What's for Dinner?

[DanaC]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_cuisine

British cuisine is the specific set of cooking traditions and practices associated with the United Kingdom. British cuisine has been described as "unfussy dishes made with quality local ingredients, matched with simple sauces to accentuate flavour, rather than disguise it."[1] However, British cuisine has absorbed the cultural influence of those that have settled in Britain, producing hybrid dishes, such as the Anglo-Indian chicken tikka masala."[2][3]

Celtic agriculture and animal breeding produced a wide variety of foodstuffs for indigenous Celts and Britons. Anglo-Saxon England developed meat and savoury herb stewing techniques before the practice became common in Europe. The Norman conquest introduced exotic spices into England in the Middle Ages.[4] The British Empire facilitated a knowledge of India's elaborate food tradition of "strong, penetrating spices and herbs".[4] Food rationing policies, put in place by the British government during wartime periods of the 20th century,[5] are said to have been the stimulus for British cuisine's poor international reputation.[4

An ancient set of islands with several nations, many regions and millennia of continuous habitation, having at one time held sway over half the world and having acted as a magnet for migrants for thousands of years. Of course our cuisine is varied.

Romano-British agriculture, highly fertile soils and advanced animal breeding produced a wide variety of very high quality foodstuffs for indigenous Romano-British people. Anglo-Saxon England developed meat and savoury herb stewing techniques and the Norman conquest reintroduced exotic spices and continental influences back into Great Britain in the Middle Ages[4] as maritime Britain became a major player in the transcontinental spice trade for many centuries after. Following the Protestant Reformation in the 16th and 17th centuries "plain and robust" food remained the mainstay of the British diet, reflecting tastes which are still shared with neighbouring north European countries and traditional North American Cuisine. In the 18th and 19th centuries, as the Colonial British Empire began to be influenced by India's elaborate food tradition of "strong, penetrating spices and herbs", the United Kingdom developed a worldwide reputation[7] for the quality of British beef and pedigree bulls were exported to form the bloodline of major modern beef herds in the New World.[4] Developments in plant breeding produced a multiplicity of fruit and vegetable varieties, with British disease-resistant rootstocks still used globally for fruits such as apples.

There was, amidst the long haul of British history, a relatively brief period during and after WW2 where continued shortages and rationing led to a decline in the quality and variety of British cuisine.

Modern British (or New British) cuisine is a style of British cooking which fully emerged in the late 1970s, and has become increasingly popular.[citation needed] It uses high-quality local ingredients,[citation needed] preparing them in ways which combine traditional British recipes with modern innovations, and has an affinity with the Slow Food movement.

It is not generally a nostalgic movement, although there are some efforts to re-introduce pre-20th-century recipes. Ingredients not native to the islands, particularly herbs and spices, are frequently added to traditional dishes (echoing the highly spiced nature of much British food in the mediaeval era).[citation needed]

Much of Modern British cooking also draws heavily on influences from Mediterranean cuisines, and more recently, Middle Eastern, South Asian, East Asian and Southeast Asian cuisines. The traditional influence of northern and central European cuisines is significant but fading.

The Modern British style of cooking emerged as a response to the depressing food rationing that persisted for several years after the Second World War, along with restrictions on foreign currency exchange, making travel difficult.[citation needed] A hunger for exotic cooking was satisfied by writers such as Elizabeth David, who from 1950 produced evocative books whose recipes (mostly French and Mediterranean) were then often impossible to produce in Britain, where even olive oil could only normally be found in dispensing chemists rather than food stores. By the 1960s foreign holidays, and foreign-style restaurants in Britain, further widened the popularity of foreign cuisine. Recent Modern British cuisine has been very much influenced and popularised by TV chefs, all also writing books, such as Fanny Cradock, Clement Freud, Robert Carrier, Robert Irvine, Keith Floyd, Delia Smith, Gordon Ramsay, Nigella Lawson Simon Hopkinson, Nigel Slater and Jamie Oliver, alongside the Food Programme, made by BBC Radio 4.

We're a pretty foodie nation these days. Yes, there are swathes of the population who won't deviate from their chicken nuggets and chips, but the average British town these days creaks under the weight of gastro pubs and experimental restaurants.