But why? Health & obesity issues? Hippy vision of disrupting capitalism? Sustainability problems with industrial food?
Yes, definitely.
To continue the anecdote, I didn't really realise how unusual the UK (and IME USA) is in this regard till I did my masters, an Erasmus program with 17 students from 11 countries. People would cook together as a social activity all the time, even during a 1-hour lunch break, and have parties where people (males and females) would proudly cook typical dishes from their region and share them. As a Brit I was just gobbling down bland sandwiches for lunch, and when we had parties I could never think of anything typically English/Hampshirish to bring, so was normally on beer and crisp duty.
Personally, I do care, if only because I think it's a shame to miss out on extra nice things. I think a culture based around eating nice, healthy food is probably healthier than a culture based around binge drinking on an empty stomach. And I also think fostering a market for local food would be a wise part of addressing the sustainability challenges of modern agriculture while also helping to safeguard rural jobs and food security.
Re: British food heritage
Posted: Wed May 05, 2021 12:35 pm
by Tessa K
Bird on a Fire wrote: ↑Wed May 05, 2021 12:27 pm
To continue the anecdote, I didn't really realise how unusual the UK (and IME USA) is in this regard till I did my masters, an Erasmus program with 17 students from 11 countries. People would cook together as a social activity all the time, even during a 1-hour lunch break, and have parties where people (males and females) would proudly cook typical dishes from their region and share them. As a Brit I was just gobbling down bland sandwiches for lunch, and when we had parties I could never think of anything typically English/Hampshirish to bring, so was normally on beer and crisp duty.
Personally, I do care, if only because I think it's a shame to miss out on extra nice things. I think a culture based around eating nice, healthy food is probably healthier than a culture based around binge drinking on an empty stomach. And I also think fostering a market for local food would be a wise part of addressing the sustainability challenges of modern agriculture while also helping to safeguard rural jobs and food security.
Sausage rolls are an undervalued English food. Not the cheap crappy ones but ones made with good quality meat and pastry. The best one I ever had was at the Wellcome Museum cafe. It may have been when Konditor and Cook were running it.
Re: British food heritage
Posted: Wed May 05, 2021 12:39 pm
by Bird on a Fire
Tessa K wrote: ↑Wed May 05, 2021 12:35 pm
Bird on a Fire wrote: ↑Wed May 05, 2021 12:27 pm
To continue the anecdote, I didn't really realise how unusual the UK (and IME USA) is in this regard till I did my masters, an Erasmus program with 17 students from 11 countries. People would cook together as a social activity all the time, even during a 1-hour lunch break, and have parties where people (males and females) would proudly cook typical dishes from their region and share them. As a Brit I was just gobbling down bland sandwiches for lunch, and when we had parties I could never think of anything typically English/Hampshirish to bring, so was normally on beer and crisp duty.
Personally, I do care, if only because I think it's a shame to miss out on extra nice things. I think a culture based around eating nice, healthy food is probably healthier than a culture based around binge drinking on an empty stomach. And I also think fostering a market for local food would be a wise part of addressing the sustainability challenges of modern agriculture while also helping to safeguard rural jobs and food security.
Sausage rolls are an undervalued English food. Not the cheap crappy ones but ones made with good quality meat and pastry. The best one I ever had was at the Wellcome Museum cafe. It may have been when Konditor and Cook were running it.
Yes, I like sausage rolls. I tried a Gregg's vegan one at Christmas and even that was pretty good. I'm not good at pastry, though.
My go-to English dish to impress foreign guests is English Breakfast, which can also be a hungover lunch - but I feel a bit weird eating it for dinner.
I would quite like to have a small repertoire of English dishes, though they'd have to be vegetarian-adaptable as most of my friends are conservationists.
Re: British food heritage
Posted: Wed May 05, 2021 12:51 pm
by Tessa K
Bird on a Fire wrote: ↑Wed May 05, 2021 12:39 pm
Tessa K wrote: ↑Wed May 05, 2021 12:35 pm
Bird on a Fire wrote: ↑Wed May 05, 2021 12:27 pm
To continue the anecdote, I didn't really realise how unusual the UK (and IME USA) is in this regard till I did my masters, an Erasmus program with 17 students from 11 countries. People would cook together as a social activity all the time, even during a 1-hour lunch break, and have parties where people (males and females) would proudly cook typical dishes from their region and share them. As a Brit I was just gobbling down bland sandwiches for lunch, and when we had parties I could never think of anything typically English/Hampshirish to bring, so was normally on beer and crisp duty.
Personally, I do care, if only because I think it's a shame to miss out on extra nice things. I think a culture based around eating nice, healthy food is probably healthier than a culture based around binge drinking on an empty stomach. And I also think fostering a market for local food would be a wise part of addressing the sustainability challenges of modern agriculture while also helping to safeguard rural jobs and food security.
Sausage rolls are an undervalued English food. Not the cheap crappy ones but ones made with good quality meat and pastry. The best one I ever had was at the Wellcome Museum cafe. It may have been when Konditor and Cook were running it.
Yes, I like sausage rolls. I tried a Gregg's vegan one at Christmas and even that was pretty good. I'm not good at pastry, though.
My go-to English dish to impress foreign guests is English Breakfast, which can also be a hungover lunch - but I feel a bit weird eating it for dinner.
I would quite like to have a small repertoire of English dishes, though they'd have to be vegetarian-adaptable as most of my friends are conservationists.
Life's too short to bother with making pastry when you can buy it ready made from a supermarket and veggie sausages would work too. Yes, I know, homemade is best... If you do homemake it, cheese straws are dead easy. Savoury scones are another easy winner as there are all sorts of things you can put in them.
Other easy dishes are cheese and potato pie or fritata (pretty much the same ingredients) or pinwheel sandwiches - kind of an English version of sushi (sort of).
Similarly, a good quality Scotch egg is a thing of beauty.
Re: British food heritage
Posted: Wed May 05, 2021 1:04 pm
by tom p
Bird on a Fire wrote: ↑Wed May 05, 2021 12:39 pm
Tessa K wrote: ↑Wed May 05, 2021 12:35 pm
Bird on a Fire wrote: ↑Wed May 05, 2021 12:27 pm
To continue the anecdote, I didn't really realise how unusual the UK (and IME USA) is in this regard till I did my masters, an Erasmus program with 17 students from 11 countries. People would cook together as a social activity all the time, even during a 1-hour lunch break, and have parties where people (males and females) would proudly cook typical dishes from their region and share them. As a Brit I was just gobbling down bland sandwiches for lunch, and when we had parties I could never think of anything typically English/Hampshirish to bring, so was normally on beer and crisp duty.
Personally, I do care, if only because I think it's a shame to miss out on extra nice things. I think a culture based around eating nice, healthy food is probably healthier than a culture based around binge drinking on an empty stomach. And I also think fostering a market for local food would be a wise part of addressing the sustainability challenges of modern agriculture while also helping to safeguard rural jobs and food security.
Sausage rolls are an undervalued English food. Not the cheap crappy ones but ones made with good quality meat and pastry. The best one I ever had was at the Wellcome Museum cafe. It may have been when Konditor and Cook were running it.
Yes, I like sausage rolls. I tried a Gregg's vegan one at Christmas and even that was pretty good. I'm not good at pastry, though.
My go-to English dish to impress foreign guests is English Breakfast, which can also be a hungover lunch - but I feel a bit weird eating it for dinner.
I would quite like to have a small repertoire of English dishes, though they'd have to be vegetarian-adaptable as most of my friends are conservationists.
Apple+/-rhubarb or blackberry crumble.
Toad in the hole (veggie option is easy if you can find veggie sos)
Roast dinner. Despite the common trop of it being stressful - it's really easy: plonk thing you are gonna roast in oven, set timer to 35 mins before it's ready. Par-boil spuds, drain and set aside to steam themselves properly dry. When timer goes, whack the heat right up to 220ish, place pan big enough for your spuds with sunflower oil in oven and set timer for 10 mins. when timer goes, remove pan from oven, put spuds in pan, replace pan in oven & set timer for 25 mins.
Then set the veg going.
If you're making yorkshires, pop in another pan when you pop the spuds in & do the timer for 10 & 15 mins respectively. Job's a good 'un.
Re: British food heritage
Posted: Wed May 05, 2021 1:07 pm
by Tessa K
I was focussing mostly on finger foods for parties but the suggestion for a full roast dinner did remind me that you can make filled Yorkshire puddings on their own. Our version of vol-au-vents. Stuff them with a bit of meat and horseradish for a more authentic roast dinner style or pretty much anything meaty, veggie or even vegan.
Re: British food heritage
Posted: Wed May 05, 2021 1:31 pm
by FlammableFlower
Definitely in support of the crumbles - apple and blackberry or rhubarb with cut up bits of stem ginger in syrup... both taste amazing.
Local foods to me: Easter biscuits, made with cassia oil and not cinnamon. The shop bought ones don't quite match what my gran used to make, but they're lovely when they come round. Bath buns, bath chaps and Sally Lunn cakes.
Also - chicken or pork cooked in cider.
Re: British food heritage
Posted: Wed May 05, 2021 2:11 pm
by monkey
Bird on a Fire wrote: ↑Wed May 05, 2021 12:39 pm
I would quite like to have a small repertoire of English dishes, though they'd have to be vegetarian-adaptable as most of my friends are conservationists.
My friend made an awesome veggie wellington. Try that one. More pastry.
Re: British food heritage
Posted: Wed May 05, 2021 2:50 pm
by Gfamily
Bird on a Fire wrote: ↑Wed May 05, 2021 12:39 pm
I would quite like to have a small repertoire of English dishes, though they'd have to be vegetarian-adaptable as most of my friends are conservationists.
Not English, but a good Welsh recipe is the
Glamorgan Sausage - with leek and cheese.
Re: British food heritage
Posted: Wed May 05, 2021 3:00 pm
by Tessa K
FlammableFlower wrote: ↑Wed May 05, 2021 1:31 pm
Definitely in support of the crumbles - apple and blackberry or rhubarb with cut up bits of stem ginger in syrup... both taste amazing.
Local foods to me: Easter biscuits, made with cassia oil and not cinnamon. The shop bought ones don't quite match what my gran used to make, but they're lovely when they come round. Bath buns, bath chaps and Sally Lunn cakes.
Also - chicken or pork cooked in cider.
Oh yes, most definitely Easter biscuits. Cassia oil is lovely. I bought some dried cassia and it wasn't nearly the same. I made Easter biscuits a lot a few years ago and must do it again. The trick with them is to take them out just before you think they're done, when they're still a bit soft in the middle as they harden as they cool.
Pork in cider or cider vinegar with whole grain mustard is excellent.
You can make mini crumbles in fairy cake cases too. Plum is one of my favourites. I like rhubarb with a bit of orange rind rather than ginger, which I'm not that keen on, except in ginger biscuits.
Re: British food heritage
Posted: Wed May 05, 2021 3:31 pm
by Grumble
I love a crumble, but according to my National Trust cookbook they aren’t very old at all. Less than 100 years anyway, when the book was written.
Re: British food heritage
Posted: Wed May 05, 2021 3:34 pm
by bagpuss
Flapjacks are pretty British, I think and very easy to make (and delicious).
When living in French student accommodation back when I too was doing Erasmus, I wowed the French students with my home-made fudge, also very easy, although French people do find it considerably harder to pronounce than to eat.
Scones are good, whether savoury or sweet.
Dorset apple cake (if you google "dorset apple cake bagpuss", you should find my recipe, from another entirely unrelated forum long long ago
).
Pasties, whether yer traditional Cornish variety or a veggie-based one, or something else entirely
Re: British food heritage
Posted: Wed May 05, 2021 3:43 pm
by discovolante
There's a lot of meat and pastry based dishes being discussed in this thread. Now we've moved on from heritage vegetables, as a not-quite-veggie coeliac is it any bl..dy wonder I don't know anything about British food eh. Although crumbles are doable.
As you were.
Re: British food heritage
Posted: Wed May 05, 2021 3:53 pm
by bagpuss
discovolante wrote: ↑Wed May 05, 2021 3:43 pm
There's a lot of meat and pastry based dishes being discussed in this thread. Now we've moved on from heritage vegetables, as a not-quite-veggie coeliac is it any bl..dy wonder I don't know anything about British food eh. Although crumbles are doable.
As you were.
Yeah, sorry about that, just 1 thing on my list that's edible by a coeliac. But fudge is wonderful, even if it doesn't exactly form the basis of a healthy diet.
Re: British food heritage
Posted: Wed May 05, 2021 4:17 pm
by discovolante
bagpuss wrote: ↑Wed May 05, 2021 3:53 pm
discovolante wrote: ↑Wed May 05, 2021 3:43 pm
There's a lot of meat and pastry based dishes being discussed in this thread. Now we've moved on from heritage vegetables, as a not-quite-veggie coeliac is it any bl..dy wonder I don't know anything about British food eh. Although crumbles are doable.
As you were.
Yeah, sorry about that, just 1 thing on my list that's edible by a coeliac. But fudge is wonderful, even if it doesn't exactly form the basis of a healthy diet.
I do like fudge
(I know a lot of people don't, too sweet they say, well you don't need to eat a whole bar at a time!)
Re: British food heritage
Posted: Wed May 05, 2021 4:29 pm
by Aitch
discovolante wrote: ↑Wed May 05, 2021 3:43 pm
There's a lot of meat and pastry based dishes being discussed in this thread. Now we've moved on from heritage vegetables, as a not-quite-veggie coeliac is it any bl..dy wonder
I don't know anything about British food eh. Although crumbles are doable.
As you were.
Try
https://www.amazon.co.uk/English-Food-J ... 091770432/*. The paperback is cheaper, obviously. Oh, and there is one Welsh recipe in it, which caused a right kerfuffle when it was published.
* actually it's about English food, so...
Re: British food heritage
Posted: Wed May 05, 2021 7:48 pm
by Sciolus
bagpuss wrote: ↑Wed May 05, 2021 8:24 am
Tessa K wrote: ↑Wed May 05, 2021 7:39 am
dyqik wrote: ↑Wed May 05, 2021 1:32 am
I don't know of anything from Sussex except Banoffee Pie, and that's not old enough to be traditional.
Sussex Pond Pudding. It comes up on cooking programmes sometimes. I've never had it but like the look of it as I like citrus.
Yes, that was what I was thinking of. I've never made it yet but have every intention of doing so at some point. Mind you, I've been meaning to for at least 2 decades so I'm not sure when it'll actually happen.
Heh, same here. Trouble is, like many traditional foods, it sounds pretty heavy, and not really suited to today's sedentary, temperature-controlled lifestyle. (Also, the lemon seems to be a modern innovation; the traditional filling is butter, sugar, currents and spices/booze ad lib.) Rummaging through my books of Sussex traditions, there's quite a lot of suet pastry (suet bacon roll is bl..dy delicious). The other notable Sussex food is plum heavies, pastry with sugar and currents mixed in. Or, for real peasant food, there's kettle bender:
This dish was quickly made by filling a basin with pieces of bread, pouring on boiling water, adding a good gob of butter and a little pepper and salt. After a good stir is was ready to eat. Although the mixture sounds plain it is quite good, but butter is needed, not margarine.
Re: British food heritage
Posted: Wed May 05, 2021 8:15 pm
by Bird on a Fire
Now that I think of it (because you've all reminded me!), Britain does have quite the array of excellent traditional desserts. I'd been overlooking them, probably because I basically never eat (or want) dessert. But I guess I could still learn to cook them.
And thanks Tessa for the finger-food focus - it does make life easier when no cutlery is required. Although, as the Bangladeshi guy on our course demonstrated, anything can be finger food, even sloppy dahl, if you adopt the right attitude. (Fusion food tip: tortillas are perfectly decent substitutes for rotis).
Re: British food heritage
Posted: Wed May 05, 2021 8:26 pm
by JQH
Curd tarts, or cheese cakes as they were known when I was a kid, are nom.
Never seen them outside of North Yorkshire so at some point I'm going to have to try baking my own.
Re: British food heritage
Posted: Wed May 05, 2021 8:29 pm
by Bird on a Fire
JQH wrote: ↑Wed May 05, 2021 8:26 pm
Curd tarts, or cheese cakes as they were known when I was a kid, are nom.
Never seen them outside of North Yorkshire so at some point I'm going to have to try baking my own.
Those sound quite similar to
queijadas, which they make just up the road from here. They are indeed nom.
How easy is it to get your own curds? Do you just chuck some acid in some milk?
Re: British food heritage
Posted: Wed May 05, 2021 8:31 pm
by JQH
Never tried. IIRC my mum got curds from the local butcher.
Re: British food heritage
Posted: Thu May 06, 2021 1:03 am
by dyqik
Bird on a Fire wrote: ↑Wed May 05, 2021 8:29 pm
How easy is it to get your own curds? Do you just chuck some acid in some milk?
Yes.
Ricotta and paneer is made by heating milk to 85C-ish, and adding citric acid or lemon juice until it goes lumpy. Then strain through a flour sack cloth or butter muslin (not cheese cloth, which is to loose).
Cheddar cheese curds or similar need a mesophilic culture and rennet though. Which is easy to buy online in powdered form.
We tried my wife's first attempt at Cambozola today. It's not blue enough, unfortunately, but the camembert element is there and there's a good rind.
Re: British food heritage
Posted: Thu May 06, 2021 10:40 am
by Fishnut
I'm listening to this now and it's very interesting. The guest expert is Pen Vogler, who's written a book called
Scoff: A History of Food and Class that may be of interest to followers of this thread.
Re: British food heritage
Posted: Fri May 07, 2021 8:42 pm
by TAFKAsoveda
discovolante wrote: ↑Wed May 05, 2021 4:17 pm
bagpuss wrote: ↑Wed May 05, 2021 3:53 pm
discovolante wrote: ↑Wed May 05, 2021 3:43 pm
There's a lot of meat and pastry based dishes being discussed in this thread. Now we've moved on from heritage vegetables, as a not-quite-veggie coeliac is it any bl..dy wonder I don't know anything about British food eh. Although crumbles are doable.
As you were.
Yeah, sorry about that, just 1 thing on my list that's edible by a coeliac. But fudge is wonderful, even if it doesn't exactly form the basis of a healthy diet.
I do like fudge
(I know a lot of people don't, too sweet they say, well you don't need to eat a whole bar at a time!)
Let’s it start on fudge, it’s as bad as cycle helmets round here
Re: British food heritage
Posted: Sat May 08, 2021 12:00 am
by Martin_B
TAFKAsoveda wrote: ↑Fri May 07, 2021 8:42 pm
discovolante wrote: ↑Wed May 05, 2021 4:17 pm
bagpuss wrote: ↑Wed May 05, 2021 3:53 pm
Yeah, sorry about that, just 1 thing on my list that's edible by a coeliac. But fudge is wonderful, even if it doesn't exactly form the basis of a healthy diet.
I do like fudge
(I know a lot of people don't, too sweet they say, well you don't need to eat a whole bar at a time!)
Let’s it start on fudge, it’s as bad as cycle helmets round here
What? A cycle helmet made of fudge!