Kem cho? Maja maa!

[DanaC]

start getting names of stuff off her! So many of these things I recognise but can't remember the names.

Oh and do go for indian sweets, theyre delightful. They are very sweet yes, but they also usually have a slightly malted flavour, as theyre often made with boiled down milk. Used to take ages for Gran to get the 'powdered milk' (e.g thick milk mush) ready.

[Pie]

I have a running joke with the family -- that the only reason the British conquered an Empire was to secure decent take-away.

[Sundae]

Originally Posted by Pie

I have a running joke with the family -- that the only reason the British conquered an Empire was to secure decent take-away.

That's not a joke, it's truth!

[DanaC]

'British' cuisine may well be a contradition in terms for much of the last hundred years or so, but 'English' cuisine is a little different.

'Britain' as an entity carried certain self-conceptions, including things like plain speaking, plain cooking stoicism. Around the the eighteenth century native fruit and vegetables, drawn as they were from the dirt, and suitable food for beasts of burden, became the food of the poor. Proper solid British yeomen ate meat and bread. White bread mind, none of that nasty black shit the Frenchies were eating. Beer, not 'vinegar' as French wine was termed. Stout leather boots, not those silly wooden shoes.

Culinary creation and variety, which had always been a feature of aristocratic English society, even if it hadn't been available to the labouring classes, now became a sign of weakness and effiminacy. By the time of Victoria, this had become wrapped up with a kind of morality of plainness. The Victorian age then added the concept of 'nutrition' to their diet. The scientific Victorians were eager to solve their social, moral and class crises. Along with new investigations into sanitation and the effects of city life on the constitution of the nation (e.g. the moral and physical strength of the workforce) came a focus on food. Again, the emphasis was on plainness. Good, wholesome food. None of that foreign muck. Simple flavours. Balanced meals (probably not what we might considered balanced now).

The morality of food is a major part of the development of British cuisine. The wealthiest and most favoured of our elite sent their sons, who would impose themselves on the globe, to schools that built their character. Cold showers are not a myth. The regimes of those schools concentrated on a lack of physical luxury. Food was simple, basic, 'wholesome'. And three generations of our ruling elite fostered a taste for over-boiled vegetables and suet puddings. Add to that ideas that 'rich' foods were bad for children, and the nurseries of the wealthy also had no truck with spices and fancy-shmancy sauces.

OUtside of the elite our food is highly regionalised. People talk about 'British' food, or even 'English' food. But the truth is the traditional foods of Yorkshire and Devon are wholly different from each other. Obviously there are also common trends. Traditionally our cuisine is very similar to German and Scandinavian.

We lost touch with a lot of our food traditions during the nineteenth century because of increased urbanisation and the introduction of mass produced goods. Fruit was no longer needed as a sweetener once sugar was cheaply available: this changed the nature of our desserts for example. Without agrarian life patterns and with food being imported in large quantities, our diets became less seasonally defined. This drastically reduced the level of variety in poorer diets. With work now taking place primarily outside of the home, and the family no longer a discrete production unit, food as a daily event reduced in importance. Interestingly one area where there was (and is) great variety in shape and flavour was in 'street foods'. Things that could be eaten on the move, like pasties and pies, fish and chips etc. Baked goods are where you get the most variance regionally I think. Seafood to go (mussels, whelks, eels etc) was a biggy with the workingclasses: actually that survived for a good lone while. As a teenager, I remember guys coming round the pubs with their trays of mussels and whelks.

Into the 20th century and two world wars devastate the country, and we are left with privation and rationing into the 50s.

There's nothing about traditional English cuisine that warrants the reputation it has. 'British' cuisine however is a very different matter. 'British' is a political and cultural definition, and that carries through to food, style of dress, preferred arguing method, attitude towards the French, everything.

[DanaC]

A couple of additional points:

The need for high energy food that would stave off hunger for a long time, drove working-class diets towards high protein, high starch foods: meat stews etc. Access to meat as a regular part of that diet was a sign of relative success and stability; it was also indicative of a man's ability to provide for his family. Add to that the increasingly macho nature of working-class culture and food easily becomes coded for gender: fancy food is feminine and feminising, real men need proper food. It also gets tied up with class and national pride: fancy food is for the effete elite, or the effeminate French. And regional pride: none of that fancy southern muck, we eat proper Yorkshire fayre up here.

That's survived some within working-class culture. Cooking is still seen as a very female pursuit in more traditional communities and fancy food is for the soft.

But...'British' cuisine now is not what British cuisine was. Just as 'British' means something very different now than it meant fifty years ago. British cuisine is a multi-ethnic and varied as 'British' is. From the closing decades of the 20th century we began reclaiming older culinary traditions, adopting new culinary traditions and then fusing them altogether into what became British cuisine as it now is.

[Trilby]

Dana : passionate about her food.

I give her an A+

[Sundae]

Me too.

For the record, someone in my Mum's family had a seafood stall outside a pub. I can't remember who (Cousin Tommy maybe?) but I remember it was a Courage pub. How? Because it had the Courage cock on a sign outside. And I was young enough to associate it with chicken flavoured crisps - which I didn't really like - so was very grateful when we had a tray of seafood instead. Doused in vinegar of course, this was the East End!

[jinx]

Today's treat was some sort of spicy curry muffin/cake think... A little dense but very tasty.

[dollface]

And it was all Yellow.

[Sun_Sparkz]

Yummo! That all looks great - especially the oily sweet one. You are lucky to have a nice relationship with them.
Do you ever take them in a sample of your families signiature dish?

[jinx]

Wow, sorry Sun, didn't see your question till now... But yes, I've made them a few things. Most recently was vegan black bean soup (I can't keep track of who is vegan there and who isn't so I just assume they all are at this point) a couple weeks ago.

Jigna made us this about a week ago, forgot I had taken the pic...

[xoxoxoBruce]

For your 60th birthday, Jinx?

[jinx]