British Food: Classic or Dud (S&D too)

Heinz Curry Beans are pretty good.

Basically, the British tastes said the overly sweet US versions of baked beans should have half as much sugar so there was more tang of the tomato in the sauce. Heinz started mass-marketing this flavour in the UK in the 60s, prior to that baked beans had mainly been available as an 'exotic import' in posh food shops. Beans on toast rapidly became a fairly staple meal in poorer homes, as it was cheap and quick, and eaten extensively by students.

Curry Powder (as a generic garam masala mix) was developed during the days of the Raj for people who wanted to take the flavour of Indian food back to Britain, and reflects a general taste rather than a specific curry. As the boom in Indian food in Britain spread in the 60s, several big manufacturers started producing curry powder and it made its way into an awful lot of homes. And certainly some of them might have been having beans more than once a week, so might have added something like curry powder into one of those times to taste something different (I certainly remember my dad making his own curried beans by this method in the 70s). The mass-produced ones have a more standardised taste, and not really enough curry powder, but they're OK.

(some of the detail here, such as Fortnum & Masons being the first to import baked beans is from Wikipedia)

As to the chocolate, I guess it will depend on your tastes. I find mass-market American chocolate like gargling with vegetable oil (and I note the big manufacturers are trying to get to exactly that stage, with cocoa butter completely removed in favour of vegetable oil), and British mass-market chocolate pretty good, but then I like Curry Beans so YMMV.

Was the spotted dick Heinz in a tin too? If you wanted to try that kind of thing I'd go for something freshly made. It's nice when it's warm and the blends of spices are just right, otherwise it's just stodge. Haven't tried the Heinz one but I have eaten their treacle sponge and sticky toffee pudding tins, which were horribly sweet, synthetic, dry and heavy as lead. If you are going to get any tinned steam pudding you'll probably want some custard or some vanilla icecream to make your way through the sponge parts.

Those curry beans are just baked beans with mild curry powder tipped into the tomato sauce, right? Kind of disgusting on first mouthful but after a few more it becomes somehow charming in its bright orange E-numbers+turmeric rush, like currywurst. I'd take a currywurst, pommes und mayo over curried baked beans any day though. So the chocolate sounds like the best bet, as I would definitely agree that massmarket UK chocolate is a great deal nicer than anything American I've tried, but maybe that's just my British tastes.

And I'd say UK restaurant meals were expensive (can't remember the last time I had a restaurant meal that was less than £35-£45 per head, even the lacklustre chain restaurants charge in that region now) considering in the US and a lot of other European countries you could get a good meal out for half that, or at least when I've been abroad I've found that to be the case.

mention of Porters restaurant upthread. never been but looked them up the other day and found a couple of sites with wall to wall scathing reviews. Browns fared much better however.

i've not tried Heinz curry beans but their normal ones are fin - even better if you add in some Reggae Reggae sauce.

i think you mean 'deck', bro.

I've been to Porters, it was shit.

Ha, I was going to say "oh, I have been there once, to meet a friend who likes it so much that he's tried everything on the menu, and thought it was pretty good" and now I see that the mention upthread was me. Well. I will google myself some scathing reviews out of interest, but I'd still happily go back.

I took the missus there on her first visit to the UK cos she wanted to try some British food. I had a steak & ale pie, which TBH wasn't bad, but not really any better than a steak & ale pie at a Wetherspoon/Hogshead/etc, can't remember what she had but she didn't like it and the service was bloody awful.

Baked beans in general = indefensible. Curry variant even more so.

I bought the book on a whim in a remainder shop (might have been to read on the trip to Brighton?) and found it exceptionally MEH. Almost every recipe started "I used to love it when nanny made..." and it read like an advertising blurb for the restaurant which seems to mainly cater for tourist looking for the 'authetic' British experience (see their website, with packages that can be arranged with the bix box offices to tie in with the London Eye, the Tower, Madame Tussauds, Greenwich or a West End show - currently Blood Brothers or Chicago).

sausage in mug of baked beans = easily defensible

Sorry, that was a Porters-related xpost, not about the baked beans book. Which might well be as good as the Spam and Marmite ones, and is available from 1p on Amazon.

The Marmite one is shite - I was given it as a birthday present by somebody who saw it and thought "This is perfect for Lucy!" She wrote as much on the inside cover too.

Best UK food stuffs:

Cream tea (Ed/Tracer Hand division)
Donner meat and chips (ghetto division)

I never took the plunge with the Marmite one but the Spam one is OK for a deliberately branded item.

Eton Mess fucking rules. The only thing other than sexually attractive posh girls in ballgowns that makes me wish I'd had a public school education.

You forgot the shower rape.

Projecting, much?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally-Anne_test

Cream tea (Ed/Tracer Hand division)

^ jesus christ you have some weird issues

Donner meat and chips (ghetto division)

^ jesus christ you have some diet issues

http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/FindingAids/dynaweb/calher/breen/figures/I0018235A.jpg

haha, 'Donner' meat

The curry beans tasted nothing like any curry I have ever tasted. They tasted like navy beans, tomato sauce, sugar, and cloves. Actually, they tasted like cloves with the other ingredients added as an afterthought.

I like Marmite, and I thought about buying a little jar of it, but I wasn't sure if I loved it that much.

And a huge xp--yes, the Spotted Dick was in a can. Which is why I wasn't paying $4.50 for it.

don't buy those pudding-in-a-can things

haha, 'Donner' meat

I'd have put the scare wuotes around 'meat'

$4.50 for spotted dick is a bit of a gip given that it is meant to be a poor man's cheap pudding. Try this one:

http://www.nakedwhiz.com/spotdick.htm

I often think Fanny is over-rated.

I think Fanny can be relied upon for dick, though.

You're probably right, although Johnny is probably required just to make sure.

http://www.justhungry.com/images/fof_johnnyfanny.jpg

What do the English call English muffins?

guess

English muffins -- what do the English call them?

Marmite is the only thing I have purchased in the British aisle in Jewel. It was pretty expensive but well worth it. What's pretty stupid is that I hadn't had Marmite in years, and may well not have it again for years, but that one week I needed it really badly.

I'm not sure there's anything else that's all that different these days - I get my loose-leaf tea sent over from England, but could certainly get decent stuff here, and I don't eat much by way of chocolate bars, except plain dark chocolate that's just as available in the US.

Oh, wait a minute, I just remembered the nightmare that was shopping for the ingredients for Christmas pudding and mince pies. I never did find currants, for example (!).

yeah the US doesn't do sultanas either

The sultana grape is cultivated in the United States under the name Thompson Seedless, named after William Thompson, a viticulturist who was an early grower in California and is sometimes credited with the variety's introduction.[3][4] According to the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations, the two names are synonymous.[5] Virtually all of California raisin production (approximately 97% in 2000) and roughly one-third of California's total grape area is of this variety, making it the single most widely-planted variety.[6][4]

Not all speakers of English in Anglo America make clear distinctions between different types of dried grapes (raisins, sultanas, currants), and golden-coloured raisins made from other grape varieties may be marketed as sultanas. In addition, virtually all California raisins are produced from the Thompson Seedless grape, even those which, because of different drying processes, are not golden like the traditional sultana raisin. The term sultana is not commonly used to refer to any type of raisin in American English; as most American raisins are from sultana grapes, they are called simply raisins or golden raisins, according to colour. The latter, which at least in colour resemble the traditional sultana raisin, are artificially dried and sulfured, in distinction to "natural" raisins.[7] All non-organic sultana grapes in California and elsewhere are treated with the plant hormone gibberellin.

Hey! I'm eating currants RIGHT NOW!

Which I purchased from Jewel in your hood, Toby.

They are dried, don't know if that's what you were looking for.

I'm going to be in England in early December and I reserved a table for two at Fat Duck (Note: I'm not loaded lol--I'm an American writer, doy--I've just been dilligently saving my money for savory deliciousness).

Thing is, my GF isn't convinced it's such a good idea. If she flakes, is there an english ilXor who would be interested in being my dinner buddy? Maybe someone who also has trouble convincing his/her friends to make the trek to/spend money at places like this? It'll be fun! Send me a PM.

In light of the turn this thread took, I would like to point out that mass-produced items sold by the processed foods industry do not constitute "cooking", English or otherwise. Cooking is done in a kitchen, using identifiable ingredients. It does not consist of opening a can or removing a wrapper.

As noted many times already, good English cooks excel at savory pies and puddings, roasts, and various sweets. They seem to have no feel for vegetables whatever, unless you count potatos and even then not so much.

Are characteristic English soups any good?

Hmmm, I would say mostly no. The only soups of I can think of that people might call 'English' are either meaty (game soup, yuk, or the usually horrible Brown Windsor soup, basically beef stock with bits of beef floating in it) or half-English, like Mulligatawny (which can be delicious). And then there's completely not English soups like Scotch Broth (veg and meat) or that other Scottish favourite Cock-a-leekie (which can be quite nice).

I'm not sure I agree with you on your other points - I think good English cooks have quite a feel for veggies these days, I can't remember the last time I went to a decent restaurant and had bad veg, although tbf this was once commonplace.

And Whiney - if your GF is crazy enough not to want to go to the Fat Duck - I'm there!

(ps. does she not want to go because she thinks it'll be all clouds of fluff and bits of wood, because you can eat sort of 'normal' food there too...)

Dunno about British cuisine, but hot damn there are a whole lot of fantastic Indian restaurants over there. Also Weetabix - There is no American equivalent of this delicious (and convenient!) breakfast treat.

As Wheetabix is to Frosted Flakes, so I Love Books is to I Love Everything.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/leicestershire/7652487.stm

You can buy Weetabix in the US, though. I think Whole Foods has it - certainly some supermarket chain round here does, anyway.

Fat Duck was so, so good last time I went there. Jealous.

I bought Weetabix in Canada once but it was ludicrously expensive

I saw Weetabix in Cost Plus last week (while buying McVitie's digestive biscuits and Hobnobs), but didn't notice the price.

And Whiney - if your GF is crazy enough not to want to go to the Fat Duck - I'm there!

(ps. does she not want to go because she thinks it'll be all clouds of fluff and bits of wood, because you can eat sort of 'normal' food there too...)

She's mad picky. She's vegetarian but has a list of vegetables she doesn't like a mile long. They told me they could make her a veg version of the tasting menu, but she's also not a glutton like me and doesn't know if she can handle a bazillion courses. Plus we're only in London two days and I don't want to drag her some place she's not pumped about.

So, seriously, if you're into the idea, drop me a sitemail. Since you'd be doing me (and her) a HUGE favor, I'd only expect you to bring the £££s for your wood-and-fluff tasting menu order (they seem adamant that everyone at the table order it) order and whatever drinks you want. I'll be a good host and pay our tip, I'll cover our train/taxi ride to come from London (is that where you're at?), and buy you a celebratory beverage if applicable.

Then we can post about what we ate!

That pork pie news linked to above is excellent. WRT English soups: pea and ham is a bit of a classic.