best food from Orwell's "In Defense of English Cooking"

haggis won't win. the american shift will all roll in and vote for stilton or something

stilton is rad tbf

There's alcohol in mint sauce??

can't wait for the us muffins vs uk muffins arguments to kick off

xp

vinegar is just spoiled alcohol innit?

Dublin prawns surely more contentious than Haggis, which has been alleged to have been invented in England

xp yeah I guess, doesn't get you pissed though iirc

I do usually further dilute mint sauce with more vinegar come to think of it.

my fam did that, could make one jar go a year easily

so you don't like mint sauce at all, you just like vinegar with a dash of toothpaste?

next you'll be telling me you only enjoy homeopathic servings of mushy peas

a: you need mint in tabbouli (w/parsley to counteract the spear-carrying element of the mint)
b: a good quick tomato salad is tomatoes and shredded mint leaves in red wine vinaigrette
c: there's an excellent soup, spinach, leek and mint with lamb DUMPLINGS! which i live off in the winter
d: the first book i reached down went to "leaves in liver tea" a bit fast for my liking, but it turns out "liver tea" is a old-fashioned polite way of saying "diuretic": the tea contains no liver it acts on the liver (beneficially) and contains mint leaves, dandelion leaves, rosemary, blessed thistle (broken) and wormwood lol lol lol
e: pliny sez students shd wear a sprig of mint to classes to "exhilarate their minds"
f: after eights so i win the thread

in conclusion mint is good not bad

If you think mint sauce tastes like toothpaste, you have either never eaten mint sauce or never brushed your teeth

unsure why i capitalised DUMPLINGS! in that list however they are very nice

wrong, it's actually both xp

and elizabeth david was all about continental non-UK cuisine

Only her early books: her later work was very much to do with the history of regional British cookery

hahaha the DUMPLINGS! autocorrect abides

TS mint sauce vs mint jelly

e: pliny sez students shd wear a sprig of mint to classes to "exhilarate their minds"

and where are pliny and his students now i ask u

ts ky sauce vs ky jelly

they are under the sod iirc

xp

exactly

WHERE IS YOUR MINT GOD NOW, PLINY

what I mean is nice places where you could get something good and British for about 15-20 quid no fuss.

Real lack of places.

This is the thing - the quality of casual food in France and Italy is just so much better than it is here. You can go to a French inn largely frequented by lorry drivers and the food will be great. A lot of places serving what might be described as 'British' food in that price bracket are just lazy.

There's loads of good stuff in London and other big cities obviously and a lot of country/village pubs still bother. It's medium-sized towns and cities where you really see the problem, like why is the food in Oxford so shit?

so the only foods that clear BG's bar are (i) nectar and (ii) ambrosia

the latter reminds me that THIS is not in the only-the-english list:

https://www.englishteastore.com/media/catalog/product/cache/6/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/F/P/FPUD_AMB_CRCE_-00_Ambrosia-Creamed-Rice-Pudding-15oz-425g.jpg

dude chips w/ curry sauce is the most belgian thing ever

I have never heard of this but the Belgians are culturally English according to that one Jonathan Meades doc so the point stands.

the roast is the quintessential english meal & all the best, truly decadent 3-types-of-stuffing&all-the-sauces, christmas-dinner-level roasts I've had have been home cooked.

I'm voting sausages though. I've had some great sausages around europe but my favourites have been in england

never cared for any of the desserts though, they're just for old people

a *lot* of lunchtime lifting in small towns is done by eg highish-quality chains like pret or else supermarket packaged snacks*, which maybe cuts into the share that good casual caffs and restaurants wd need to stay solvent?

*to be eaten back at yr desk so you look as if yr working thru lunch?

so the only foods that clear BG's bar are (i) nectar and (ii) ambrosia

also haggis

this has probably actually been written, but a social history of sugar in the british diet wd be interesting: before colonies were established in the west indies (and slaves imported) most sugar in these sialdns came from sugarbeets, with honey pitching in the sweetener dept… i read once that UK consumption of cane sugar (which is what the plantations provide) went up by 600 times over the relevant timespan (like 1700-1800, i forget exactly), WHICH IS A LOT

the bulk of our puddings and cakes and jams and jellies and conserves presumably date from this rise -- not just the tendency to use sugar to preserve, but to treat staples others used largely as savouries (like rice and tapioca and sago and lol yes old stale bread) as the stodge in highly sweetened desserts

apologies for all the questions marks, i am starting to post like stevolende

DUMPLINGS!!

I want to vote cox's orange puppies because of how comprehensively wrong the entire rest of the world gets apples. The overarching focus on sweetness and appearance over taste is execrable. I think of almost all the things in the list the thing that is hardest to get a good example of outside of the UK is a decent apple.

I'm not even sure the cox is the best apple but it is a fine example. Even more infuriating is that the rest of the world doesn't value cooking apples at all.

but what about all those American pies?

cooking apples often now quite hard to track down *inside* the UK also imo: the apple is going the way of the rubbery and tasteless mass-grown tomato :( :( :(

I haven't had a good shop-bought tomato in years except for the premium brand "we actually taste of something" varieties

That is a sad development. I did track down some good cookers in Pennsylvania - eating apples make for shit pies and American apple pie is generally not good. For a superlative in American pies it has to be cherry, pumpkin or pecan.

i thought i didn't much like tomatoes until i ate them on the amalfi coast (darling) and they were so extraordinary it kinda ruined forevermore the pale imitation-of-an-imitation tomatoes we get here in the uk

in general food -- including supermarket food -- has actually improved immeasurably during my lifetime at all levels but the need for unblemished supermarket produce has come at a high price

(i still gag thinking abt the food we were served at the school when i was 8-12, tho i think it was a weird outlier enabled by a headmaster w/no clinical sense of taste or smell)

(the cook was called mr bell, an unendingly angry red-head scot: our schoolboy theory was that he was an escaped criminal who secured his job with threats of extreme physical violence towards the staff and governers)

#notallscotsmen he posted quickly

an anglo-greek friend insists it's impossible to have truly great souvlaki in the uk due to the poor tomatoes. I could stand to appreciate apples more. I like a good apple compote with salad, bit of pomegranate... not v trad english though

there was a VERY HIGH incidence of large-ball tapioca for pudding: as consequence i cannot look a bubble-tea in the eye to this day

Best tomatoes I've bought in London have been from the Turkish grocers in Harringay. Cooking apples come from my parents' garden, fortunately.

haggis won't win. the american shift will all roll in and vote for stilton or something

check

goddammit

i'd be interested to know how many ilxors have tried haggis tbh

see I've had things purporting to be haggis but let's be real

anyway I like it in principle

you used to be able to buy very good quasi-haggis at hackney M&S: plastic boiling skin tho, not a actual real sheep's stomach :(

Had haggis, neeps & tatties in a pub in Glasgow once but I'm skeptical that it was "real" haggis, it wasn't in any kind of casing and looked more like mince. Probably something like Brain's faggots vs "real" faggots, which tbh I haven't eaten either (call myself a midlander?)

i avoided haggis for a long time cuz the ingredients sound pretty foul but it really is delicious - rich and spicy and warming

Brain's faggots don't taste half as good now as they did when I was a kid, I'm guessing there's less offal in them

this really is turning into blood sausage: the thread but i'm cool with it tbh

I will state for the record that I still enjoy a mouthful of faggots

boil them from cold for 3 mins from when the water starts bubbling

bit puzzled at the "from cold" combined with the "from when the water starts bubbling" here? what's the thing that's cold -- the raw potatoes?

the water!

Like there is a difference than if you just throw them straight into boiling water for 3 mins, which would make poorer roast potatoes, quite possibly.

"in defense of (bad) English posting (and cooking)"

so how is the water cold if it is also bubbling? do you use sparkling water?

(i think i am being dense but i can't work out how)

Put potatoes in cold salted water, bring to rolling boil, then 3 minutes later you drain. Just like making a three-minute boiled egg!

thanks, Suzy!

You just xp'ed me where I had described "rolling boil" as a "lively boil" then deleted it, thankfully!

lol ok i do understand it now and i was totally being dense, for some reason the two "froms" formulation just threw me

(i think i might still be quite tired post-op) (also argumentative)