English Cuisine

I am always both amused and annoyed when I hear foreign people criticize English food. "It's unimaginative", they say. "It's boring, it's tasteless, and it’s chips with everything and totally overcooked vegetables". "It's unambitious", say the French. When I ask these visitors where they have experienced English cooking, I am astonished by their reply. "In Wimpy Bars and McDonald's Hamburger restaurants", they often say. I have won my case. Their conclu­sions are inexcusable.

I have a theory about English cooking, and I was interested to read that several famous cookery writers agree with me. My theory is this. Our basic ingredients, when fresh, are so full of flavor that we haven't had to invent sauces and complex recipes to disguise their natural taste. What can compare with fresh peas or new potatoes just boiled (not overboiled) and served with butter? Why drown spring lamb in wine or cream or yoghurt and spices, when with just one or two herbs it is absolutely delicious? We have to go back to before World War II.

The British have in fact always imported food from abroad. From the time of the Roman invasion foreign trade was a major influence on British cooking. English kitchens, like the English language, absorbed ingredients from all over the world - chickens, rabbits, apples, and tea. All of these and more were successfully incorporated into British dishes. Another important influence on British cooking was of course the weather and climate. We complain about our wet and changeable weather but the good old British rain gives us rich soil and grass, and means that we are able to produce some of the finest varieties of meat, fruit and vegetables, which don't need fancy sauces or complicated recipes to disguise their taste. "Abroad poor soils meant more searching for food, more discovery, more invention, whereas our ancestors sat down to plenty without having to take trouble", says Jane Grigson.

However, World War II changed everything. Wartime women had to forget 600 years of British cooking, learn to do without foreign imports. The Ministry of Food published cheap, boring recipes. The joke of the war was a dish called Woolton Pie (named after the Minister for Food!). This consisted of a mixture of boiled vegetables covered in white sauce with mashed potato on the top. Britain never managed to recover from the wartime attitude to food. We were left with a loss of confidence in our cooking skills and after years of Ministry recipes we began to believe that British food was boring, and we searched the world for sophisticated, new dishes which gave hope of a better future. Surely food is as much a part of our culture as our landscape, our language, and our literature. Nowadays, cooking British food is like speaking a dead language. It is almost as bizarre as having a conversation in Anglo-Saxon English!

If you ask foreigners to name some typically English dishes, they will probably say "Fish and chips" and then stop. It is disappointing, but true, that there is no tradition in England of eating in restaurants. English cooking is found in the home, where it is possible to time the dishes to perfection. So it is diffi­cult to find a good English restaurant with reasonable prices.

It is for these reasons that we haven't exported our dishes, but we have imported a surprising number from all over the world. In most cities in Britain you'll find Indian, Chinese, French and Italian restaurants. In Lon­don you'll also find Indonesian, Lebanese, Iranian, German, Spanish, Mexi­can, Greek...Cynics will say that this is because we have no "cuisine" our­selves. However, there is still one small ray of hope. British pubs are often the best places to eat well and cheaply in Britain, and they also increasingly try to serve tasty British food.