The Best of British Food
From traditional dishes to modern British cuisine.
It's not so long ago that visitors to Britain in search of traditional British food got no further than the pub where all that was on offer was the ubiquitous ‘ploughman’s lunch’ - a cosy name for bread and cheese with a pickled onion on the side. Or they might have ended up at the ‘Olde Fish and Chip Shoppe’, working their way through a pile of greasy chips and a piece of soggy fish. Then there were all those restaurants serving up pretentious and inferior imitations of French or Italian cooking. No wonder British food had such a bad reputation.
British Food - Traditional Dishes
The above scenario is almost unrecognizable today. There are still bad meals to be found, as there are anywhere, but there has been a revival of interest in British food and some of the country’s best chefs are creating delicious new versions of traditional dishes - and they are not giving them fancy French names either.
Okay, so cullen skink (a delicious creamy, buttery, potatoey fish soup) doesn’t sound nearly as elegant as soupe de poisson but, properly made, it tastes wonderful, as do homey dishes like bangers and mash (sausages and potatoes) and bubble and squeak(chopped or sliced beef sauteed and covered with fried cabbage and potato) - both of which are served at the very smart Langan’s restaurant in the heart of London’s Mayfair district.
British Food - Modern British Cuisine
Britain has always been a place stuffed with the finest of local gastronomic resources and the traditional mode of cooking has been to mess as little as possible with these first-class ingredients. Unlike France, Britain never acquired a haute cuisine or custom of elaborate, highly contrived dining. Everyone, from commoner to king, ate basically the same kind of food. But it’s what is done with these ingredients that makes fine cooking and the lord in his manor probably ate better than did the peasant in the field.
Today’s chefs are concentrating on a modern British cuisine where traditional dishes are enhanced by innovative, interesting ingredients. “Modern British” is now a recognisable category in restaurant guidebooks.
British Food -Michelan Stars
London has emerged as one of the finest restaurant cities in the world(with more Michelan stars than any place outside of France) and many of the most successful chefs are offering ‘the best of British’. At St.John restaurant you can try braised beef and carrots, whelks, roasted bonemarrow with parsley salad, jellied rabbit and kippers from the Isle of Man. At Butler’s Wharf Chop-house there’s steak and kidney pudding with oysters, beef stew with horseradish dumplings
British Food - outside of London
But it’s not only in London that you can find good British food. Fine eating places are dottedaround the English countryside. Often they are pubs or country hotels which have access to produce from local farms and, when in season, fresh game like grouse, pheasant and partridge. Scotland, Ireland and Wales have all enthusiastically joined in the renaissance of British cooking.
Ireland
Irish chefs are challenged to produce recipes which not only make the best use of local produce but are discernably Irish in style. In a competition run by the Irish Food Board some of the winning entries have been dishes like Fillet of Beef Freshly Smoked on Turf, served with Potato Pancakes; Dubliner Cheese, Leek and Cashel Blue Tart; Crab and Champ Bake. Champ is something you will find on many Irish menus. It is simply mashed potatoes, chopped scallions (green onions), flavoured with nutmeg and fried in butter. Let’s not forget potato cakes - dripping with butter they re not for the calorie watcher but hard to resist.
Scotland and Wales
Scotland and Wales have introduced “Taste of Scotland” and “Taste of Wales" schemes. Follow the stars by looking for the window stickers in hotels and restaurants. All participants in the scheme are inspected to make sure they make skilful use of the best local produce. Worth looking out for.
In Wales, look for traditional dishes like lamb, leeks, and Cawl, the all-in-one stew, and that unusual seaweed, laverbread. Many menus feature the delicate Caerphilly cheese and at wayside teashops you might be served Welsh cakes- spicy little pancakes, baked on a griddle and served with lashings of butter.
Scottish cooking has been portrayed as haggis and sheeps Finehead broth but there's much more to it than these humble dishes. Today the emphasis is on wild salmon fresh from the rivers, the highest quality Aberdeen Angus beef and Scotch Lamb - reared on sweet-smelling heather and with a very distinctive taste. Game is big in Scotland, especially during the shooting season when there’s an abundance of pheasant and grouse and for those of us with a sweet tooth there’s pure butter shortbread, whisky trifles and delicious Dundee Cakes.
Enjoy! And don’t give a thought to that fool who invented the calorie.
