Where Lee Anderson is correct is that a shocking amount of people in this country cannot cook and have no discernible interest in food. But that is certainly not limited to the poor.
Take PB – we have fully grown professional men on here who earn £70k+++ who cannot even find their way around a saucepan, and luxuriate in eating ready meals and assorted other shite in service stations, after starting their day with coffee-flavoured dust and hot water (job done!).
We also have the quasi-hair-shirted PB Northerners who balk at spending even £40 a head in a restaurant, clearly having never done even the most rudimentary analysis of where £40 a head in a good restaurant goes.
Given such a large proportion of the English population continues to refuse to spend a reasonable proportion of its income on what it puts inside its own bodies, one can perhaps forgive (to some extent) the hackneyed stereotype held of us by our continental cousins that we are a nation of potato-faced barbarians.
An Italian colleague was lamenting Londoners calling themselves "foodies" recently, suggesting that in Italy it's just normal life. I think she's right. What we'd call a "foodie" in the UK is simply living normally in lots of European countries (notable exceptions include Germany and the Netherlands which also have the same shit food as the UK).
I defended us on the basis that the UK simply hasn't got a food culture the same as Italy, Spain or France because we have never been able to grow the same quality fruit and veg (lack of sunshine) which means our food is simply lacking in flavour. If you look at traditional British food it is basically warm, beige coloured and slightly salty. It's not easy to build a food culture out of that.
Quite simply, calories are cheaper now than at any time in human history. In living memory, we have stories of food (quite ordinary food) as a treat or luxury.
There's plenty of food culture in the UK. It has been deprecated by cheap-is-better.
The obesity epidemic is an artefact of this - our culture and society is not well adapted for a situation where too many calories is the problem.
Too many calories isn't the problem. The wrong type of food is the problem.
Indeed. A truth the French and Italians understand and that we do not. Hence the raft of processed "low fat" shite in our supermarkets which is packed full of additives and, often, sugar.
Yes, a simple step we could take is to phase out the sale of margarine entirely or have a huge public health campaign to prefer butter and ban the advertising of any perceived health benefits of margarine over butter (simply, there aren't any).
We could just ban the fake colouring of margerine, and see how people like it in its natural grey.
Wow are we cancelling margarine now? I like margarine, it's much easier to spread than butter.
I know someone from Sainsbury's who is involved with resurrecting a lot of lost apple varieties, his project will, err, bear fruit at some point in the next 20 years so it could be a long wait.
I don't hold out much hope on that, supermarkets are abysmal on apples, and even when they stock decent varieties the quality is generally low, because they prioritise appearance over flavour.
Still, maybe they'll get better. The improvement in tomatoes (if you look carefully you can even buy ripe ones now!!), potatoes, and strawberries has been remarkable. But supermarkets have weird blind spots: it's becoming harder and harder to find decent mandarins, tangerines etc because they are obsessed with those dreadful 'easy peelers', by which they mean fruits which have dried out so much that they've shrunk inside and become tasteless and mushy. On the other hand. supermarkets should also be prosecuted by the trading standards people for their so-called 'ripe and ready to eat' avocados, by which they mean avocados which are hard as old boots and which need to be kept for a week or two in a warmish place, in the (often forlorn) hope that they will ripen before they rot.
Waitrose has got crap tomatoes, I've switched to Natoora deliveries recently as I mentioned earlier today. Truly amazing, though imported from Italy. I've had better luck with some of the Kent grown tomatoes in Sainsbury's. I still refuse to buy the hydroponically grown in a dutch greenhouse ones though when tomatoes grown in Kentish or Italian fields are so much better.
Agree on potatoes, compared to when I was a kid to today the improvement in a maris piper has been incredible, the flavour and quality is just another level.
Too many people don't think of potatoes as something that has flavour - just something to fill you up alongside the tasty things on the plate or else to be smothered in ketchup or curry sauce.
We get some cracking potatoes in our food boxes. Delicious without the need for any adulteration.
As I've said in the past, Riverford and Abel & Cole kept us fed while we were shielding, so very happy to keep buying fresh organic produce from them, even if it costs a bit more that even a Waitrose supermarket shop.
Similar here with the local community food shop. Shifted to it in a big way in lockdown, now much less supermarket stuff.
Don't keep your butter in the fridge during the day, we have ours on a butter dish with a nice lid and the first one out of bed just takes it out of the fridge while the coffee machine heats up, by the time the other of us is downstairs it's perfect for spreading on toast. Just need to put half of a small block out at a time. Not looking forwards to making the switch to unsalted though.
You won't miss salt if you gradually phase it out. My wife and I largely stopped using salt about thirty years ago, pretty much without noticing. It wasn't a conscious health-kick particularly, we just found ourselves using less and less added salt most of the time, and eventually none except on a few things like tomatoes. We certainly don't miss salted butter - in fact, it tastes rather unpleasant now.
First they came for the climate change activists, and I did not speak out…
Ok I appreciate it’s not quite dragging this poor woman to Dachau, but still. Filmed at a peaceful march then the police turn up and arrest her in the middle of the night. And leave her to make her own way home in her nightie on public transport.
Because she wants to stop climate change.
Is this what we’ve become?
I'd be hesitant before taking as gospel the portrayal of this by a fellow activist.
Where Lee Anderson is correct is that a shocking amount of people in this country cannot cook and have no discernible interest in food. But that is certainly not limited to the poor.
Take PB – we have fully grown professional men on here who earn £70k+++ who cannot even find their way around a saucepan, and luxuriate in eating ready meals and assorted other shite in service stations, after starting their day with coffee-flavoured dust and hot water (job done!).
We also have the quasi-hair-shirted PB Northerners who balk at spending even £40 a head in a restaurant, clearly having never done even the most rudimentary analysis of where £40 a head in a good restaurant goes.
Given such a large proportion of the English population continues to refuse to spend a reasonable proportion of its income on what it puts inside its own bodies, one can perhaps forgive (to some extent) the hackneyed stereotype held of us by our continental cousins that we are a nation of potato-faced barbarians.
An Italian colleague was lamenting Londoners calling themselves "foodies" recently, suggesting that in Italy it's just normal life. I think she's right. What we'd call a "foodie" in the UK is simply living normally in lots of European countries (notable exceptions include Germany and the Netherlands which also have the same shit food as the UK).
I defended us on the basis that the UK simply hasn't got a food culture the same as Italy, Spain or France because we have never been able to grow the same quality fruit and veg (lack of sunshine) which means our food is simply lacking in flavour. If you look at traditional British food it is basically warm, beige coloured and slightly salty. It's not easy to build a food culture out of that.
We have amazing produce in the UK, eg possibly the best seafood in the world, so that doesn’t explain it. We can’t grow oranges but English strawberries are superb etc etc
I’ve always understood it as the fault of the Industrial Revolution which disconnected people from rural life and the source of all their food, and of course that happened first in the UK, and in a bigger way in the UK than almost anywhere else
And British food is vastly better now (and much better than Germany or the Netherlands). TV cooking shows are a major reason for this. Maybe THE reason
One recent observations I heard, either on Farming Today or the Food Programme:
Government monopolies after WW2 caused a loss of suppliers, eg Government Cheddar which was used nationally during cheese rationing up to 1954.
While Government Cheddar helped to get Britain through the war, it also practically wiped out all farmhouse and artisanal manufacture of cheese. Cheeses such as Wensleydale almost disappeared. In the south-west of England before the war, 514 farms were making a vast variety of cheddars. In 1974, just 33 farms were making cheddar, mostly of uniform taste and quality. https://www.cooksinfo.com/government-cheddar-cheese
The UK cheese renaissance did not begin properly until the 1980s.
Yes, absolutely
The same happened to beer, cider, apples, gin, so many things. All now being happily revived
And wine. Don't forget English wine. When I worked in a 'licensed chemists' for a few days in the early 60's there was noxious looking product called 'British Wine'. It was, apparently a blend of something or other.
I dimly remember this. Still available ... wonder what it tastes like?
"Made by the traditional blending of full bodied ruby Fortified British Wine with the special Sanatogen formula to give a unique mellow flavour"
Superb discovery
Surely the person that wrote the copy wore a faint, ironic smile as they wrote this:
“ The name 'Tonic Wine' does not imply health giving or medicinal properties Also available, Sanatogen Tonic Wine 'with added iron' which retains the delightful taste of the original product.”
Sounds like something to go with a Fray Bentos pie, who have recently upgraded their recipe so it costs a full £2.
One thing I should like to know is why the Spanish, who eat a lot of cured pork, smoke like chimneys, and don’t sleep properly - have the longest life expectancy in Europe.
One thing I should like to know is why the Spanish, who eat a lot of cured pork, smoke like chimneys, and don’t sleep properly - have the longest life expectancy in Europe.
They are foreign sorts. It will involve cheating in some way surely?
Coleen Rooney’s lawyer has accused Rebekah Vardy of suggesting using the anniversary of his client’s sister's death as the “peg” to message her.
David Sherborne said that, after she realised she’d been blocked by Mrs Rooney’s Instagram account in January 2019, Mrs Vardy suggested mentioning “Rosie” in a message to Mrs Rooney.
Mr Sherborne said that Mrs Vardy was intending to use the anniversary of Rosie’s death – Mrs Rooney’s sister, who had a brain disorder, died in 2013 aged 14 – as “the peg” to message her.
Mrs Vardy responded that this was “interpreted wrong”.
One thing I should like to know is why the Spanish, who eat a lot of cured pork, smoke like chimneys, and don’t sleep properly - have the longest life expectancy in Europe.
They are foreign sorts. It will involve cheating in some way surely?
Whilst we're on food: now is the season for English asparagus, and therefore for omelettes with a little cheese (the strongest cheddar you can find), into which you put roasted asparagus tips before folding the omelette over. An easy and wonderful, wonderful dish, especially if you have top-notch eggs and above all don't overcook the omelette.
One thing I should like to know is why the Spanish, who eat a lot of cured pork, smoke like chimneys, and don’t sleep properly - have the longest life expectancy in Europe.
One thing I should like to know is why the Spanish, who eat a lot of cured pork, smoke like chimneys, and don’t sleep properly - have the longest life expectancy in Europe.
Where Lee Anderson is correct is that a shocking amount of people in this country cannot cook and have no discernible interest in food. But that is certainly not limited to the poor.
Take PB – we have fully grown professional men on here who earn £70k+++ who cannot even find their way around a saucepan, and luxuriate in eating ready meals and assorted other shite in service stations, after starting their day with coffee-flavoured dust and hot water (job done!).
We also have the quasi-hair-shirted PB Northerners who balk at spending even £40 a head in a restaurant, clearly having never done even the most rudimentary analysis of where £40 a head in a good restaurant goes.
Given such a large proportion of the English population continues to refuse to spend a reasonable proportion of its income on what it puts inside its own bodies, one can perhaps forgive (to some extent) the hackneyed stereotype held of us by our continental cousins that we are a nation of potato-faced barbarians.
An Italian colleague was lamenting Londoners calling themselves "foodies" recently, suggesting that in Italy it's just normal life. I think she's right. What we'd call a "foodie" in the UK is simply living normally in lots of European countries (notable exceptions include Germany and the Netherlands which also have the same shit food as the UK).
I defended us on the basis that the UK simply hasn't got a food culture the same as Italy, Spain or France because we have never been able to grow the same quality fruit and veg (lack of sunshine) which means our food is simply lacking in flavour. If you look at traditional British food it is basically warm, beige coloured and slightly salty. It's not easy to build a food culture out of that.
We have amazing produce in the UK, eg possibly the best seafood in the world, so that doesn’t explain it. We can’t grow oranges but English strawberries are superb etc etc
I’ve always understood it as the fault of the Industrial Revolution which disconnected people from rural life and the source of all their food, and of course that happened first in the UK, and in a bigger way in the UK than almost anywhere else
And British food is vastly better now (and much better than Germany or the Netherlands). TV cooking shows are a major reason for this. Maybe THE reason
One recent observations I heard, either on Farming Today or the Food Programme:
Government monopolies after WW2 caused a loss of suppliers, eg Government Cheddar which was used nationally during cheese rationing up to 1954.
While Government Cheddar helped to get Britain through the war, it also practically wiped out all farmhouse and artisanal manufacture of cheese. Cheeses such as Wensleydale almost disappeared. In the south-west of England before the war, 514 farms were making a vast variety of cheddars. In 1974, just 33 farms were making cheddar, mostly of uniform taste and quality. https://www.cooksinfo.com/government-cheddar-cheese
The UK cheese renaissance did not begin properly until the 1980s.
Yes, absolutely
The same happened to beer, cider, apples, gin, so many things. All now being happily revived
And wine. Don't forget English wine. When I worked in a 'licensed chemists' for a few days in the early 60's there was noxious looking product called 'British Wine'. It was, apparently a blend of something or other.
I dimly remember this. Still available ... wonder what it tastes like?
"Made by the traditional blending of full bodied ruby Fortified British Wine with the special Sanatogen formula to give a unique mellow flavour"
Superb discovery
Surely the person that wrote the copy wore a faint, ironic smile as they wrote this:
“ The name 'Tonic Wine' does not imply health giving or medicinal properties Also available, Sanatogen Tonic Wine 'with added iron' which retains the delightful taste of the original product.”
Sounds like something to go with a Fray Bentos pie, who have recently upgraded their recipe so it costs a full £2.
A friend of mine (who is a cattle farmer) once found a cow's ear in a Fray Bentos.
One thing I should like to know is why the Spanish, who eat a lot of cured pork, smoke like chimneys, and don’t sleep properly - have the longest life expectancy in Europe.
Because they don’t worry about it? They also have 3 hour lunches, which even the French have abandoned
I won’t get thanked on here, but clearly EU membership had a massive impact on the flourishing of UK cuisine.
First by easing import of quality ingredients from France, Italy etc; second by allowing migration of young chefs from Spain etc.
Compare and contrast with the US which outside a few hotspots is fucking dystopian.
I wrote a lyrical list of British foodstuffs on here once; I am a fan. But let’s not pretend it’s where we excel above all nations, and let’s not blame the war or single mothers for poor British cuisine.
Britain is cold, and very early on it both industrialised and decided to import much of its food from the Empire. No further explanation is required.
It's the lack of sunshine (something you've noted previously as well). Lots of rain and not a lot of sunshine makes for watery and flavourless produce. It's only since global warming that the south of England now has enough annual sunshine and less rain to make such high quality tomatoes, strawberries and other high water content fruits.
One interesting current change is much investment in new glasshouses.
No idea how this will end up changing anything, or by how much.
One thing I should like to know is why the Spanish, who eat a lot of cured pork, smoke like chimneys, and don’t sleep properly - have the longest life expectancy in Europe.
Sleep.
It’s not though, despite the siesta (which is not actually observed by most), they get very little sleep.
It’s a serious question and I’ve never seen any research on it.
Edit; I see they are not “first” but they are right up there. It requires explanation.
Don't keep your butter in the fridge during the day, we have ours on a butter dish with a nice lid and the first one out of bed just takes it out of the fridge while the coffee machine heats up, by the time the other of us is downstairs it's perfect for spreading on toast. Just need to put half of a small block out at a time. Not looking forwards to making the switch to unsalted though.
You won't miss salt if you gradually phase it out. My wife and I largely stopped using salt about thirty years ago, pretty much without noticing. It wasn't a conscious health-kick particularly, we just found ourselves using less and less added salt most of the time, and eventually none except on a few things like tomatoes. We certainly don't miss salted butter - in fact, it tastes rather unpleasant now.
What’s wrong with salt? It’s like fat. It gives the flavour
Camargue fleur de sel or Ynys Mon sea salt. Of course.
Don't keep your butter in the fridge during the day, we have ours on a butter dish with a nice lid and the first one out of bed just takes it out of the fridge while the coffee machine heats up, by the time the other of us is downstairs it's perfect for spreading on toast. Just need to put half of a small block out at a time. Not looking forwards to making the switch to unsalted though.
You won't miss salt if you gradually phase it out. My wife and I largely stopped using salt about thirty years ago, pretty much without noticing. It wasn't a conscious health-kick particularly, we just found ourselves using less and less added salt most of the time, and eventually none except on a few things like tomatoes. We certainly don't miss salted butter - in fact, it tastes rather unpleasant now.
I personally think English butter is the best in the world. It annoys me that the French try to pretend otherwise.
Where Lee Anderson is correct is that a shocking amount of people in this country cannot cook and have no discernible interest in food. But that is certainly not limited to the poor.
Take PB – we have fully grown professional men on here who earn £70k+++ who cannot even find their way around a saucepan, and luxuriate in eating ready meals and assorted other shite in service stations, after starting their day with coffee-flavoured dust and hot water (job done!).
We also have the quasi-hair-shirted PB Northerners who balk at spending even £40 a head in a restaurant, clearly having never done even the most rudimentary analysis of where £40 a head in a good restaurant goes.
Given such a large proportion of the English population continues to refuse to spend a reasonable proportion of its income on what it puts inside its own bodies, one can perhaps forgive (to some extent) the hackneyed stereotype held of us by our continental cousins that we are a nation of potato-faced barbarians.
An Italian colleague was lamenting Londoners calling themselves "foodies" recently, suggesting that in Italy it's just normal life. I think she's right. What we'd call a "foodie" in the UK is simply living normally in lots of European countries (notable exceptions include Germany and the Netherlands which also have the same shit food as the UK).
I defended us on the basis that the UK simply hasn't got a food culture the same as Italy, Spain or France because we have never been able to grow the same quality fruit and veg (lack of sunshine) which means our food is simply lacking in flavour. If you look at traditional British food it is basically warm, beige coloured and slightly salty. It's not easy to build a food culture out of that.
Quite simply, calories are cheaper now than at any time in human history. In living memory, we have stories of food (quite ordinary food) as a treat or luxury.
There's plenty of food culture in the UK. It has been deprecated by cheap-is-better.
The obesity epidemic is an artefact of this - our culture and society is not well adapted for a situation where too many calories is the problem.
Too many calories isn't the problem. The wrong type of food is the problem.
Excuse my scientific illiteracy, but isn't there only one type of calorie? A calorie is a calorie, whether it's to be found in a fried mars bar or in a sea bass.
Not all calories are absorbed by the body, A calorie count is very crude - you literally burn the food and heat water to see how much energy it produces. Not eating something and the ability to extract energy from it is an entirely different process.
Where Lee Anderson is correct is that a shocking amount of people in this country cannot cook and have no discernible interest in food. But that is certainly not limited to the poor.
Take PB – we have fully grown professional men on here who earn £70k+++ who cannot even find their way around a saucepan, and luxuriate in eating ready meals and assorted other shite in service stations, after starting their day with coffee-flavoured dust and hot water (job done!).
We also have the quasi-hair-shirted PB Northerners who balk at spending even £40 a head in a restaurant, clearly having never done even the most rudimentary analysis of where £40 a head in a good restaurant goes.
Given such a large proportion of the English population continues to refuse to spend a reasonable proportion of its income on what it puts inside its own bodies, one can perhaps forgive (to some extent) the hackneyed stereotype held of us by our continental cousins that we are a nation of potato-faced barbarians.
An Italian colleague was lamenting Londoners calling themselves "foodies" recently, suggesting that in Italy it's just normal life. I think she's right. What we'd call a "foodie" in the UK is simply living normally in lots of European countries (notable exceptions include Germany and the Netherlands which also have the same shit food as the UK).
I defended us on the basis that the UK simply hasn't got a food culture the same as Italy, Spain or France because we have never been able to grow the same quality fruit and veg (lack of sunshine) which means our food is simply lacking in flavour. If you look at traditional British food it is basically warm, beige coloured and slightly salty. It's not easy to build a food culture out of that.
Quite simply, calories are cheaper now than at any time in human history. In living memory, we have stories of food (quite ordinary food) as a treat or luxury.
There's plenty of food culture in the UK. It has been deprecated by cheap-is-better.
The obesity epidemic is an artefact of this - our culture and society is not well adapted for a situation where too many calories is the problem.
Too many calories isn't the problem. The wrong type of food is the problem.
Calories in/calories out. I'm fed up of people making up all sorts of bollocks to avoid the fact they eat too much.
Yes, but why do they eat too much? Is everyones hunger sensation the same (no - some people are rarely hungry, and stop when full, others feel constantly hungry). It is NOT simple.
I was talking to a community midwife the other day about some of her charges. It was chilling and, actually, quite disturbing.
The level of support that some expectant mothers require to do even the most basic things is extraordinary. They simply know nothing, and evidently have learned nothing from either the education system or their families. They even have to be taken out, and accompanied, to go to the High Street for a walk or to shop.
And we're surprised they're not conjuring up imaginative meals for their children.
I do wonder if we really need to see a drastic reorientation in our schools towards basic life-skills, especially for the less-academic.
People say how dreadful the food is in Paris well I can tell you that's total bollox. Sitting outside just about any cafe/bistro/restaurant more than 400yds from the Gare du Nord (although the Terminus Nord looks pretty good - clean, white table cloths, wooden chairs, chequerboard floor) and you are into a just fabulous dining experience. Is it Bocuse? No. Does it need to be? Absolument non.
Day1 Crepes in the 6th, day 2 the obligatory for Brits steak frites and a decent bottle of red at a random place.
Can't beat it. You can take your persian dim sum, tasting plate, waiter explains the concept, no reservations, happening new restaurant in London and stick it up your arse.
As for the queue at Gare du Nord to come home, how embarrassing. A complete mob with customs all over the shop and clearly uncomfortable UK Border Force agents asking French families of two adults and two toddlers what the purpose of their trip to the UK was.
Don't keep your butter in the fridge during the day, we have ours on a butter dish with a nice lid and the first one out of bed just takes it out of the fridge while the coffee machine heats up, by the time the other of us is downstairs it's perfect for spreading on toast. Just need to put half of a small block out at a time. Not looking forwards to making the switch to unsalted though.
You won't miss salt if you gradually phase it out. My wife and I largely stopped using salt about thirty years ago, pretty much without noticing. It wasn't a conscious health-kick particularly, we just found ourselves using less and less added salt most of the time, and eventually none except on a few things like tomatoes. We certainly don't miss salted butter - in fact, it tastes rather unpleasant now.
What’s wrong with salt? It’s like fat. It gives the flavour
Camargue fleur de sel or Ynys Mon sea salt. Of course.
Don't keep your butter in the fridge during the day, we have ours on a butter dish with a nice lid and the first one out of bed just takes it out of the fridge while the coffee machine heats up, by the time the other of us is downstairs it's perfect for spreading on toast. Just need to put half of a small block out at a time. Not looking forwards to making the switch to unsalted though.
You won't miss salt if you gradually phase it out. My wife and I largely stopped using salt about thirty years ago, pretty much without noticing. It wasn't a conscious health-kick particularly, we just found ourselves using less and less added salt most of the time, and eventually none except on a few things like tomatoes. We certainly don't miss salted butter - in fact, it tastes rather unpleasant now.
I personally think English butter is the best in the world. It annoys me that the French try to pretend otherwise.
Last Tango in Paris makes a strong case for the French product.
Where Lee Anderson is correct is that a shocking amount of people in this country cannot cook and have no discernible interest in food. But that is certainly not limited to the poor.
Take PB – we have fully grown professional men on here who earn £70k+++ who cannot even find their way around a saucepan, and luxuriate in eating ready meals and assorted other shite in service stations, after starting their day with coffee-flavoured dust and hot water (job done!).
We also have the quasi-hair-shirted PB Northerners who balk at spending even £40 a head in a restaurant, clearly having never done even the most rudimentary analysis of where £40 a head in a good restaurant goes.
Given such a large proportion of the English population continues to refuse to spend a reasonable proportion of its income on what it puts inside its own bodies, one can perhaps forgive (to some extent) the hackneyed stereotype held of us by our continental cousins that we are a nation of potato-faced barbarians.
An Italian colleague was lamenting Londoners calling themselves "foodies" recently, suggesting that in Italy it's just normal life. I think she's right. What we'd call a "foodie" in the UK is simply living normally in lots of European countries (notable exceptions include Germany and the Netherlands which also have the same shit food as the UK).
I defended us on the basis that the UK simply hasn't got a food culture the same as Italy, Spain or France because we have never been able to grow the same quality fruit and veg (lack of sunshine) which means our food is simply lacking in flavour. If you look at traditional British food it is basically warm, beige coloured and slightly salty. It's not easy to build a food culture out of that.
We have amazing produce in the UK, eg possibly the best seafood in the world, so that doesn’t explain it. We can’t grow oranges but English strawberries are superb etc etc
I’ve always understood it as the fault of the Industrial Revolution which disconnected people from rural life and the source of all their food, and of course that happened first in the UK, and in a bigger way in the UK than almost anywhere else
And British food is vastly better now (and much better than Germany or the Netherlands). TV cooking shows are a major reason for this. Maybe THE reason
One recent observations I heard, either on Farming Today or the Food Programme:
Government monopolies after WW2 caused a loss of suppliers, eg Government Cheddar which was used nationally during cheese rationing up to 1954.
While Government Cheddar helped to get Britain through the war, it also practically wiped out all farmhouse and artisanal manufacture of cheese. Cheeses such as Wensleydale almost disappeared. In the south-west of England before the war, 514 farms were making a vast variety of cheddars. In 1974, just 33 farms were making cheddar, mostly of uniform taste and quality. https://www.cooksinfo.com/government-cheddar-cheese
The UK cheese renaissance did not begin properly until the 1980s.
Yes, absolutely
The same happened to beer, cider, apples, gin, so many things. All now being happily revived
And wine. Don't forget English wine. When I worked in a 'licensed chemists' for a few days in the early 60's there was noxious looking product called 'British Wine'. It was, apparently a blend of something or other.
I dimly remember this. Still available ... wonder what it tastes like?
"Made by the traditional blending of full bodied ruby Fortified British Wine with the special Sanatogen formula to give a unique mellow flavour"
Superb discovery
Surely the person that wrote the copy wore a faint, ironic smile as they wrote this:
“ The name 'Tonic Wine' does not imply health giving or medicinal properties Also available, Sanatogen Tonic Wine 'with added iron' which retains the delightful taste of the original product.”
Sounds like something to go with a Fray Bentos pie, who have recently upgraded their recipe so it costs a full £2.
A friend of mine (who is a cattle farmer) once found a cow's ear in a Fray Bentos.
Where Lee Anderson is correct is that a shocking amount of people in this country cannot cook and have no discernible interest in food. But that is certainly not limited to the poor.
Take PB – we have fully grown professional men on here who earn £70k+++ who cannot even find their way around a saucepan, and luxuriate in eating ready meals and assorted other shite in service stations, after starting their day with coffee-flavoured dust and hot water (job done!).
We also have the quasi-hair-shirted PB Northerners who balk at spending even £40 a head in a restaurant, clearly having never done even the most rudimentary analysis of where £40 a head in a good restaurant goes.
Given such a large proportion of the English population continues to refuse to spend a reasonable proportion of its income on what it puts inside its own bodies, one can perhaps forgive (to some extent) the hackneyed stereotype held of us by our continental cousins that we are a nation of potato-faced barbarians.
An Italian colleague was lamenting Londoners calling themselves "foodies" recently, suggesting that in Italy it's just normal life. I think she's right. What we'd call a "foodie" in the UK is simply living normally in lots of European countries (notable exceptions include Germany and the Netherlands which also have the same shit food as the UK).
I defended us on the basis that the UK simply hasn't got a food culture the same as Italy, Spain or France because we have never been able to grow the same quality fruit and veg (lack of sunshine) which means our food is simply lacking in flavour. If you look at traditional British food it is basically warm, beige coloured and slightly salty. It's not easy to build a food culture out of that.
Quite simply, calories are cheaper now than at any time in human history. In living memory, we have stories of food (quite ordinary food) as a treat or luxury.
There's plenty of food culture in the UK. It has been deprecated by cheap-is-better.
The obesity epidemic is an artefact of this - our culture and society is not well adapted for a situation where too many calories is the problem.
Too many calories isn't the problem. The wrong type of food is the problem.
Calories in/calories out. I'm fed up of people making up all sorts of bollocks to avoid the fact they eat too much.
Since you can't control your 'calories out' because your body isn't a simple car, and what it chooses to use or store is based on a complex formula of hormones, nature and quality of nutrition (sugars, fats etc. ), variable metabolic rates, *as well as* activity levels, the 'calories in/calories out' statement is meaningless. It means no more than saying 'to be rich you have to earn more money than you spend'.
People say how dreadful the food is in Paris well I can tell you that's total bollox. Sitting outside just about any cafe/bistro/restaurant more than 400yds from the Gare du Nord (although the Terminus Nord looks pretty good - clean, white table cloths, wooden chairs, chequerboard floor) and you are into a just fabulous dining experience. Is it Bocuse? No. Does it need to be? Absolument non.
Day1 Crepes in the 6th, day 2 the obligatory for Brits steak frites and a decent bottle of red at a random place.
Can't beat it. You can take your persian dim sum, tasting plate, waiter explains the concept, no reservations, happening new restaurant in London and stick it up your arse.
As for the queue at Gare du Nord to come home, how embarrassing. A complete mob with customs all over the shop and clearly uncomfortable UK Border Force agents asking French families of two adults and two toddlers what the purpose of their trip to the UK was.
I was talking to a community midwife the other day about some of her charges. It was chilling and, actually, quite disturbing.
The level of support that some expectant mothers require to do even the most basic things is extraordinary. They simply know nothing, and evidently have learned nothing from either the education system or their families. They even have to be taken out, and accompanied, to go to the High Street for a walk or to shop.
And we're surprised they're not conjuring up imaginative meals for their children.
I do wonder if we really need to see a drastic reorientation in our schools towards basic life-skills, especially for the less-academic.
The biggest challenge is getting people past the "but I haven't done X" hurdle.
People say how dreadful the food is in Paris well I can tell you that's total bollox. Sitting outside just about any cafe/bistro/restaurant more than 400yds from the Gare du Nord (although the Terminus Nord looks pretty good - clean, white table cloths, wooden chairs, chequerboard floor) and you are into a just fabulous dining experience. Is it Bocuse? No. Does it need to be? Absolument non.
Day1 Crepes in the 6th, day 2 the obligatory for Brits steak frites and a decent bottle of red at a random place.
Can't beat it. You can take your persian dim sum, tasting plate, waiter explains the concept, no reservations, happening new restaurant in London and stick it up your arse.
As for the queue at Gare du Nord to come home, how embarrassing. A complete mob with customs all over the shop and clearly uncomfortable UK Border Force agents asking French families of two adults and two toddlers what the purpose of their trip to the UK was.
Stupid Brexiter arseholes.
Are you sober?
Why should he be? I'd get sloshed if I had to face that queue.
People say how dreadful the food is in Paris well I can tell you that's total bollox. Sitting outside just about any cafe/bistro/restaurant more than 400yds from the Gare du Nord (although the Terminus Nord looks pretty good - clean, white table cloths, wooden chairs, chequerboard floor) and you are into a just fabulous dining experience. Is it Bocuse? No. Does it need to be? Absolument non.
Day1 Crepes in the 6th, day 2 the obligatory for Brits steak frites and a decent bottle of red at a random place.
Can't beat it. You can take your persian dim sum, tasting plate, waiter explains the concept, no reservations, happening new restaurant in London and stick it up your arse.
As for the queue at Gare du Nord to come home, how embarrassing. A complete mob with customs all over the shop and clearly uncomfortable UK Border Force agents asking French families of two adults and two toddlers what the purpose of their trip to the UK was.
Stupid Brexiter arseholes.
Are you sober?
Yep. Sadly. Was tempted to buy a bottle of wine for the journey home but it's Evian all the way, baby.
Don't keep your butter in the fridge during the day, we have ours on a butter dish with a nice lid and the first one out of bed just takes it out of the fridge while the coffee machine heats up, by the time the other of us is downstairs it's perfect for spreading on toast. Just need to put half of a small block out at a time. Not looking forwards to making the switch to unsalted though.
You won't miss salt if you gradually phase it out. My wife and I largely stopped using salt about thirty years ago, pretty much without noticing. It wasn't a conscious health-kick particularly, we just found ourselves using less and less added salt most of the time, and eventually none except on a few things like tomatoes. We certainly don't miss salted butter - in fact, it tastes rather unpleasant now.
I personally think English butter is the best in the world. It annoys me that the French try to pretend otherwise.
Last Tango in Paris makes a strong case for the French product.
I watched that a few years ago.
Absolute crap; a real stinker. The 1970s were really odd, sexually. I presume it was a kind of collective insanity produced by loosening the repression of earlier times.
I also don’t “get” Marlon Brando. Even in “On the Waterfront”.
Where Lee Anderson is correct is that a shocking amount of people in this country cannot cook and have no discernible interest in food. But that is certainly not limited to the poor.
Take PB – we have fully grown professional men on here who earn £70k+++ who cannot even find their way around a saucepan, and luxuriate in eating ready meals and assorted other shite in service stations, after starting their day with coffee-flavoured dust and hot water (job done!).
We also have the quasi-hair-shirted PB Northerners who balk at spending even £40 a head in a restaurant, clearly having never done even the most rudimentary analysis of where £40 a head in a good restaurant goes.
Given such a large proportion of the English population continues to refuse to spend a reasonable proportion of its income on what it puts inside its own bodies, one can perhaps forgive (to some extent) the hackneyed stereotype held of us by our continental cousins that we are a nation of potato-faced barbarians.
An Italian colleague was lamenting Londoners calling themselves "foodies" recently, suggesting that in Italy it's just normal life. I think she's right. What we'd call a "foodie" in the UK is simply living normally in lots of European countries (notable exceptions include Germany and the Netherlands which also have the same shit food as the UK).
I defended us on the basis that the UK simply hasn't got a food culture the same as Italy, Spain or France because we have never been able to grow the same quality fruit and veg (lack of sunshine) which means our food is simply lacking in flavour. If you look at traditional British food it is basically warm, beige coloured and slightly salty. It's not easy to build a food culture out of that.
We have amazing produce in the UK, eg possibly the best seafood in the world, so that doesn’t explain it. We can’t grow oranges but English strawberries are superb etc etc
I’ve always understood it as the fault of the Industrial Revolution which disconnected people from rural life and the source of all their food, and of course that happened first in the UK, and in a bigger way in the UK than almost anywhere else
And British food is vastly better now (and much better than Germany or the Netherlands). TV cooking shows are a major reason for this. Maybe THE reason
One recent observations I heard, either on Farming Today or the Food Programme:
Government monopolies after WW2 caused a loss of suppliers, eg Government Cheddar which was used nationally during cheese rationing up to 1954.
While Government Cheddar helped to get Britain through the war, it also practically wiped out all farmhouse and artisanal manufacture of cheese. Cheeses such as Wensleydale almost disappeared. In the south-west of England before the war, 514 farms were making a vast variety of cheddars. In 1974, just 33 farms were making cheddar, mostly of uniform taste and quality. https://www.cooksinfo.com/government-cheddar-cheese
The UK cheese renaissance did not begin properly until the 1980s.
Yes, absolutely
The same happened to beer, cider, apples, gin, so many things. All now being happily revived
And wine. Don't forget English wine. When I worked in a 'licensed chemists' for a few days in the early 60's there was noxious looking product called 'British Wine'. It was, apparently a blend of something or other.
I dimly remember this. Still available ... wonder what it tastes like?
"Made by the traditional blending of full bodied ruby Fortified British Wine with the special Sanatogen formula to give a unique mellow flavour"
Superb discovery
Surely the person that wrote the copy wore a faint, ironic smile as they wrote this:
“ The name 'Tonic Wine' does not imply health giving or medicinal properties Also available, Sanatogen Tonic Wine 'with added iron' which retains the delightful taste of the original product.”
Sounds like something to go with a Fray Bentos pie, who have recently upgraded their recipe so it costs a full £2.
A friend of mine (who is a cattle farmer) once found a cow's ear in a Fray Bentos.
People say how dreadful the food is in Paris well I can tell you that's total bollox. Sitting outside just about any cafe/bistro/restaurant more than 400yds from the Gare du Nord (although the Terminus Nord looks pretty good - clean, white table cloths, wooden chairs, chequerboard floor) and you are into a just fabulous dining experience. Is it Bocuse? No. Does it need to be? Absolument non.
Day1 Crepes in the 6th, day 2 the obligatory for Brits steak frites and a decent bottle of red at a random place.
Can't beat it. You can take your persian dim sum, tasting plate, waiter explains the concept, no reservations, happening new restaurant in London and stick it up your arse.
As for the queue at Gare du Nord to come home, how embarrassing. A complete mob with customs all over the shop and clearly uncomfortable UK Border Force agents asking French families of two adults and two toddlers what the purpose of their trip to the UK was.
Stupid Brexiter arseholes.
Blanche Livermore’s travel diary showed us that cafe for cafe, food is just better across the channel.
In brief defence of Ottolenghi; these are my favourite fishcakes, and with no rare ingredients. I highly recommend them!
"Smoked fish and parsnip cakes I love these for breakfast, but they’re good at any time. If you don’t want to make the cream, serve with a wedge of lemon instead. Serves four.
4-5 parsnips (550g) 260g smoked cod or haddock fillets, skinless and boneless, chopped into 4cm pieces 25g fresh white breadcrumbs (about 1 thin slice of bread, crust removed) 5g dill, roughly chopped 5g chives, roughly chopped 10g parsley leaves, roughly chopped 1 garlic clove, crushed 4 spring onions, finely chopped Finely grated zest of ½ lemon 1 egg, lightly whisked 1 tsp caraway seeds, toasted and roughly crushed 20g unsalted butter 2 tbsp olive oil Salt and black pepper For the horseradish cream 2 tbsp finely grated fresh horseradish (or 1 tbsp horseradish sauce) 150g soured cream 2 tsp lemon juice
Preheat the oven to 200C/390F/gas mark 6. Mix together the ingredients for the horseradish cream with an eighth of a teaspoon of salt and a good grind of black pepper. Keep in the fridge until needed.
Place the parsnips on a small baking tray and roast for 30-35 minutes, until cooked through and soft. Once cool enough to handle, peel off and discard the skin. Place the flesh in a large bowl (you should have 270g cooked parsnip) roughly mash and set aside to cool.
Place the fish in a food processor and pulse a few times (you want it roughly chopped rather than minced) then add to the parsnip, with a half-teaspoon of salt, plenty of pepper and the remaining ingredients apart from the oil and butter. Mix well and form into eight patties: they should be about 8cm wide and 2-3cm thick. At this stage you could cover the patties and refrigerate until ready to cook, up to 24 hours ahead of time.
Add the butter and oil to a large frying pan and place on a medium-high heat. Once the butter starts to foam, add the patties and fry for six to eight minutes, turning over halfway through, until the fish is cooked and the patties are golden-brown. Serve warm, with a spoonful of the horseradish cream alongside."
I was talking to a community midwife the other day about some of her charges. It was chilling and, actually, quite disturbing.
The level of support that some expectant mothers require to do even the most basic things is extraordinary. They simply know nothing, and evidently have learned nothing from either the education system or their families. They even have to be taken out, and accompanied, to go to the High Street for a walk or to shop.
And we're surprised they're not conjuring up imaginative meals for their children.
I do wonder if we really need to see a drastic reorientation in our schools towards basic life-skills, especially for the less-academic.
People say how dreadful the food is in Paris well I can tell you that's total bollox. Sitting outside just about any cafe/bistro/restaurant more than 400yds from the Gare du Nord (although the Terminus Nord looks pretty good - clean, white table cloths, wooden chairs, chequerboard floor) and you are into a just fabulous dining experience. Is it Bocuse? No. Does it need to be? Absolument non.
Day1 Crepes in the 6th, day 2 the obligatory for Brits steak frites and a decent bottle of red at a random place.
Can't beat it. You can take your persian dim sum, tasting plate, waiter explains the concept, no reservations, happening new restaurant in London and stick it up your arse.
As for the queue at Gare du Nord to come home, how embarrassing. A complete mob with customs all over the shop and clearly uncomfortable UK Border Force agents asking French families of two adults and two toddlers what the purpose of their trip to the UK was.
Where Lee Anderson is correct is that a shocking amount of people in this country cannot cook and have no discernible interest in food. But that is certainly not limited to the poor.
Take PB – we have fully grown professional men on here who earn £70k+++ who cannot even find their way around a saucepan, and luxuriate in eating ready meals and assorted other shite in service stations, after starting their day with coffee-flavoured dust and hot water (job done!).
We also have the quasi-hair-shirted PB Northerners who balk at spending even £40 a head in a restaurant, clearly having never done even the most rudimentary analysis of where £40 a head in a good restaurant goes.
Given such a large proportion of the English population continues to refuse to spend a reasonable proportion of its income on what it puts inside its own bodies, one can perhaps forgive (to some extent) the hackneyed stereotype held of us by our continental cousins that we are a nation of potato-faced barbarians.
An Italian colleague was lamenting Londoners calling themselves "foodies" recently, suggesting that in Italy it's just normal life. I think she's right. What we'd call a "foodie" in the UK is simply living normally in lots of European countries (notable exceptions include Germany and the Netherlands which also have the same shit food as the UK).
I defended us on the basis that the UK simply hasn't got a food culture the same as Italy, Spain or France because we have never been able to grow the same quality fruit and veg (lack of sunshine) which means our food is simply lacking in flavour. If you look at traditional British food it is basically warm, beige coloured and slightly salty. It's not easy to build a food culture out of that.
We have amazing produce in the UK, eg possibly the best seafood in the world, so that doesn’t explain it. We can’t grow oranges but English strawberries are superb etc etc
I’ve always understood it as the fault of the Industrial Revolution which disconnected people from rural life and the source of all their food, and of course that happened first in the UK, and in a bigger way in the UK than almost anywhere else
And British food is vastly better now (and much better than Germany or the Netherlands). TV cooking shows are a major reason for this. Maybe THE reason
I feel like somewhere between the Industrial Revolution to the hang ups from WW2 rationing and the homogenisation of species/supermarket offerings, the country forgot what culinary gifts it was blessed with. We now have world class meat produce too, not just sea food, and some fabulous traditional ways of seasoning it. Same for fruit.
The war is the biggest single recipient of blame for destroying the British diet. Powdered eggs. Everything tinned. Horrendous food trends that linger to this day. Look at the photos of the winning England team in 1966 - the teeth (or lack of). That's a legacy of the WW2 diet.
The war greatly improved health for a lot of people who ate better than otherwise. Brown bread, vitamins, British Restaurants, and so on. Perhaps more the relapse into peace. I don't think cooking changed greatly from before the war.
No, I'm afraid that's simply a myth, espoused by those who back low fat and other discredited diet methodologies. Have you seen the allowances for butter, milk and cheese in the rations? Those nutrient dense foods cannot be replaced by munching on a home grown carrot, laudible though the effort is. Sugar rationing was probably the only beneficial part of it.
Wasn't it simply that rationing meant everyone could afford to eat enough, which wasn't the case in the 1930s? Not that the mix of food was better.
Very little white bread - shift to wholemeal was a significant improvement. Vitamin enriched stuff for children.
I don't know precisely what 'vitamin-enriched' foods you're speaking of, but I do know that the origin of 'fortified with vitamins and iron' on foods was because they were replacing foods that contained natural vitamins and iron. So typically this would not be a net gain, and indeed, given that synthetic vitamins and minerals are less absorbable than those naturally occurring in foods, would represent a net loss.
People say how dreadful the food is in Paris well I can tell you that's total bollox. Sitting outside just about any cafe/bistro/restaurant more than 400yds from the Gare du Nord (although the Terminus Nord looks pretty good - clean, white table cloths, wooden chairs, chequerboard floor) and you are into a just fabulous dining experience. Is it Bocuse? No. Does it need to be? Absolument non.
Day1 Crepes in the 6th, day 2 the obligatory for Brits steak frites and a decent bottle of red at a random place.
Can't beat it. You can take your persian dim sum, tasting plate, waiter explains the concept, no reservations, happening new restaurant in London and stick it up your arse.
As for the queue at Gare du Nord to come home, how embarrassing. A complete mob with customs all over the shop and clearly uncomfortable UK Border Force agents asking French families of two adults and two toddlers what the purpose of their trip to the UK was.
I hesitate to comment on the gourmet thread, which is as mysterious to me as Patagonian pole-dancing, but a genuine question. I've always eaten lots of salt, because I like it. I affectionately remember Klipfisk, massive salted fish designed that way to avoid the need for refrigeration - you're supposed to soak it off, but it's more fun if you don't. I'm aware that this can increase blood pressure, so I keep an eye on that, which remains normal. Is there any other reason (leaving aside taste preferences) why this is risky?
I went to a McDonalds in Paris. No moules, no crepes, no Samuel L Jackson asking for a Royale with cheese. Really disappointing. And they have Marks and Sparks. Culture cuckoos innit
Don't keep your butter in the fridge during the day, we have ours on a butter dish with a nice lid and the first one out of bed just takes it out of the fridge while the coffee machine heats up, by the time the other of us is downstairs it's perfect for spreading on toast. Just need to put half of a small block out at a time. Not looking forwards to making the switch to unsalted though.
You won't miss salt if you gradually phase it out. My wife and I largely stopped using salt about thirty years ago, pretty much without noticing. It wasn't a conscious health-kick particularly, we just found ourselves using less and less added salt most of the time, and eventually none except on a few things like tomatoes. We certainly don't miss salted butter - in fact, it tastes rather unpleasant now.
I personally think English butter is the best in the world. It annoys me that the French try to pretend otherwise.
Last Tango in Paris makes a strong case for the French product.
I watched that a few years ago.
Absolute crap; a real stinker. The 1970s were really odd, sexually. I presume it was a kind of collective insanity produced by loosening the repression of earlier times.
I also don’t “get” Marlon Brando. Even in “On the Waterfront”.
I don't know. I thought he "could have been a contender".
I was talking to a community midwife the other day about some of her charges. It was chilling and, actually, quite disturbing.
The level of support that some expectant mothers require to do even the most basic things is extraordinary. They simply know nothing, and evidently have learned nothing from either the education system or their families. They even have to be taken out, and accompanied, to go to the High Street for a walk or to shop.
And we're surprised they're not conjuring up imaginative meals for their children.
I do wonder if we really need to see a drastic reorientation in our schools towards basic life-skills, especially for the less-academic.
Absolutely.and skills training instead of half the bollocks uni courses run.
The Japanese eat a lot of salt and - sumo wrestlers aside - are thin as rakes. They also have high life expectancy.
The UK is doing it all wrong.
Stay the fuck away from sugar and carbs.
Yes. Soy sauce is basically liquid salt - plus umami
Japanese food is great. Japanese food IN JAPAN is incredible. Possibly the best cuisine in the world alongside Vietnamese (also salty, and they’re also thin as fuck)
I was talking to a community midwife the other day about some of her charges. It was chilling and, actually, quite disturbing.
The level of support that some expectant mothers require to do even the most basic things is extraordinary. They simply know nothing, and evidently have learned nothing from either the education system or their families. They even have to be taken out, and accompanied, to go to the High Street for a walk or to shop.
And we're surprised they're not conjuring up imaginative meals for their children.
I do wonder if we really need to see a drastic reorientation in our schools towards basic life-skills, especially for the less-academic.
YES
I recall at infants school we all had fake savings books with toy money and a school savings bank so we could learn about money, spending and saving. And then through secondary school, there was woodworking, metal working, technical drawing, and domestic sciences (cooking, sewing, knitting, household budgeting) in the curriculum.
That was in the Armed Forces schools in Cyprus. Came home as a 14-year old to Plymouth to a grammar school and don't recall any of those subjects on offer.
Where Lee Anderson is correct is that a shocking amount of people in this country cannot cook and have no discernible interest in food. But that is certainly not limited to the poor.
Take PB – we have fully grown professional men on here who earn £70k+++ who cannot even find their way around a saucepan, and luxuriate in eating ready meals and assorted other shite in service stations, after starting their day with coffee-flavoured dust and hot water (job done!).
We also have the quasi-hair-shirted PB Northerners who balk at spending even £40 a head in a restaurant, clearly having never done even the most rudimentary analysis of where £40 a head in a good restaurant goes.
Given such a large proportion of the English population continues to refuse to spend a reasonable proportion of its income on what it puts inside its own bodies, one can perhaps forgive (to some extent) the hackneyed stereotype held of us by our continental cousins that we are a nation of potato-faced barbarians.
An Italian colleague was lamenting Londoners calling themselves "foodies" recently, suggesting that in Italy it's just normal life. I think she's right. What we'd call a "foodie" in the UK is simply living normally in lots of European countries (notable exceptions include Germany and the Netherlands which also have the same shit food as the UK).
I defended us on the basis that the UK simply hasn't got a food culture the same as Italy, Spain or France because we have never been able to grow the same quality fruit and veg (lack of sunshine) which means our food is simply lacking in flavour. If you look at traditional British food it is basically warm, beige coloured and slightly salty. It's not easy to build a food culture out of that.
We have amazing produce in the UK, eg possibly the best seafood in the world, so that doesn’t explain it. We can’t grow oranges but English strawberries are superb etc etc
I’ve always understood it as the fault of the Industrial Revolution which disconnected people from rural life and the source of all their food, and of course that happened first in the UK, and in a bigger way in the UK than almost anywhere else
And British food is vastly better now (and much better than Germany or the Netherlands). TV cooking shows are a major reason for this. Maybe THE reason
I feel like somewhere between the Industrial Revolution to the hang ups from WW2 rationing and the homogenisation of species/supermarket offerings, the country forgot what culinary gifts it was blessed with. We now have world class meat produce too, not just sea food, and some fabulous traditional ways of seasoning it. Same for fruit.
The war is the biggest single recipient of blame for destroying the British diet. Powdered eggs. Everything tinned. Horrendous food trends that linger to this day. Look at the photos of the winning England team in 1966 - the teeth (or lack of). That's a legacy of the WW2 diet.
The war greatly improved health for a lot of people who ate better than otherwise. Brown bread, vitamins, British Restaurants, and so on. Perhaps more the relapse into peace. I don't think cooking changed greatly from before the war.
No, I'm afraid that's simply a myth, espoused by those who back low fat and other discredited diet methodologies. Have you seen the allowances for butter, milk and cheese in the rations? Those nutrient dense foods cannot be replaced by munching on a home grown carrot, laudible though the effort is. Sugar rationing was probably the only beneficial part of it.
Wasn't it simply that rationing meant everyone could afford to eat enough, which wasn't the case in the 1930s? Not that the mix of food was better.
Very little white bread - shift to wholemeal was a significant improvement. Vitamin enriched stuff for children.
I don't know precisely what 'vitamin-enriched' foods you're speaking of, but I do know that the origin of 'fortified with vitamins and iron' on foods was because they were replacing foods that contained natural vitamins and iron. So typically this would not be a net gain, and indeed, given that synthetic vitamins and minerals are less absorbable than those naturally occurring in foods, would represent a net loss.
I was thinking of the rosehip syprup with VitC. The wholemeal bread didn't have the vitamins taken out in the first place.
Where Lee Anderson is correct is that a shocking amount of people in this country cannot cook and have no discernible interest in food. But that is certainly not limited to the poor.
Take PB – we have fully grown professional men on here who earn £70k+++ who cannot even find their way around a saucepan, and luxuriate in eating ready meals and assorted other shite in service stations, after starting their day with coffee-flavoured dust and hot water (job done!).
We also have the quasi-hair-shirted PB Northerners who balk at spending even £40 a head in a restaurant, clearly having never done even the most rudimentary analysis of where £40 a head in a good restaurant goes.
Given such a large proportion of the English population continues to refuse to spend a reasonable proportion of its income on what it puts inside its own bodies, one can perhaps forgive (to some extent) the hackneyed stereotype held of us by our continental cousins that we are a nation of potato-faced barbarians.
An Italian colleague was lamenting Londoners calling themselves "foodies" recently, suggesting that in Italy it's just normal life. I think she's right. What we'd call a "foodie" in the UK is simply living normally in lots of European countries (notable exceptions include Germany and the Netherlands which also have the same shit food as the UK).
I defended us on the basis that the UK simply hasn't got a food culture the same as Italy, Spain or France because we have never been able to grow the same quality fruit and veg (lack of sunshine) which means our food is simply lacking in flavour. If you look at traditional British food it is basically warm, beige coloured and slightly salty. It's not easy to build a food culture out of that.
Quite simply, calories are cheaper now than at any time in human history. In living memory, we have stories of food (quite ordinary food) as a treat or luxury.
There's plenty of food culture in the UK. It has been deprecated by cheap-is-better.
The obesity epidemic is an artefact of this - our culture and society is not well adapted for a situation where too many calories is the problem.
Too many calories isn't the problem. The wrong type of food is the problem.
Indeed. A truth the French and Italians understand and that we do not. Hence the raft of processed "low fat" shite in our supermarkets which is packed full of additives and, often, sugar.
Yes, a simple step we could take is to phase out the sale of margarine entirely or have a huge public health campaign to prefer butter and ban the advertising of any perceived health benefits of margarine over butter (simply, there aren't any).
We could just ban the fake colouring of margerine, and see how people like it in its natural grey.
Wow are we cancelling margarine now? I like margarine, it's much easier to spread than butter.
Your choice, but it's pretty bad. The fact that it's marketed as a healthier alternative is a scandal. My house is cool and I just keep my butter in a metal butter dish with a couple in the fridge to spare. It's fine to spread.
Don't keep your butter in the fridge during the day, we have ours on a butter dish with a nice lid and the first one out of bed just takes it out of the fridge while the coffee machine heats up, by the time the other of us is downstairs it's perfect for spreading on toast. Just need to put half of a small block out at a time. Not looking forwards to making the switch to unsalted though.
You won't miss salt if you gradually phase it out. My wife and I largely stopped using salt about thirty years ago, pretty much without noticing. It wasn't a conscious health-kick particularly, we just found ourselves using less and less added salt most of the time, and eventually none except on a few things like tomatoes. We certainly don't miss salted butter - in fact, it tastes rather unpleasant now.
I personally think English butter is the best in the world. It annoys me that the French try to pretend otherwise.
Last Tango in Paris makes a strong case for the French product.
I watched that a few years ago.
Absolute crap; a real stinker. The 1970s were really odd, sexually. I presume it was a kind of collective insanity produced by loosening the repression of earlier times.
I also don’t “get” Marlon Brando. Even in “On the Waterfront”.
Quite, I can't remember much about it at all, outside the butter scene.
Same applies to a lot of stuff, that its shock value masks its basic crapness. Oscar Wilde's posh Lords whose Hideous Secret Can Only Be Hinted At, don't really work in a world where Lord X would be married to his male butler and tweeting about which one prefer rimming/being rimmed. And I had to sit through a stage production of Breakfast At Tiffany's on, oddly, Brexitrefnacht 2016, and the point of that seemed to be Hey, She Drinks Gin And Puts Out For Money!!!! I mean, wow.
https://twitter.com/jane__bradley/status/1524647337557172225 ... One of the Conservative Party's biggest donors, and its former treasurer, is suspected of secretly funnelling hundreds of thousands of pounds to the party from a Russian bank account –– according to a report filed to the National Crime Agency....
I hesitate to comment on the gourmet thread, which is as mysterious to me as Patagonian pole-dancing, but a genuine question. I've always eaten lots of salt, because I like it. I affectionately remember Klipfisk, massive salted fish designed that way to avoid the need for refrigeration - you're supposed to soak it off, but it's more fun if you don't. I'm aware that this can increase blood pressure, so I keep an eye on that, which remains normal. Is there any other reason (leaving aside taste preferences) why this is risky?
I think it's just the blood-pressure issue, although Wikipedia points to other problems as well:
People say how dreadful the food is in Paris well I can tell you that's total bollox. Sitting outside just about any cafe/bistro/restaurant more than 400yds from the Gare du Nord (although the Terminus Nord looks pretty good - clean, white table cloths, wooden chairs, chequerboard floor) and you are into a just fabulous dining experience. Is it Bocuse? No. Does it need to be? Absolument non.
Day1 Crepes in the 6th, day 2 the obligatory for Brits steak frites and a decent bottle of red at a random place.
Can't beat it. You can take your persian dim sum, tasting plate, waiter explains the concept, no reservations, happening new restaurant in London and stick it up your arse.
As for the queue at Gare du Nord to come home, how embarrassing. A complete mob with customs all over the shop and clearly uncomfortable UK Border Force agents asking French families of two adults and two toddlers what the purpose of their trip to the UK was.
Stupid Brexiter arseholes.
Are you sober?
I’m going to have a wild guess and say Non
I've just said yes to one of those little bottles of wine so the answer is, shall we say, fluid.
But really - the Eurostar experience has been completely transformed. The UK Border Force person I showed my passport to had the decency to be embarrassed, as we both looked over at the French family undergoing the third degree as to why they wanted to come to the UK.
Queues meanwhile stretching along nearly to the top of the escalators.
I hesitate to comment on the gourmet thread, which is as mysterious to me as Patagonian pole-dancing, but a genuine question. I've always eaten lots of salt, because I like it. I affectionately remember Klipfisk, massive salted fish designed that way to avoid the need for refrigeration - you're supposed to soak it off, but it's more fun if you don't. I'm aware that this can increase blood pressure, so I keep an eye on that, which remains normal. Is there any other reason (leaving aside taste preferences) why this is risky?
As I recall, some studies* linking to stomach cancer, dementia and kidney stones.
But these things are hard to untangle, as excess salt consumption often goes hand in hand with other risk factors, such as extremely processed food, high fat, high sugar. So hard to link to salt per se.
*you can of course find 'come studies' to show almost anything, but I think these were fairly reputable, ones I came across in the course of work
I hesitate to comment on the gourmet thread, which is as mysterious to me as Patagonian pole-dancing, but a genuine question. I've always eaten lots of salt, because I like it. I affectionately remember Klipfisk, massive salted fish designed that way to avoid the need for refrigeration - you're supposed to soak it off, but it's more fun if you don't. I'm aware that this can increase blood pressure, so I keep an eye on that, which remains normal. Is there any other reason (leaving aside taste preferences) why this is risky?
NPXMP and his massive salted fish BP, heart disease and stroke are the risks but not if you monitor yourself ok. Salt rules. Obviously not the road gritting shit for 59p a giant pot in the chippy but even a half serviceable pot of Anglesey or Maldon etc as a finishing salt adds everything and isn't too pricey if you don't go nuts
Where Lee Anderson is correct is that a shocking amount of people in this country cannot cook and have no discernible interest in food. But that is certainly not limited to the poor.
Take PB – we have fully grown professional men on here who earn £70k+++ who cannot even find their way around a saucepan, and luxuriate in eating ready meals and assorted other shite in service stations, after starting their day with coffee-flavoured dust and hot water (job done!).
We also have the quasi-hair-shirted PB Northerners who balk at spending even £40 a head in a restaurant, clearly having never done even the most rudimentary analysis of where £40 a head in a good restaurant goes.
Given such a large proportion of the English population continues to refuse to spend a reasonable proportion of its income on what it puts inside its own bodies, one can perhaps forgive (to some extent) the hackneyed stereotype held of us by our continental cousins that we are a nation of potato-faced barbarians.
An Italian colleague was lamenting Londoners calling themselves "foodies" recently, suggesting that in Italy it's just normal life. I think she's right. What we'd call a "foodie" in the UK is simply living normally in lots of European countries (notable exceptions include Germany and the Netherlands which also have the same shit food as the UK).
I defended us on the basis that the UK simply hasn't got a food culture the same as Italy, Spain or France because we have never been able to grow the same quality fruit and veg (lack of sunshine) which means our food is simply lacking in flavour. If you look at traditional British food it is basically warm, beige coloured and slightly salty. It's not easy to build a food culture out of that.
Quite simply, calories are cheaper now than at any time in human history. In living memory, we have stories of food (quite ordinary food) as a treat or luxury.
There's plenty of food culture in the UK. It has been deprecated by cheap-is-better.
The obesity epidemic is an artefact of this - our culture and society is not well adapted for a situation where too many calories is the problem.
Too many calories isn't the problem. The wrong type of food is the problem.
Indeed. A truth the French and Italians understand and that we do not. Hence the raft of processed "low fat" shite in our supermarkets which is packed full of additives and, often, sugar.
Yes, a simple step we could take is to phase out the sale of margarine entirely or have a huge public health campaign to prefer butter and ban the advertising of any perceived health benefits of margarine over butter (simply, there aren't any).
We could just ban the fake colouring of margerine, and see how people like it in its natural grey.
Wow are we cancelling margarine now? I like margarine, it's much easier to spread than butter.
You like margarine? Wow, Anabob's going to blow a gasket.
Amongst my general agreement with good, primarily home-prepared tasty food, I will admit certain inverted snobberies. You just need to be selective and make your own informed choices. So for me:
Margarine: vegetable oil chemically altered to do a job, namely, to be more spreadable and healthier than butter. It gives a good layer to separate filling from bread, and I'm easy with it being the product of a chemical process using metal catalysts. That said, its almost complete substitution with blended spreads is a step forward - nothing at all wrong with a spread. I despair of my wife's general reversion to butter a few years ago, doesn't she know my life insurance isn't THAT big - butter is for taste, but only when the butter is a taste you want to come through. Happy toix and match.
Coffee: a functional food, taken primarily for its drug qualities. Love a good espresso, saturated with sugar for a hit, but some cafetiere with bitter grounds in the bottom, no thanks. I'll take my chance with instant for a regular and consistent dosage (the difference between caffeine content of fresh coffees from I'm still dead (Starbucks) to bolt upright (many independents) is not what I want in my drugs. As for Nescafé Gold Blend, trying to recreate the authentic experience of grounds in an instant - wtaf. So. I'm on Sainsbury's own brand now
Pizza with pineapple: look Italians eat ham with peaches and it's lovely. Pineapple is itself an acquired taste, it's not authentic, but I don't accept the ban. Ironically, you want a good thin tomato heavy Italian pizza, not an Americanised slab of bread - pineapple with too much bread and overly cheese heavy isn't great.
https://twitter.com/jane__bradley/status/1524647337557172225 ... One of the Conservative Party's biggest donors, and its former treasurer, is suspected of secretly funnelling hundreds of thousands of pounds to the party from a Russian bank account –– according to a report filed to the National Crime Agency....
In brief defence of Ottolenghi; these are my favourite fishcakes, and with no rare ingredients. I highly recommend them!
"Smoked fish and parsnip cakes I love these for breakfast, but they’re good at any time. If you don’t want to make the cream, serve with a wedge of lemon instead. Serves four.
4-5 parsnips (550g) 260g smoked cod or haddock fillets, skinless and boneless, chopped into 4cm pieces 25g fresh white breadcrumbs (about 1 thin slice of bread, crust removed) 5g dill, roughly chopped 5g chives, roughly chopped 10g parsley leaves, roughly chopped 1 garlic clove, crushed 4 spring onions, finely chopped Finely grated zest of ½ lemon 1 egg, lightly whisked 20g unsalted butter 2 tbsp olive oil Salt and black pepper For the horseradish cream 2 tbsp finely grated fresh horseradish (or 1 tbsp horseradish sauce) 150g soured cream 2 tsp lemon juice
Preheat the oven to 200C/390F/gas mark 6. Mix together the ingredients for the horseradish cream with an eighth of a teaspoon of salt and a good grind of black pepper. Keep in the fridge until needed.
Place the parsnips on a small baking tray and roast for 30-35 minutes, until cooked through and soft. Once cool enough to handle, peel off and discard the skin. Place the flesh in a large bowl (you should have 270g cooked parsnip) roughly mash and set aside to cool.
Place the fish in a food processor and pulse a few times (you want it roughly chopped rather than minced) then add to the parsnip, with a half-teaspoon of salt, plenty of pepper and the remaining ingredients apart from the oil and butter. Mix well and form into eight patties: they should be about 8cm wide and 2-3cm thick. At this stage you could cover the patties and refrigerate until ready to cook, up to 24 hours ahead of time.
Add the butter and oil to a large frying pan and place on a medium-high heat. Once the butter starts to foam, add the patties and fry for six to eight minutes, turning over halfway through, until the fish is cooked and the patties are golden-brown. Serve warm, with a spoonful of the horseradish cream alongside."
Who the heck is ever going to do that FOR BREAKFAST (for four?!). It’s about 60-90 minutes of prep and cooking for something you will scoff in 2 minutes then head out
I love this bit:
“1 tsp caraway seeds, toasted and roughly crushed”
In brief defence of Ottolenghi; these are my favourite fishcakes, and with no rare ingredients. I highly recommend them!
"Smoked fish and parsnip cakes I love these for breakfast, but they’re good at any time. If you don’t want to make the cream, serve with a wedge of lemon instead. Serves four.
4-5 parsnips (550g) 260g smoked cod or haddock fillets, skinless and boneless, chopped into 4cm pieces 25g fresh white breadcrumbs (about 1 thin slice of bread, crust removed) 5g dill, roughly chopped 5g chives, roughly chopped 10g parsley leaves, roughly chopped 1 garlic clove, crushed 4 spring onions, finely chopped Finely grated zest of ½ lemon 1 egg, lightly whisked 1 tsp caraway seeds, toasted and roughly crushed 20g unsalted butter 2 tbsp olive oil Salt and black pepper For the horseradish cream 2 tbsp finely grated fresh horseradish (or 1 tbsp horseradish sauce) 150g soured cream 2 tsp lemon juice
Preheat the oven to 200C/390F/gas mark 6. Mix together the ingredients for the horseradish cream with an eighth of a teaspoon of salt and a good grind of black pepper. Keep in the fridge until needed.
Place the parsnips on a small baking tray and roast for 30-35 minutes, until cooked through and soft. Once cool enough to handle, peel off and discard the skin. Place the flesh in a large bowl (you should have 270g cooked parsnip) roughly mash and set aside to cool.
Place the fish in a food processor and pulse a few times (you want it roughly chopped rather than minced) then add to the parsnip, with a half-teaspoon of salt, plenty of pepper and the remaining ingredients apart from the oil and butter. Mix well and form into eight patties: they should be about 8cm wide and 2-3cm thick. At this stage you could cover the patties and refrigerate until ready to cook, up to 24 hours ahead of time.
Add the butter and oil to a large frying pan and place on a medium-high heat. Once the butter starts to foam, add the patties and fry for six to eight minutes, turning over halfway through, until the fish is cooked and the patties are golden-brown. Serve warm, with a spoonful of the horseradish cream alongside."
https://twitter.com/jane__bradley/status/1524647337557172225 ... One of the Conservative Party's biggest donors, and its former treasurer, is suspected of secretly funnelling hundreds of thousands of pounds to the party from a Russian bank account –– according to a report filed to the National Crime Agency....
https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2022-03-29/debates/D30351A6-5912-417B-A961-413167847683/AppointmentOfLordLebedev ...In connection to this, I am deeply concerned by the Conservative party’s use of lawfare to bat away the questions I have asked about potential national security threats that predate the issues we are discussing today. In February 2019, I wrote to the then chair of the Conservative party, the right hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Brandon Lewis), asking him to investigate donations by Ehud “Udi” Sheleg, who had been reported in the media as having strong connections to Russia and as probably not being able to afford the £1.8 million of donations that may or may not be connected to his being appointed treasurer of the Conservative party—I would not wish to speculate.
The reply I received from the right hon. Gentleman made it clear that Mr Sheleg should not need to reveal the source of his wealth. It also threatened me with libel action, with the right hon. Gentleman, who is now Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, using the same tactics that Russian oligarchs have been using to silence criticism and block investigations. Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton) Order. I need to make sure that the hon. Gentleman is referring to the matter in hand, which is Lord Lebedev and the appointment process. Stephen Kinnock Thank you, Madam Speaker. What I am trying to do is set out clearly the worrying pattern of behaviour, but I take your feedback and I will move on...
In brief defence of Ottolenghi; these are my favourite fishcakes, and with no rare ingredients. I highly recommend them!
"Smoked fish and parsnip cakes I love these for breakfast, but they’re good at any time. If you don’t want to make the cream, serve with a wedge of lemon instead. Serves four.
4-5 parsnips (550g) 260g smoked cod or haddock fillets, skinless and boneless, chopped into 4cm pieces 25g fresh white breadcrumbs (about 1 thin slice of bread, crust removed) 5g dill, roughly chopped 5g chives, roughly chopped 10g parsley leaves, roughly chopped 1 garlic clove, crushed 4 spring onions, finely chopped Finely grated zest of ½ lemon 1 egg, lightly whisked 20g unsalted butter 2 tbsp olive oil Salt and black pepper For the horseradish cream 2 tbsp finely grated fresh horseradish (or 1 tbsp horseradish sauce) 150g soured cream 2 tsp lemon juice
Preheat the oven to 200C/390F/gas mark 6. Mix together the ingredients for the horseradish cream with an eighth of a teaspoon of salt and a good grind of black pepper. Keep in the fridge until needed.
Place the parsnips on a small baking tray and roast for 30-35 minutes, until cooked through and soft. Once cool enough to handle, peel off and discard the skin. Place the flesh in a large bowl (you should have 270g cooked parsnip) roughly mash and set aside to cool.
Place the fish in a food processor and pulse a few times (you want it roughly chopped rather than minced) then add to the parsnip, with a half-teaspoon of salt, plenty of pepper and the remaining ingredients apart from the oil and butter. Mix well and form into eight patties: they should be about 8cm wide and 2-3cm thick. At this stage you could cover the patties and refrigerate until ready to cook, up to 24 hours ahead of time.
Add the butter and oil to a large frying pan and place on a medium-high heat. Once the butter starts to foam, add the patties and fry for six to eight minutes, turning over halfway through, until the fish is cooked and the patties are golden-brown. Serve warm, with a spoonful of the horseradish cream alongside."
Who the heck is ever going to do that FOR BREAKFAST (for four?!). It’s about 60-90 minutes of prep and cooking for something you will scoff in 2 minutes then head out
I love this bit:
“1 tsp caraway seeds, toasted and roughly crushed”
It does sound delicious but Jeeez
It's a bit more fancy than Go To Work On An Egg for sure
Coleen Rooney’s lawyer has accused Rebekah Vardy of suggesting using the anniversary of his client’s sister's death as the “peg” to message her.
David Sherborne said that, after she realised she’d been blocked by Mrs Rooney’s Instagram account in January 2019, Mrs Vardy suggested mentioning “Rosie” in a message to Mrs Rooney.
Mr Sherborne said that Mrs Vardy was intending to use the anniversary of Rosie’s death – Mrs Rooney’s sister, who had a brain disorder, died in 2013 aged 14 – as “the peg” to message her.
Mrs Vardy responded that this was “interpreted wrong”.
This is the equivalent of buying a brand new Bugatti and driving it into a wall at 150mph, without a seatbelt.
It's Jamie Vardy I feel sorry for. What must their home life be like?
Who the f*** gives a flying sh*t about anything these people say or do and why is it front page news? Why is it even in the courts? It all sounds like it belongs in the infants' school playground.
Where Lee Anderson is correct is that a shocking amount of people in this country cannot cook and have no discernible interest in food. But that is certainly not limited to the poor.
Take PB – we have fully grown professional men on here who earn £70k+++ who cannot even find their way around a saucepan, and luxuriate in eating ready meals and assorted other shite in service stations, after starting their day with coffee-flavoured dust and hot water (job done!).
We also have the quasi-hair-shirted PB Northerners who balk at spending even £40 a head in a restaurant, clearly having never done even the most rudimentary analysis of where £40 a head in a good restaurant goes.
Given such a large proportion of the English population continues to refuse to spend a reasonable proportion of its income on what it puts inside its own bodies, one can perhaps forgive (to some extent) the hackneyed stereotype held of us by our continental cousins that we are a nation of potato-faced barbarians.
An Italian colleague was lamenting Londoners calling themselves "foodies" recently, suggesting that in Italy it's just normal life. I think she's right. What we'd call a "foodie" in the UK is simply living normally in lots of European countries (notable exceptions include Germany and the Netherlands which also have the same shit food as the UK).
I defended us on the basis that the UK simply hasn't got a food culture the same as Italy, Spain or France because we have never been able to grow the same quality fruit and veg (lack of sunshine) which means our food is simply lacking in flavour. If you look at traditional British food it is basically warm, beige coloured and slightly salty. It's not easy to build a food culture out of that.
We have amazing produce in the UK, eg possibly the best seafood in the world, so that doesn’t explain it. We can’t grow oranges but English strawberries are superb etc etc
I’ve always understood it as the fault of the Industrial Revolution which disconnected people from rural life and the source of all their food, and of course that happened first in the UK, and in a bigger way in the UK than almost anywhere else
And British food is vastly better now (and much better than Germany or the Netherlands). TV cooking shows are a major reason for this. Maybe THE reason
I feel like somewhere between the Industrial Revolution to the hang ups from WW2 rationing and the homogenisation of species/supermarket offerings, the country forgot what culinary gifts it was blessed with. We now have world class meat produce too, not just sea food, and some fabulous traditional ways of seasoning it. Same for fruit.
The war is the biggest single recipient of blame for destroying the British diet. Powdered eggs. Everything tinned. Horrendous food trends that linger to this day. Look at the photos of the winning England team in 1966 - the teeth (or lack of). That's a legacy of the WW2 diet.
The war greatly improved health for a lot of people who ate better than otherwise. Brown bread, vitamins, British Restaurants, and so on. Perhaps more the relapse into peace. I don't think cooking changed greatly from before the war.
No, I'm afraid that's simply a myth, espoused by those who back low fat and other discredited diet methodologies. Have you seen the allowances for butter, milk and cheese in the rations? Those nutrient dense foods cannot be replaced by munching on a home grown carrot, laudible though the effort is. Sugar rationing was probably the only beneficial part of it.
Wasn't it simply that rationing meant everyone could afford to eat enough, which wasn't the case in the 1930s? Not that the mix of food was better.
Very little white bread - shift to wholemeal was a significant improvement. Vitamin enriched stuff for children.
I don't know precisely what 'vitamin-enriched' foods you're speaking of, but I do know that the origin of 'fortified with vitamins and iron' on foods was because they were replacing foods that contained natural vitamins and iron. So typically this would not be a net gain, and indeed, given that synthetic vitamins and minerals are less absorbable than those naturally occurring in foods, would represent a net loss.
I was thinking of the rosehip syprup with VitC. The wholemeal bread didn't have the vitamins taken out in the first place.
Where Lee Anderson is correct is that a shocking amount of people in this country cannot cook and have no discernible interest in food. But that is certainly not limited to the poor.
Take PB – we have fully grown professional men on here who earn £70k+++ who cannot even find their way around a saucepan, and luxuriate in eating ready meals and assorted other shite in service stations, after starting their day with coffee-flavoured dust and hot water (job done!).
We also have the quasi-hair-shirted PB Northerners who balk at spending even £40 a head in a restaurant, clearly having never done even the most rudimentary analysis of where £40 a head in a good restaurant goes.
Given such a large proportion of the English population continues to refuse to spend a reasonable proportion of its income on what it puts inside its own bodies, one can perhaps forgive (to some extent) the hackneyed stereotype held of us by our continental cousins that we are a nation of potato-faced barbarians.
An Italian colleague was lamenting Londoners calling themselves "foodies" recently, suggesting that in Italy it's just normal life. I think she's right. What we'd call a "foodie" in the UK is simply living normally in lots of European countries (notable exceptions include Germany and the Netherlands which also have the same shit food as the UK).
I defended us on the basis that the UK simply hasn't got a food culture the same as Italy, Spain or France because we have never been able to grow the same quality fruit and veg (lack of sunshine) which means our food is simply lacking in flavour. If you look at traditional British food it is basically warm, beige coloured and slightly salty. It's not easy to build a food culture out of that.
Quite simply, calories are cheaper now than at any time in human history. In living memory, we have stories of food (quite ordinary food) as a treat or luxury.
There's plenty of food culture in the UK. It has been deprecated by cheap-is-better.
The obesity epidemic is an artefact of this - our culture and society is not well adapted for a situation where too many calories is the problem.
Too many calories isn't the problem. The wrong type of food is the problem.
Indeed. A truth the French and Italians understand and that we do not. Hence the raft of processed "low fat" shite in our supermarkets which is packed full of additives and, often, sugar.
Yes, a simple step we could take is to phase out the sale of margarine entirely or have a huge public health campaign to prefer butter and ban the advertising of any perceived health benefits of margarine over butter (simply, there aren't any).
We could just ban the fake colouring of margerine, and see how people like it in its natural grey.
Wow are we cancelling margarine now? I like margarine, it's much easier to spread than butter.
You like margarine? Wow, Anabob's going to blow a gasket.
Amongst my general agreement with good, primarily home-prepared tasty food, I will admit certain inverted snobberies. You just need to be selective and make your own informed choices. So for me:
Margarine: vegetable oil chemically altered to do a job, namely, to be more spreadable and healthier than butter. It gives a good layer to separate filling from bread, and I'm easy with it being the product of a chemical process using metal catalysts. That said, its almost complete substitution with blended spreads is a step forward - nothing at all wrong with a spread. I despair of my wife's general reversion to butter a few years ago, doesn't she know my life insurance isn't THAT big - butter is for taste, but only when the butter is a taste you want to come through. Happy toix and match.
Coffee: a functional food, taken primarily for its drug qualities. Love a good espresso, saturated with sugar for a hit, but some cafetiere with bitter grounds in the bottom, no thanks. I'll take my chance with instant for a regular and consistent dosage (the difference between caffeine content of fresh coffees from I'm still dead (Starbucks) to bolt upright (many independents) is not what I want in my drugs. As for Nescafé Gold Blend, trying to recreate the authentic experience of grounds in an instant - wtaf. So. I'm on Sainsbury's own brand now
Pizza with pineapple: look Italians eat ham with peaches and it's lovely. Pineapple is itself an acquired taste, it's not authentic, but I don't accept the ban. Ironically, you want a good thin tomato heavy Italian pizza, not an Americanised slab of bread - pineapple with too much bread and overly cheese heavy isn't great.
Where Lee Anderson is correct is that a shocking amount of people in this country cannot cook and have no discernible interest in food. But that is certainly not limited to the poor.
Take PB – we have fully grown professional men on here who earn £70k+++ who cannot even find their way around a saucepan, and luxuriate in eating ready meals and assorted other shite in service stations, after starting their day with coffee-flavoured dust and hot water (job done!).
We also have the quasi-hair-shirted PB Northerners who balk at spending even £40 a head in a restaurant, clearly having never done even the most rudimentary analysis of where £40 a head in a good restaurant goes.
Given such a large proportion of the English population continues to refuse to spend a reasonable proportion of its income on what it puts inside its own bodies, one can perhaps forgive (to some extent) the hackneyed stereotype held of us by our continental cousins that we are a nation of potato-faced barbarians.
An Italian colleague was lamenting Londoners calling themselves "foodies" recently, suggesting that in Italy it's just normal life. I think she's right. What we'd call a "foodie" in the UK is simply living normally in lots of European countries (notable exceptions include Germany and the Netherlands which also have the same shit food as the UK).
I defended us on the basis that the UK simply hasn't got a food culture the same as Italy, Spain or France because we have never been able to grow the same quality fruit and veg (lack of sunshine) which means our food is simply lacking in flavour. If you look at traditional British food it is basically warm, beige coloured and slightly salty. It's not easy to build a food culture out of that.
We have amazing produce in the UK, eg possibly the best seafood in the world, so that doesn’t explain it. We can’t grow oranges but English strawberries are superb etc etc
I’ve always understood it as the fault of the Industrial Revolution which disconnected people from rural life and the source of all their food, and of course that happened first in the UK, and in a bigger way in the UK than almost anywhere else
And British food is vastly better now (and much better than Germany or the Netherlands). TV cooking shows are a major reason for this. Maybe THE reason
I feel like somewhere between the Industrial Revolution to the hang ups from WW2 rationing and the homogenisation of species/supermarket offerings, the country forgot what culinary gifts it was blessed with. We now have world class meat produce too, not just sea food, and some fabulous traditional ways of seasoning it. Same for fruit.
The war is the biggest single recipient of blame for destroying the British diet. Powdered eggs. Everything tinned. Horrendous food trends that linger to this day. Look at the photos of the winning England team in 1966 - the teeth (or lack of). That's a legacy of the WW2 diet.
The war greatly improved health for a lot of people who ate better than otherwise. Brown bread, vitamins, British Restaurants, and so on. Perhaps more the relapse into peace. I don't think cooking changed greatly from before the war.
No, I'm afraid that's simply a myth, espoused by those who back low fat and other discredited diet methodologies. Have you seen the allowances for butter, milk and cheese in the rations? Those nutrient dense foods cannot be replaced by munching on a home grown carrot, laudible though the effort is. Sugar rationing was probably the only beneficial part of it.
Wasn't it simply that rationing meant everyone could afford to eat enough, which wasn't the case in the 1930s? Not that the mix of food was better.
Very little white bread - shift to wholemeal was a significant improvement. Vitamin enriched stuff for children.
I don't know precisely what 'vitamin-enriched' foods you're speaking of, but I do know that the origin of 'fortified with vitamins and iron' on foods was because they were replacing foods that contained natural vitamins and iron. So typically this would not be a net gain, and indeed, given that synthetic vitamins and minerals are less absorbable than those naturally occurring in foods, would represent a net loss.
I was thinking of the rosehip syprup with VitC. The wholemeal bread didn't have the vitamins taken out in the first place.
Further to this I checked. National Loaf was mainly wholemeal (maybe bulked out with oats/odd flour) but did also have added vitamins as well. So better all round.
Don't keep your butter in the fridge during the day, we have ours on a butter dish with a nice lid and the first one out of bed just takes it out of the fridge while the coffee machine heats up, by the time the other of us is downstairs it's perfect for spreading on toast. Just need to put half of a small block out at a time. Not looking forwards to making the switch to unsalted though.
You won't miss salt if you gradually phase it out. My wife and I largely stopped using salt about thirty years ago, pretty much without noticing. It wasn't a conscious health-kick particularly, we just found ourselves using less and less added salt most of the time, and eventually none except on a few things like tomatoes. We certainly don't miss salted butter - in fact, it tastes rather unpleasant now.
I personally think English butter is the best in the world. It annoys me that the French try to pretend otherwise.
Last Tango in Paris makes a strong case for the French product.
I watched that a few years ago.
Absolute crap; a real stinker. The 1970s were really odd, sexually. I presume it was a kind of collective insanity produced by loosening the repression of earlier times.
I also don’t “get” Marlon Brando. Even in “On the Waterfront”.
I don't know. I thought he "could have been a contender".
You're an errand boy, sent by grocery clerks, to collect a bill.
https://twitter.com/jane__bradley/status/1524647337557172225 ... One of the Conservative Party's biggest donors, and its former treasurer, is suspected of secretly funnelling hundreds of thousands of pounds to the party from a Russian bank account –– according to a report filed to the National Crime Agency....
And nowhere to be seen in UK media . It’s an astonishing story but for some reason isn’t getting any air play here.
Don't keep your butter in the fridge during the day, we have ours on a butter dish with a nice lid and the first one out of bed just takes it out of the fridge while the coffee machine heats up, by the time the other of us is downstairs it's perfect for spreading on toast. Just need to put half of a small block out at a time. Not looking forwards to making the switch to unsalted though.
You won't miss salt if you gradually phase it out. My wife and I largely stopped using salt about thirty years ago, pretty much without noticing. It wasn't a conscious health-kick particularly, we just found ourselves using less and less added salt most of the time, and eventually none except on a few things like tomatoes. We certainly don't miss salted butter - in fact, it tastes rather unpleasant now.
I agree completely. Other than some specific things where salt is intrinsic to the taste, if you remove it you stop missing it and then stuff you used to use salt on now tastes too salty if you add salt. Cooking veg, pasta and rice are excellent example of this. No salt and now too salty if any added.
Where Lee Anderson is correct is that a shocking amount of people in this country cannot cook and have no discernible interest in food. But that is certainly not limited to the poor.
Take PB – we have fully grown professional men on here who earn £70k+++ who cannot even find their way around a saucepan, and luxuriate in eating ready meals and assorted other shite in service stations, after starting their day with coffee-flavoured dust and hot water (job done!).
We also have the quasi-hair-shirted PB Northerners who balk at spending even £40 a head in a restaurant, clearly having never done even the most rudimentary analysis of where £40 a head in a good restaurant goes.
Given such a large proportion of the English population continues to refuse to spend a reasonable proportion of its income on what it puts inside its own bodies, one can perhaps forgive (to some extent) the hackneyed stereotype held of us by our continental cousins that we are a nation of potato-faced barbarians.
An Italian colleague was lamenting Londoners calling themselves "foodies" recently, suggesting that in Italy it's just normal life. I think she's right. What we'd call a "foodie" in the UK is simply living normally in lots of European countries (notable exceptions include Germany and the Netherlands which also have the same shit food as the UK).
I defended us on the basis that the UK simply hasn't got a food culture the same as Italy, Spain or France because we have never been able to grow the same quality fruit and veg (lack of sunshine) which means our food is simply lacking in flavour. If you look at traditional British food it is basically warm, beige coloured and slightly salty. It's not easy to build a food culture out of that.
We have amazing produce in the UK, eg possibly the best seafood in the world, so that doesn’t explain it. We can’t grow oranges but English strawberries are superb etc etc
I’ve always understood it as the fault of the Industrial Revolution which disconnected people from rural life and the source of all their food, and of course that happened first in the UK, and in a bigger way in the UK than almost anywhere else
And British food is vastly better now (and much better than Germany or the Netherlands). TV cooking shows are a major reason for this. Maybe THE reason
I feel like somewhere between the Industrial Revolution to the hang ups from WW2 rationing and the homogenisation of species/supermarket offerings, the country forgot what culinary gifts it was blessed with. We now have world class meat produce too, not just sea food, and some fabulous traditional ways of seasoning it. Same for fruit.
The war is the biggest single recipient of blame for destroying the British diet. Powdered eggs. Everything tinned. Horrendous food trends that linger to this day. Look at the photos of the winning England team in 1966 - the teeth (or lack of). That's a legacy of the WW2 diet.
The war greatly improved health for a lot of people who ate better than otherwise. Brown bread, vitamins, British Restaurants, and so on. Perhaps more the relapse into peace. I don't think cooking changed greatly from before the war.
No, I'm afraid that's simply a myth, espoused by those who back low fat and other discredited diet methodologies. Have you seen the allowances for butter, milk and cheese in the rations? Those nutrient dense foods cannot be replaced by munching on a home grown carrot, laudible though the effort is. Sugar rationing was probably the only beneficial part of it.
Wasn't it simply that rationing meant everyone could afford to eat enough, which wasn't the case in the 1930s? Not that the mix of food was better.
Very little white bread - shift to wholemeal was a significant improvement. Vitamin enriched stuff for children.
I don't know precisely what 'vitamin-enriched' foods you're speaking of, but I do know that the origin of 'fortified with vitamins and iron' on foods was because they were replacing foods that contained natural vitamins and iron. So typically this would not be a net gain, and indeed, given that synthetic vitamins and minerals are less absorbable than those naturally occurring in foods, would represent a net loss.
I was thinking of the rosehip syprup with VitC. The wholemeal bread didn't have the vitamins taken out in the first place.
Where Lee Anderson is correct is that a shocking amount of people in this country cannot cook and have no discernible interest in food. But that is certainly not limited to the poor.
Take PB – we have fully grown professional men on here who earn £70k+++ who cannot even find their way around a saucepan, and luxuriate in eating ready meals and assorted other shite in service stations, after starting their day with coffee-flavoured dust and hot water (job done!).
We also have the quasi-hair-shirted PB Northerners who balk at spending even £40 a head in a restaurant, clearly having never done even the most rudimentary analysis of where £40 a head in a good restaurant goes.
Given such a large proportion of the English population continues to refuse to spend a reasonable proportion of its income on what it puts inside its own bodies, one can perhaps forgive (to some extent) the hackneyed stereotype held of us by our continental cousins that we are a nation of potato-faced barbarians.
An Italian colleague was lamenting Londoners calling themselves "foodies" recently, suggesting that in Italy it's just normal life. I think she's right. What we'd call a "foodie" in the UK is simply living normally in lots of European countries (notable exceptions include Germany and the Netherlands which also have the same shit food as the UK).
I defended us on the basis that the UK simply hasn't got a food culture the same as Italy, Spain or France because we have never been able to grow the same quality fruit and veg (lack of sunshine) which means our food is simply lacking in flavour. If you look at traditional British food it is basically warm, beige coloured and slightly salty. It's not easy to build a food culture out of that.
Quite simply, calories are cheaper now than at any time in human history. In living memory, we have stories of food (quite ordinary food) as a treat or luxury.
There's plenty of food culture in the UK. It has been deprecated by cheap-is-better.
The obesity epidemic is an artefact of this - our culture and society is not well adapted for a situation where too many calories is the problem.
Too many calories isn't the problem. The wrong type of food is the problem.
Indeed. A truth the French and Italians understand and that we do not. Hence the raft of processed "low fat" shite in our supermarkets which is packed full of additives and, often, sugar.
Yes, a simple step we could take is to phase out the sale of margarine entirely or have a huge public health campaign to prefer butter and ban the advertising of any perceived health benefits of margarine over butter (simply, there aren't any).
We could just ban the fake colouring of margerine, and see how people like it in its natural grey.
Wow are we cancelling margarine now? I like margarine, it's much easier to spread than butter.
You like margarine? Wow, Anabob's going to blow a gasket.
Amongst my general agreement with good, primarily home-prepared tasty food, I will admit certain inverted snobberies. You just need to be selective and make your own informed choices. So for me:
Margarine: vegetable oil chemically altered to do a job, namely, to be more spreadable and healthier than butter. It gives a good layer to separate filling from bread, and I'm easy with it being the product of a chemical process using metal catalysts. That said, its almost complete substitution with blended spreads is a step forward - nothing at all wrong with a spread. I despair of my wife's general reversion to butter a few years ago, doesn't she know my life insurance isn't THAT big - butter is for taste, but only when the butter is a taste you want to come through. Happy toix and match.
Coffee: a functional food, taken primarily for its drug qualities. Love a good espresso, saturated with sugar for a hit, but some cafetiere with bitter grounds in the bottom, no thanks. I'll take my chance with instant for a regular and consistent dosage (the difference between caffeine content of fresh coffees from I'm still dead (Starbucks) to bolt upright (many independents) is not what I want in my drugs. As for Nescafé Gold Blend, trying to recreate the authentic experience of grounds in an instant - wtaf. So. I'm on Sainsbury's own brand now
Pizza with pineapple: look Italians eat ham with peaches and it's lovely. Pineapple is itself an acquired taste, it's not authentic, but I don't accept the ban. Ironically, you want a good thin tomato heavy Italian pizza, not an Americanised slab of bread - pineapple with too much bread and overly cheese heavy isn't great.
It's not healthier than butter.
Indeed, it's a fraud that has been perpetrated by Unilever on the British public that margarine is healthier than butter. Not as bad as the tobacco companies but still damaging. Butter has so many essential nutrients in it and fat from dairy is very good for us.
Where Lee Anderson is correct is that a shocking amount of people in this country cannot cook and have no discernible interest in food. But that is certainly not limited to the poor.
Take PB – we have fully grown professional men on here who earn £70k+++ who cannot even find their way around a saucepan, and luxuriate in eating ready meals and assorted other shite in service stations, after starting their day with coffee-flavoured dust and hot water (job done!).
We also have the quasi-hair-shirted PB Northerners who balk at spending even £40 a head in a restaurant, clearly having never done even the most rudimentary analysis of where £40 a head in a good restaurant goes.
Given such a large proportion of the English population continues to refuse to spend a reasonable proportion of its income on what it puts inside its own bodies, one can perhaps forgive (to some extent) the hackneyed stereotype held of us by our continental cousins that we are a nation of potato-faced barbarians.
An Italian colleague was lamenting Londoners calling themselves "foodies" recently, suggesting that in Italy it's just normal life. I think she's right. What we'd call a "foodie" in the UK is simply living normally in lots of European countries (notable exceptions include Germany and the Netherlands which also have the same shit food as the UK).
I defended us on the basis that the UK simply hasn't got a food culture the same as Italy, Spain or France because we have never been able to grow the same quality fruit and veg (lack of sunshine) which means our food is simply lacking in flavour. If you look at traditional British food it is basically warm, beige coloured and slightly salty. It's not easy to build a food culture out of that.
Quite simply, calories are cheaper now than at any time in human history. In living memory, we have stories of food (quite ordinary food) as a treat or luxury.
There's plenty of food culture in the UK. It has been deprecated by cheap-is-better.
The obesity epidemic is an artefact of this - our culture and society is not well adapted for a situation where too many calories is the problem.
Too many calories isn't the problem. The wrong type of food is the problem.
Indeed. A truth the French and Italians understand and that we do not. Hence the raft of processed "low fat" shite in our supermarkets which is packed full of additives and, often, sugar.
Yes, a simple step we could take is to phase out the sale of margarine entirely or have a huge public health campaign to prefer butter and ban the advertising of any perceived health benefits of margarine over butter (simply, there aren't any).
We could just ban the fake colouring of margerine, and see how people like it in its natural grey.
Wow are we cancelling margarine now? I like margarine, it's much easier to spread than butter.
Have you tried this amazing innovation called a butter dish, which you store, er, outside the fridge?
Where Lee Anderson is correct is that a shocking amount of people in this country cannot cook and have no discernible interest in food. But that is certainly not limited to the poor.
Take PB – we have fully grown professional men on here who earn £70k+++ who cannot even find their way around a saucepan, and luxuriate in eating ready meals and assorted other shite in service stations, after starting their day with coffee-flavoured dust and hot water (job done!).
We also have the quasi-hair-shirted PB Northerners who balk at spending even £40 a head in a restaurant, clearly having never done even the most rudimentary analysis of where £40 a head in a good restaurant goes.
Given such a large proportion of the English population continues to refuse to spend a reasonable proportion of its income on what it puts inside its own bodies, one can perhaps forgive (to some extent) the hackneyed stereotype held of us by our continental cousins that we are a nation of potato-faced barbarians.
An Italian colleague was lamenting Londoners calling themselves "foodies" recently, suggesting that in Italy it's just normal life. I think she's right. What we'd call a "foodie" in the UK is simply living normally in lots of European countries (notable exceptions include Germany and the Netherlands which also have the same shit food as the UK).
I defended us on the basis that the UK simply hasn't got a food culture the same as Italy, Spain or France because we have never been able to grow the same quality fruit and veg (lack of sunshine) which means our food is simply lacking in flavour. If you look at traditional British food it is basically warm, beige coloured and slightly salty. It's not easy to build a food culture out of that.
Quite simply, calories are cheaper now than at any time in human history. In living memory, we have stories of food (quite ordinary food) as a treat or luxury.
There's plenty of food culture in the UK. It has been deprecated by cheap-is-better.
The obesity epidemic is an artefact of this - our culture and society is not well adapted for a situation where too many calories is the problem.
Too many calories isn't the problem. The wrong type of food is the problem.
Indeed. A truth the French and Italians understand and that we do not. Hence the raft of processed "low fat" shite in our supermarkets which is packed full of additives and, often, sugar.
Yes, a simple step we could take is to phase out the sale of margarine entirely or have a huge public health campaign to prefer butter and ban the advertising of any perceived health benefits of margarine over butter (simply, there aren't any).
We could just ban the fake colouring of margerine, and see how people like it in its natural grey.
Wow are we cancelling margarine now? I like margarine, it's much easier to spread than butter.
You like margarine? Wow, Anabob's going to blow a gasket.
People say how dreadful the food is in Paris well I can tell you that's total bollox. Sitting outside just about any cafe/bistro/restaurant more than 400yds from the Gare du Nord (although the Terminus Nord looks pretty good - clean, white table cloths, wooden chairs, chequerboard floor) and you are into a just fabulous dining experience. Is it Bocuse? No. Does it need to be? Absolument non.
Day1 Crepes in the 6th, day 2 the obligatory for Brits steak frites and a decent bottle of red at a random place.
Can't beat it. You can take your persian dim sum, tasting plate, waiter explains the concept, no reservations, happening new restaurant in London and stick it up your arse.
As for the queue at Gare du Nord to come home, how embarrassing. A complete mob with customs all over the shop and clearly uncomfortable UK Border Force agents asking French families of two adults and two toddlers what the purpose of their trip to the UK was.
Stupid Brexiter arseholes.
Are you sober?
I’m going to have a wild guess and say Non
I've just said yes to one of those little bottles of wine so the answer is, shall we say, fluid.
But really - the Eurostar experience has been completely transformed. The UK Border Force person I showed my passport to had the decency to be embarrassed, as we both looked over at the French family undergoing the third degree as to why they wanted to come to the UK.
Queues meanwhile stretching along nearly to the top of the escalators.
And we voted for it all ourselves. Bravo.
That is crap. But I’ve not ever seen it at airports and I’ve travelled a lot since Brexit
Must be a uniquely Eurostar thing.
I wonder if they have a refugee issue on the trains.
I just arrived in Samos island from Turkey (a major refugee route, you can see refugees in the Samos streets and you can see the German Italian frontex boats in the harbour)
It took well over an hour to go through passport control. This was a little ferry very obviously full of European and other tourists. Yet still we had to queue for a looooooong time. A lot of people got a lot of scrutiny. Including me. I’ve never had my passport examined so carefully before - not even at Ben Gurion
So my guess is that Eurostar have a refugee issue/policy and this may not be entirely or even at all a Brexit thing, which at least saves you having another prolapse
https://twitter.com/jane__bradley/status/1524647337557172225 ... One of the Conservative Party's biggest donors, and its former treasurer, is suspected of secretly funnelling hundreds of thousands of pounds to the party from a Russian bank account –– according to a report filed to the National Crime Agency....
And nowhere to be seen in UK media . It’s an astonishing story but for some reason isn’t getting any air play here.
Becuase the last few months have shown that the "Tories have been bought by Russia" narrative is absurd.
Don't keep your butter in the fridge during the day, we have ours on a butter dish with a nice lid and the first one out of bed just takes it out of the fridge while the coffee machine heats up, by the time the other of us is downstairs it's perfect for spreading on toast. Just need to put half of a small block out at a time. Not looking forwards to making the switch to unsalted though.
You won't miss salt if you gradually phase it out. My wife and I largely stopped using salt about thirty years ago, pretty much without noticing. It wasn't a conscious health-kick particularly, we just found ourselves using less and less added salt most of the time, and eventually none except on a few things like tomatoes. We certainly don't miss salted butter - in fact, it tastes rather unpleasant now.
I personally think English butter is the best in the world. It annoys me that the French try to pretend otherwise.
Last Tango in Paris makes a strong case for the French product.
I watched that a few years ago.
Absolute crap; a real stinker. The 1970s were really odd, sexually. I presume it was a kind of collective insanity produced by loosening the repression of earlier times.
I also don’t “get” Marlon Brando. Even in “On the Waterfront”.
It's strange how there's stuff which still makes sense half a century or more later, and equally highly regarded stuff which clearly made sense only in the context of its time.
In brief defence of Ottolenghi; these are my favourite fishcakes, and with no rare ingredients. I highly recommend them!
"Smoked fish and parsnip cakes I love these for breakfast, but they’re good at any time. If you don’t want to make the cream, serve with a wedge of lemon instead. Serves four.
4-5 parsnips (550g) 260g smoked cod or haddock fillets, skinless and boneless, chopped into 4cm pieces 25g fresh white breadcrumbs (about 1 thin slice of bread, crust removed) 5g dill, roughly chopped 5g chives, roughly chopped 10g parsley leaves, roughly chopped 1 garlic clove, crushed 4 spring onions, finely chopped Finely grated zest of ½ lemon 1 egg, lightly whisked 20g unsalted butter 2 tbsp olive oil Salt and black pepper For the horseradish cream 2 tbsp finely grated fresh horseradish (or 1 tbsp horseradish sauce) 150g soured cream 2 tsp lemon juice
Preheat the oven to 200C/390F/gas mark 6. Mix together the ingredients for the horseradish cream with an eighth of a teaspoon of salt and a good grind of black pepper. Keep in the fridge until needed.
Place the parsnips on a small baking tray and roast for 30-35 minutes, until cooked through and soft. Once cool enough to handle, peel off and discard the skin. Place the flesh in a large bowl (you should have 270g cooked parsnip) roughly mash and set aside to cool.
Place the fish in a food processor and pulse a few times (you want it roughly chopped rather than minced) then add to the parsnip, with a half-teaspoon of salt, plenty of pepper and the remaining ingredients apart from the oil and butter. Mix well and form into eight patties: they should be about 8cm wide and 2-3cm thick. At this stage you could cover the patties and refrigerate until ready to cook, up to 24 hours ahead of time.
Add the butter and oil to a large frying pan and place on a medium-high heat. Once the butter starts to foam, add the patties and fry for six to eight minutes, turning over halfway through, until the fish is cooked and the patties are golden-brown. Serve warm, with a spoonful of the horseradish cream alongside."
Who the heck is ever going to do that FOR BREAKFAST (for four?!). It’s about 60-90 minutes of prep and cooking for something you will scoff in 2 minutes then head out
I love this bit:
“1 tsp caraway seeds, toasted and roughly crushed”
It does sound delicious but Jeeez
It's a bit more fancy than Go To Work On An Egg for sure
Coleen Rooney’s lawyer has accused Rebekah Vardy of suggesting using the anniversary of his client’s sister's death as the “peg” to message her.
David Sherborne said that, after she realised she’d been blocked by Mrs Rooney’s Instagram account in January 2019, Mrs Vardy suggested mentioning “Rosie” in a message to Mrs Rooney.
Mr Sherborne said that Mrs Vardy was intending to use the anniversary of Rosie’s death – Mrs Rooney’s sister, who had a brain disorder, died in 2013 aged 14 – as “the peg” to message her.
Mrs Vardy responded that this was “interpreted wrong”.
This is the equivalent of buying a brand new Bugatti and driving it into a wall at 150mph, without a seatbelt.
It's Jamie Vardy I feel sorry for. What must their home life be like?
Who the f*** gives a flying sh*t about anything these people say or do and why is it front page news? Why is it even in the courts? It all sounds like it belongs in the infants' school playground.
Quite. And barely a peep when Ghislaine Maxwells trial was talking about her trafficking underage girls for sex. To whom? Let's have the client list.
Where Lee Anderson is correct is that a shocking amount of people in this country cannot cook and have no discernible interest in food. But that is certainly not limited to the poor.
Take PB – we have fully grown professional men on here who earn £70k+++ who cannot even find their way around a saucepan, and luxuriate in eating ready meals and assorted other shite in service stations, after starting their day with coffee-flavoured dust and hot water (job done!).
We also have the quasi-hair-shirted PB Northerners who balk at spending even £40 a head in a restaurant, clearly having never done even the most rudimentary analysis of where £40 a head in a good restaurant goes.
Given such a large proportion of the English population continues to refuse to spend a reasonable proportion of its income on what it puts inside its own bodies, one can perhaps forgive (to some extent) the hackneyed stereotype held of us by our continental cousins that we are a nation of potato-faced barbarians.
An Italian colleague was lamenting Londoners calling themselves "foodies" recently, suggesting that in Italy it's just normal life. I think she's right. What we'd call a "foodie" in the UK is simply living normally in lots of European countries (notable exceptions include Germany and the Netherlands which also have the same shit food as the UK).
I defended us on the basis that the UK simply hasn't got a food culture the same as Italy, Spain or France because we have never been able to grow the same quality fruit and veg (lack of sunshine) which means our food is simply lacking in flavour. If you look at traditional British food it is basically warm, beige coloured and slightly salty. It's not easy to build a food culture out of that.
We have amazing produce in the UK, eg possibly the best seafood in the world, so that doesn’t explain it. We can’t grow oranges but English strawberries are superb etc etc
I’ve always understood it as the fault of the Industrial Revolution which disconnected people from rural life and the source of all their food, and of course that happened first in the UK, and in a bigger way in the UK than almost anywhere else
And British food is vastly better now (and much better than Germany or the Netherlands). TV cooking shows are a major reason for this. Maybe THE reason
I feel like somewhere between the Industrial Revolution to the hang ups from WW2 rationing and the homogenisation of species/supermarket offerings, the country forgot what culinary gifts it was blessed with. We now have world class meat produce too, not just sea food, and some fabulous traditional ways of seasoning it. Same for fruit.
The war is the biggest single recipient of blame for destroying the British diet. Powdered eggs. Everything tinned. Horrendous food trends that linger to this day. Look at the photos of the winning England team in 1966 - the teeth (or lack of). That's a legacy of the WW2 diet.
The war greatly improved health for a lot of people who ate better than otherwise. Brown bread, vitamins, British Restaurants, and so on. Perhaps more the relapse into peace. I don't think cooking changed greatly from before the war.
No, I'm afraid that's simply a myth, espoused by those who back low fat and other discredited diet methodologies. Have you seen the allowances for butter, milk and cheese in the rations? Those nutrient dense foods cannot be replaced by munching on a home grown carrot, laudible though the effort is. Sugar rationing was probably the only beneficial part of it.
Wasn't it simply that rationing meant everyone could afford to eat enough, which wasn't the case in the 1930s? Not that the mix of food was better.
Very little white bread - shift to wholemeal was a significant improvement. Vitamin enriched stuff for children.
I don't know precisely what 'vitamin-enriched' foods you're speaking of, but I do know that the origin of 'fortified with vitamins and iron' on foods was because they were replacing foods that contained natural vitamins and iron. So typically this would not be a net gain, and indeed, given that synthetic vitamins and minerals are less absorbable than those naturally occurring in foods, would represent a net loss.
I was thinking of the rosehip syprup with VitC. The wholemeal bread didn't have the vitamins taken out in the first place.
Further to this I checked. National Loaf was mainly wholemeal (maybe bulked out with oats/odd flour) but did also have added vitamins as well. So better all round.
But it was (and is) a shadow nutritionally of its natural country bread predecessor, that had to wait to absorb natural airborne yeast, rather than use fast acting brewer's yeat (a product of industrialisation). That slow process eliminated the phytic acid we discussed last week, making the natural nutrients in the grains accessible.
Also, some 'fortification' is rather dubious, for example, we still adulterate our bread with chalk (calcium carbonate) because we see this as a benefit. It's actually not too likely that our bodies and bones can absorb chalk in the way that is intended.
People say how dreadful the food is in Paris well I can tell you that's total bollox. Sitting outside just about any cafe/bistro/restaurant more than 400yds from the Gare du Nord (although the Terminus Nord looks pretty good - clean, white table cloths, wooden chairs, chequerboard floor) and you are into a just fabulous dining experience. Is it Bocuse? No. Does it need to be? Absolument non.
Day1 Crepes in the 6th, day 2 the obligatory for Brits steak frites and a decent bottle of red at a random place.
Can't beat it. You can take your persian dim sum, tasting plate, waiter explains the concept, no reservations, happening new restaurant in London and stick it up your arse.
As for the queue at Gare du Nord to come home, how embarrassing. A complete mob with customs all over the shop and clearly uncomfortable UK Border Force agents asking French families of two adults and two toddlers what the purpose of their trip to the UK was.
Stupid Brexiter arseholes.
Are you sober?
I’m going to have a wild guess and say Non
I've just said yes to one of those little bottles of wine so the answer is, shall we say, fluid.
But really - the Eurostar experience has been completely transformed. The UK Border Force person I showed my passport to had the decency to be embarrassed, as we both looked over at the French family undergoing the third degree as to why they wanted to come to the UK.
Queues meanwhile stretching along nearly to the top of the escalators.
And we voted for it all ourselves. Bravo.
Our experience too over half term. Long queues and UK border people incredibly obnoxious even to British passport holders.
People say how dreadful the food is in Paris well I can tell you that's total bollox. Sitting outside just about any cafe/bistro/restaurant more than 400yds from the Gare du Nord (although the Terminus Nord looks pretty good - clean, white table cloths, wooden chairs, chequerboard floor) and you are into a just fabulous dining experience. Is it Bocuse? No. Does it need to be? Absolument non.
Day1 Crepes in the 6th, day 2 the obligatory for Brits steak frites and a decent bottle of red at a random place.
Can't beat it. You can take your persian dim sum, tasting plate, waiter explains the concept, no reservations, happening new restaurant in London and stick it up your arse.
As for the queue at Gare du Nord to come home, how embarrassing. A complete mob with customs all over the shop and clearly uncomfortable UK Border Force agents asking French families of two adults and two toddlers what the purpose of their trip to the UK was.
Stupid Brexiter arseholes.
Are you sober?
I’m going to have a wild guess and say Non
I've just said yes to one of those little bottles of wine so the answer is, shall we say, fluid.
But really - the Eurostar experience has been completely transformed. The UK Border Force person I showed my passport to had the decency to be embarrassed, as we both looked over at the French family undergoing the third degree as to why they wanted to come to the UK.
Queues meanwhile stretching along nearly to the top of the escalators.
And we voted for it all ourselves. Bravo.
That is crap. But I’ve not ever seen it at airports and I’ve travelled a lot since Brexit
Must be a uniquely Eurostar thing.
I wonder if they have a refugee issue on the trains.
I just arrived in Samos island from Turkey (a major refugee route, you can see refugees in the Samos streets and you can see the German Italian frontex boats in the harbour)
It took well over an hour to go through passport control. This was a little ferry very obviously full of European and other tourists. Yet still we had to queue for a looooooong time. A lot of people got a lot of scrutiny. Including me. I’ve never had my passport examined so carefully before - not even at Ben Gurion
So my guess is that Eurostar have a refugee issue/policy and this may not be entirely or even at all a Brexit thing, which at least saves you having another prolapse
Now have a gin
Yep could be.
And no to gin. I have my gin from the freezer and the tonic from the fridge. No ice, no lemon. Makes having a gin outside my home a not possible event.
https://twitter.com/jane__bradley/status/1524647337557172225 ... One of the Conservative Party's biggest donors, and its former treasurer, is suspected of secretly funnelling hundreds of thousands of pounds to the party from a Russian bank account –– according to a report filed to the National Crime Agency....
And nowhere to be seen in UK media . It’s an astonishing story but for some reason isn’t getting any air play here.
Becuase the last few months have shown that the "Tories have been bought by Russia" narrative is absurd.
In brief defence of Ottolenghi; these are my favourite fishcakes, and with no rare ingredients. I highly recommend them!
"Smoked fish and parsnip cakes I love these for breakfast, but they’re good at any time. If you don’t want to make the cream, serve with a wedge of lemon instead. Serves four.
4-5 parsnips (550g) 260g smoked cod or haddock fillets, skinless and boneless, chopped into 4cm pieces 25g fresh white breadcrumbs (about 1 thin slice of bread, crust removed) 5g dill, roughly chopped 5g chives, roughly chopped 10g parsley leaves, roughly chopped 1 garlic clove, crushed 4 spring onions, finely chopped Finely grated zest of ½ lemon 1 egg, lightly whisked 20g unsalted butter 2 tbsp olive oil Salt and black pepper For the horseradish cream 2 tbsp finely grated fresh horseradish (or 1 tbsp horseradish sauce) 150g soured cream 2 tsp lemon juice
Preheat the oven to 200C/390F/gas mark 6. Mix together the ingredients for the horseradish cream with an eighth of a teaspoon of salt and a good grind of black pepper. Keep in the fridge until needed.
Place the parsnips on a small baking tray and roast for 30-35 minutes, until cooked through and soft. Once cool enough to handle, peel off and discard the skin. Place the flesh in a large bowl (you should have 270g cooked parsnip) roughly mash and set aside to cool.
Place the fish in a food processor and pulse a few times (you want it roughly chopped rather than minced) then add to the parsnip, with a half-teaspoon of salt, plenty of pepper and the remaining ingredients apart from the oil and butter. Mix well and form into eight patties: they should be about 8cm wide and 2-3cm thick. At this stage you could cover the patties and refrigerate until ready to cook, up to 24 hours ahead of time.
Add the butter and oil to a large frying pan and place on a medium-high heat. Once the butter starts to foam, add the patties and fry for six to eight minutes, turning over halfway through, until the fish is cooked and the patties are golden-brown. Serve warm, with a spoonful of the horseradish cream alongside."
Who the heck is ever going to do that FOR BREAKFAST (for four?!). It’s about 60-90 minutes of prep and cooking for something you will scoff in 2 minutes then head out
I love this bit:
“1 tsp caraway seeds, toasted and roughly crushed”
It does sound delicious but Jeeez
It's a bit more fancy than Go To Work On An Egg for sure
add the fish in the food processor, with the bread crumbs.
That means you have the body of the fish cakes in about 5 minutes.
I just like a good bit of smoked fish (undyed) with wholemeal bread and butter on the side. Simple. Or some kippers. Nom nom. Or put the fish in a Cullen skink for lunch instead
https://twitter.com/jane__bradley/status/1524647337557172225 ... One of the Conservative Party's biggest donors, and its former treasurer, is suspected of secretly funnelling hundreds of thousands of pounds to the party from a Russian bank account –– according to a report filed to the National Crime Agency....
And nowhere to be seen in UK media . It’s an astonishing story but for some reason isn’t getting any air play here.
Becuase the last few months have shown that the "Tories have been bought by Russia" narrative is absurd.
Not absurd at all. Circumstances have meant that they have quite rightly changed tack. However, there is no doubt in my mind that Russian interference in British politics and society will have encouraged Putin to think that the West would not punish him for his aggression. The taking of Russian money by British politicians, and not just Tory ones is a disgrace to our democracy. Labour and Scottish Nationalists also have form. The "Russia Report" was a scam and a cover up. I hope our politicians learn from this, in the same way I hope other countries learn form their dependence on Russian oil and gas. Pretending it didn't happen won't help at all.
People say how dreadful the food is in Paris well I can tell you that's total bollox. Sitting outside just about any cafe/bistro/restaurant more than 400yds from the Gare du Nord (although the Terminus Nord looks pretty good - clean, white table cloths, wooden chairs, chequerboard floor) and you are into a just fabulous dining experience. Is it Bocuse? No. Does it need to be? Absolument non.
Day1 Crepes in the 6th, day 2 the obligatory for Brits steak frites and a decent bottle of red at a random place.
Can't beat it. You can take your persian dim sum, tasting plate, waiter explains the concept, no reservations, happening new restaurant in London and stick it up your arse.
As for the queue at Gare du Nord to come home, how embarrassing. A complete mob with customs all over the shop and clearly uncomfortable UK Border Force agents asking French families of two adults and two toddlers what the purpose of their trip to the UK was.
Stupid Brexiter arseholes.
Are you sober?
I’m going to have a wild guess and say Non
I've just said yes to one of those little bottles of wine so the answer is, shall we say, fluid.
But really - the Eurostar experience has been completely transformed. The UK Border Force person I showed my passport to had the decency to be embarrassed, as we both looked over at the French family undergoing the third degree as to why they wanted to come to the UK.
Queues meanwhile stretching along nearly to the top of the escalators.
And we voted for it all ourselves. Bravo.
Our experience too over half term. Long queues and UK border people incredibly obnoxious even to British passport holders.
Where Lee Anderson is correct is that a shocking amount of people in this country cannot cook and have no discernible interest in food. But that is certainly not limited to the poor.
Take PB – we have fully grown professional men on here who earn £70k+++ who cannot even find their way around a saucepan, and luxuriate in eating ready meals and assorted other shite in service stations, after starting their day with coffee-flavoured dust and hot water (job done!).
We also have the quasi-hair-shirted PB Northerners who balk at spending even £40 a head in a restaurant, clearly having never done even the most rudimentary analysis of where £40 a head in a good restaurant goes.
Given such a large proportion of the English population continues to refuse to spend a reasonable proportion of its income on what it puts inside its own bodies, one can perhaps forgive (to some extent) the hackneyed stereotype held of us by our continental cousins that we are a nation of potato-faced barbarians.
An Italian colleague was lamenting Londoners calling themselves "foodies" recently, suggesting that in Italy it's just normal life. I think she's right. What we'd call a "foodie" in the UK is simply living normally in lots of European countries (notable exceptions include Germany and the Netherlands which also have the same shit food as the UK).
I defended us on the basis that the UK simply hasn't got a food culture the same as Italy, Spain or France because we have never been able to grow the same quality fruit and veg (lack of sunshine) which means our food is simply lacking in flavour. If you look at traditional British food it is basically warm, beige coloured and slightly salty. It's not easy to build a food culture out of that.
We have amazing produce in the UK, eg possibly the best seafood in the world, so that doesn’t explain it. We can’t grow oranges but English strawberries are superb etc etc
I’ve always understood it as the fault of the Industrial Revolution which disconnected people from rural life and the source of all their food, and of course that happened first in the UK, and in a bigger way in the UK than almost anywhere else
And British food is vastly better now (and much better than Germany or the Netherlands). TV cooking shows are a major reason for this. Maybe THE reason
I feel like somewhere between the Industrial Revolution to the hang ups from WW2 rationing and the homogenisation of species/supermarket offerings, the country forgot what culinary gifts it was blessed with. We now have world class meat produce too, not just sea food, and some fabulous traditional ways of seasoning it. Same for fruit.
The war is the biggest single recipient of blame for destroying the British diet. Powdered eggs. Everything tinned. Horrendous food trends that linger to this day. Look at the photos of the winning England team in 1966 - the teeth (or lack of). That's a legacy of the WW2 diet.
The war greatly improved health for a lot of people who ate better than otherwise. Brown bread, vitamins, British Restaurants, and so on. Perhaps more the relapse into peace. I don't think cooking changed greatly from before the war.
No, I'm afraid that's simply a myth, espoused by those who back low fat and other discredited diet methodologies. Have you seen the allowances for butter, milk and cheese in the rations? Those nutrient dense foods cannot be replaced by munching on a home grown carrot, laudible though the effort is. Sugar rationing was probably the only beneficial part of it.
Wasn't it simply that rationing meant everyone could afford to eat enough, which wasn't the case in the 1930s? Not that the mix of food was better.
Very little white bread - shift to wholemeal was a significant improvement. Vitamin enriched stuff for children.
I don't know precisely what 'vitamin-enriched' foods you're speaking of, but I do know that the origin of 'fortified with vitamins and iron' on foods was because they were replacing foods that contained natural vitamins and iron. So typically this would not be a net gain, and indeed, given that synthetic vitamins and minerals are less absorbable than those naturally occurring in foods, would represent a net loss.
I was thinking of the rosehip syprup with VitC. The wholemeal bread didn't have the vitamins taken out in the first place.
Further to this I checked. National Loaf was mainly wholemeal (maybe bulked out with oats/odd flour) but did also have added vitamins as well. So better all round.
But it was (and is) a shadow nutritionally of its natural country bread predecessor, that had to wait to absorb natural airborne yeast, rather than use fast acting brewer's yeat (a product of industrialisation). That slow process eliminated the phytic acid we discussed last week, making the natural nutrients in the grains accessible.
Also, some 'fortification' is rather dubious, for example, we still adulterate our bread with chalk (calcium carbonate) because we see this as a benefit. It's actually not too likely that our bodies and bones can absorb chalk in the way that is intended.
When I make bread at home I use standard dry yeast but I put the dough in the fridge for two days, the flavour is out of this world and that's with ordinary supermarket branded strong wholemeal flour, butter, salt, water, milk and yeast. It's the two day fermentation process in the fridge that completely changes it from a boring loaf of brown bread to something incredible that someone from London would buy for £4.50 in an artisan bakery.
Where Lee Anderson is correct is that a shocking amount of people in this country cannot cook and have no discernible interest in food. But that is certainly not limited to the poor.
Take PB – we have fully grown professional men on here who earn £70k+++ who cannot even find their way around a saucepan, and luxuriate in eating ready meals and assorted other shite in service stations, after starting their day with coffee-flavoured dust and hot water (job done!).
We also have the quasi-hair-shirted PB Northerners who balk at spending even £40 a head in a restaurant, clearly having never done even the most rudimentary analysis of where £40 a head in a good restaurant goes.
Given such a large proportion of the English population continues to refuse to spend a reasonable proportion of its income on what it puts inside its own bodies, one can perhaps forgive (to some extent) the hackneyed stereotype held of us by our continental cousins that we are a nation of potato-faced barbarians.
An Italian colleague was lamenting Londoners calling themselves "foodies" recently, suggesting that in Italy it's just normal life. I think she's right. What we'd call a "foodie" in the UK is simply living normally in lots of European countries (notable exceptions include Germany and the Netherlands which also have the same shit food as the UK).
I defended us on the basis that the UK simply hasn't got a food culture the same as Italy, Spain or France because we have never been able to grow the same quality fruit and veg (lack of sunshine) which means our food is simply lacking in flavour. If you look at traditional British food it is basically warm, beige coloured and slightly salty. It's not easy to build a food culture out of that.
We have amazing produce in the UK, eg possibly the best seafood in the world, so that doesn’t explain it. We can’t grow oranges but English strawberries are superb etc etc
I’ve always understood it as the fault of the Industrial Revolution which disconnected people from rural life and the source of all their food, and of course that happened first in the UK, and in a bigger way in the UK than almost anywhere else
And British food is vastly better now (and much better than Germany or the Netherlands). TV cooking shows are a major reason for this. Maybe THE reason
I feel like somewhere between the Industrial Revolution to the hang ups from WW2 rationing and the homogenisation of species/supermarket offerings, the country forgot what culinary gifts it was blessed with. We now have world class meat produce too, not just sea food, and some fabulous traditional ways of seasoning it. Same for fruit.
The war is the biggest single recipient of blame for destroying the British diet. Powdered eggs. Everything tinned. Horrendous food trends that linger to this day. Look at the photos of the winning England team in 1966 - the teeth (or lack of). That's a legacy of the WW2 diet.
The war greatly improved health for a lot of people who ate better than otherwise. Brown bread, vitamins, British Restaurants, and so on. Perhaps more the relapse into peace. I don't think cooking changed greatly from before the war.
No, I'm afraid that's simply a myth, espoused by those who back low fat and other discredited diet methodologies. Have you seen the allowances for butter, milk and cheese in the rations? Those nutrient dense foods cannot be replaced by munching on a home grown carrot, laudible though the effort is. Sugar rationing was probably the only beneficial part of it.
Wasn't it simply that rationing meant everyone could afford to eat enough, which wasn't the case in the 1930s? Not that the mix of food was better.
Very little white bread - shift to wholemeal was a significant improvement. Vitamin enriched stuff for children.
I don't know precisely what 'vitamin-enriched' foods you're speaking of, but I do know that the origin of 'fortified with vitamins and iron' on foods was because they were replacing foods that contained natural vitamins and iron. So typically this would not be a net gain, and indeed, given that synthetic vitamins and minerals are less absorbable than those naturally occurring in foods, would represent a net loss.
I was thinking of the rosehip syprup with VitC. The wholemeal bread didn't have the vitamins taken out in the first place.
Where Lee Anderson is correct is that a shocking amount of people in this country cannot cook and have no discernible interest in food. But that is certainly not limited to the poor.
Take PB – we have fully grown professional men on here who earn £70k+++ who cannot even find their way around a saucepan, and luxuriate in eating ready meals and assorted other shite in service stations, after starting their day with coffee-flavoured dust and hot water (job done!).
We also have the quasi-hair-shirted PB Northerners who balk at spending even £40 a head in a restaurant, clearly having never done even the most rudimentary analysis of where £40 a head in a good restaurant goes.
Given such a large proportion of the English population continues to refuse to spend a reasonable proportion of its income on what it puts inside its own bodies, one can perhaps forgive (to some extent) the hackneyed stereotype held of us by our continental cousins that we are a nation of potato-faced barbarians.
An Italian colleague was lamenting Londoners calling themselves "foodies" recently, suggesting that in Italy it's just normal life. I think she's right. What we'd call a "foodie" in the UK is simply living normally in lots of European countries (notable exceptions include Germany and the Netherlands which also have the same shit food as the UK).
I defended us on the basis that the UK simply hasn't got a food culture the same as Italy, Spain or France because we have never been able to grow the same quality fruit and veg (lack of sunshine) which means our food is simply lacking in flavour. If you look at traditional British food it is basically warm, beige coloured and slightly salty. It's not easy to build a food culture out of that.
Quite simply, calories are cheaper now than at any time in human history. In living memory, we have stories of food (quite ordinary food) as a treat or luxury.
There's plenty of food culture in the UK. It has been deprecated by cheap-is-better.
The obesity epidemic is an artefact of this - our culture and society is not well adapted for a situation where too many calories is the problem.
Too many calories isn't the problem. The wrong type of food is the problem.
Indeed. A truth the French and Italians understand and that we do not. Hence the raft of processed "low fat" shite in our supermarkets which is packed full of additives and, often, sugar.
Yes, a simple step we could take is to phase out the sale of margarine entirely or have a huge public health campaign to prefer butter and ban the advertising of any perceived health benefits of margarine over butter (simply, there aren't any).
We could just ban the fake colouring of margerine, and see how people like it in its natural grey.
Wow are we cancelling margarine now? I like margarine, it's much easier to spread than butter.
You like margarine? Wow, Anabob's going to blow a gasket.
Amongst my general agreement with good, primarily home-prepared tasty food, I will admit certain inverted snobberies. You just need to be selective and make your own informed choices. So for me:
Margarine: vegetable oil chemically altered to do a job, namely, to be more spreadable and healthier than butter. It gives a good layer to separate filling from bread, and I'm easy with it being the product of a chemical process using metal catalysts. That said, its almost complete substitution with blended spreads is a step forward - nothing at all wrong with a spread. I despair of my wife's general reversion to butter a few years ago, doesn't she know my life insurance isn't THAT big - butter is for taste, but only when the butter is a taste you want to come through. Happy toix and match.
Coffee: a functional food, taken primarily for its drug qualities. Love a good espresso, saturated with sugar for a hit, but some cafetiere with bitter grounds in the bottom, no thanks. I'll take my chance with instant for a regular and consistent dosage (the difference between caffeine content of fresh coffees from I'm still dead (Starbucks) to bolt upright (many independents) is not what I want in my drugs. As for Nescafé Gold Blend, trying to recreate the authentic experience of grounds in an instant - wtaf. So. I'm on Sainsbury's own brand now
Pizza with pineapple: look Italians eat ham with peaches and it's lovely. Pineapple is itself an acquired taste, it's not authentic, but I don't accept the ban. Ironically, you want a good thin tomato heavy Italian pizza, not an Americanised slab of bread - pineapple with too much bread and overly cheese heavy isn't great.
It's not healthier than butter.
Indeed, it's a fraud that has been perpetrated by Unilever on the British public that margarine is healthier than butter. Not as bad as the tobacco companies but still damaging. Butter has so many essential nutrients in it and fat from dairy is very good for us.
It boils my blood when they target older people with those loathsome ad campaigns emotionally telling people to 'make the switch'. Thankfully those seem to have calmed down these days.
Where Lee Anderson is correct is that a shocking amount of people in this country cannot cook and have no discernible interest in food. But that is certainly not limited to the poor.
Take PB – we have fully grown professional men on here who earn £70k+++ who cannot even find their way around a saucepan, and luxuriate in eating ready meals and assorted other shite in service stations, after starting their day with coffee-flavoured dust and hot water (job done!).
We also have the quasi-hair-shirted PB Northerners who balk at spending even £40 a head in a restaurant, clearly having never done even the most rudimentary analysis of where £40 a head in a good restaurant goes.
Given such a large proportion of the English population continues to refuse to spend a reasonable proportion of its income on what it puts inside its own bodies, one can perhaps forgive (to some extent) the hackneyed stereotype held of us by our continental cousins that we are a nation of potato-faced barbarians.
An Italian colleague was lamenting Londoners calling themselves "foodies" recently, suggesting that in Italy it's just normal life. I think she's right. What we'd call a "foodie" in the UK is simply living normally in lots of European countries (notable exceptions include Germany and the Netherlands which also have the same shit food as the UK).
I defended us on the basis that the UK simply hasn't got a food culture the same as Italy, Spain or France because we have never been able to grow the same quality fruit and veg (lack of sunshine) which means our food is simply lacking in flavour. If you look at traditional British food it is basically warm, beige coloured and slightly salty. It's not easy to build a food culture out of that.
We have amazing produce in the UK, eg possibly the best seafood in the world, so that doesn’t explain it. We can’t grow oranges but English strawberries are superb etc etc
I’ve always understood it as the fault of the Industrial Revolution which disconnected people from rural life and the source of all their food, and of course that happened first in the UK, and in a bigger way in the UK than almost anywhere else
And British food is vastly better now (and much better than Germany or the Netherlands). TV cooking shows are a major reason for this. Maybe THE reason
I feel like somewhere between the Industrial Revolution to the hang ups from WW2 rationing and the homogenisation of species/supermarket offerings, the country forgot what culinary gifts it was blessed with. We now have world class meat produce too, not just sea food, and some fabulous traditional ways of seasoning it. Same for fruit.
The war is the biggest single recipient of blame for destroying the British diet. Powdered eggs. Everything tinned. Horrendous food trends that linger to this day. Look at the photos of the winning England team in 1966 - the teeth (or lack of). That's a legacy of the WW2 diet.
The war greatly improved health for a lot of people who ate better than otherwise. Brown bread, vitamins, British Restaurants, and so on. Perhaps more the relapse into peace. I don't think cooking changed greatly from before the war.
No, I'm afraid that's simply a myth, espoused by those who back low fat and other discredited diet methodologies. Have you seen the allowances for butter, milk and cheese in the rations? Those nutrient dense foods cannot be replaced by munching on a home grown carrot, laudible though the effort is. Sugar rationing was probably the only beneficial part of it.
Wasn't it simply that rationing meant everyone could afford to eat enough, which wasn't the case in the 1930s? Not that the mix of food was better.
Very little white bread - shift to wholemeal was a significant improvement. Vitamin enriched stuff for children.
I don't know precisely what 'vitamin-enriched' foods you're speaking of, but I do know that the origin of 'fortified with vitamins and iron' on foods was because they were replacing foods that contained natural vitamins and iron. So typically this would not be a net gain, and indeed, given that synthetic vitamins and minerals are less absorbable than those naturally occurring in foods, would represent a net loss.
I was thinking of the rosehip syprup with VitC. The wholemeal bread didn't have the vitamins taken out in the first place.
Further to this I checked. National Loaf was mainly wholemeal (maybe bulked out with oats/odd flour) but did also have added vitamins as well. So better all round.
But it was (and is) a shadow nutritionally of its natural country bread predecessor, that had to wait to absorb natural airborne yeast, rather than use fast acting brewer's yeat (a product of industrialisation). That slow process eliminated the phytic acid we discussed last week, making the natural nutrients in the grains accessible.
Also, some 'fortification' is rather dubious, for example, we still adulterate our bread with chalk (calcium carbonate) because we see this as a benefit. It's actually not too likely that our bodies and bones can absorb chalk in the way that is intended.
When I make bread at home I use standard dry yeast but I put the dough in the fridge for two days, the flavour is out of this world and that's with ordinary supermarket branded strong wholemeal flour, butter, salt, water, milk and yeast. It's the two day fermentation process in the fridge that completely changes it from a boring loaf of brown bread to something incredible that someone from London would buy for £4.50 in an artisan bakery.
I used to do that myself, religiously - must admit I am very much off the wagon and buy supermarket crap these days.
People say how dreadful the food is in Paris well I can tell you that's total bollox. Sitting outside just about any cafe/bistro/restaurant more than 400yds from the Gare du Nord (although the Terminus Nord looks pretty good - clean, white table cloths, wooden chairs, chequerboard floor) and you are into a just fabulous dining experience. Is it Bocuse? No. Does it need to be? Absolument non.
Day1 Crepes in the 6th, day 2 the obligatory for Brits steak frites and a decent bottle of red at a random place.
Can't beat it. You can take your persian dim sum, tasting plate, waiter explains the concept, no reservations, happening new restaurant in London and stick it up your arse.
As for the queue at Gare du Nord to come home, how embarrassing. A complete mob with customs all over the shop and clearly uncomfortable UK Border Force agents asking French families of two adults and two toddlers what the purpose of their trip to the UK was.
Stupid Brexiter arseholes.
Are you sober?
I’m going to have a wild guess and say Non
I've just said yes to one of those little bottles of wine so the answer is, shall we say, fluid.
But really - the Eurostar experience has been completely transformed. The UK Border Force person I showed my passport to had the decency to be embarrassed, as we both looked over at the French family undergoing the third degree as to why they wanted to come to the UK.
Queues meanwhile stretching along nearly to the top of the escalators.
And we voted for it all ourselves. Bravo.
Our experience too over half term. Long queues and UK border people incredibly obnoxious even to British passport holders.
Where Lee Anderson is correct is that a shocking amount of people in this country cannot cook and have no discernible interest in food. But that is certainly not limited to the poor.
Take PB – we have fully grown professional men on here who earn £70k+++ who cannot even find their way around a saucepan, and luxuriate in eating ready meals and assorted other shite in service stations, after starting their day with coffee-flavoured dust and hot water (job done!).
We also have the quasi-hair-shirted PB Northerners who balk at spending even £40 a head in a restaurant, clearly having never done even the most rudimentary analysis of where £40 a head in a good restaurant goes.
Given such a large proportion of the English population continues to refuse to spend a reasonable proportion of its income on what it puts inside its own bodies, one can perhaps forgive (to some extent) the hackneyed stereotype held of us by our continental cousins that we are a nation of potato-faced barbarians.
An Italian colleague was lamenting Londoners calling themselves "foodies" recently, suggesting that in Italy it's just normal life. I think she's right. What we'd call a "foodie" in the UK is simply living normally in lots of European countries (notable exceptions include Germany and the Netherlands which also have the same shit food as the UK).
I defended us on the basis that the UK simply hasn't got a food culture the same as Italy, Spain or France because we have never been able to grow the same quality fruit and veg (lack of sunshine) which means our food is simply lacking in flavour. If you look at traditional British food it is basically warm, beige coloured and slightly salty. It's not easy to build a food culture out of that.
We have amazing produce in the UK, eg possibly the best seafood in the world, so that doesn’t explain it. We can’t grow oranges but English strawberries are superb etc etc
I’ve always understood it as the fault of the Industrial Revolution which disconnected people from rural life and the source of all their food, and of course that happened first in the UK, and in a bigger way in the UK than almost anywhere else
And British food is vastly better now (and much better than Germany or the Netherlands). TV cooking shows are a major reason for this. Maybe THE reason
I feel like somewhere between the Industrial Revolution to the hang ups from WW2 rationing and the homogenisation of species/supermarket offerings, the country forgot what culinary gifts it was blessed with. We now have world class meat produce too, not just sea food, and some fabulous traditional ways of seasoning it. Same for fruit.
The war is the biggest single recipient of blame for destroying the British diet. Powdered eggs. Everything tinned. Horrendous food trends that linger to this day. Look at the photos of the winning England team in 1966 - the teeth (or lack of). That's a legacy of the WW2 diet.
The war greatly improved health for a lot of people who ate better than otherwise. Brown bread, vitamins, British Restaurants, and so on. Perhaps more the relapse into peace. I don't think cooking changed greatly from before the war.
No, I'm afraid that's simply a myth, espoused by those who back low fat and other discredited diet methodologies. Have you seen the allowances for butter, milk and cheese in the rations? Those nutrient dense foods cannot be replaced by munching on a home grown carrot, laudible though the effort is. Sugar rationing was probably the only beneficial part of it.
Wasn't it simply that rationing meant everyone could afford to eat enough, which wasn't the case in the 1930s? Not that the mix of food was better.
Very little white bread - shift to wholemeal was a significant improvement. Vitamin enriched stuff for children.
I don't know precisely what 'vitamin-enriched' foods you're speaking of, but I do know that the origin of 'fortified with vitamins and iron' on foods was because they were replacing foods that contained natural vitamins and iron. So typically this would not be a net gain, and indeed, given that synthetic vitamins and minerals are less absorbable than those naturally occurring in foods, would represent a net loss.
I was thinking of the rosehip syprup with VitC. The wholemeal bread didn't have the vitamins taken out in the first place.
Where Lee Anderson is correct is that a shocking amount of people in this country cannot cook and have no discernible interest in food. But that is certainly not limited to the poor.
Take PB – we have fully grown professional men on here who earn £70k+++ who cannot even find their way around a saucepan, and luxuriate in eating ready meals and assorted other shite in service stations, after starting their day with coffee-flavoured dust and hot water (job done!).
We also have the quasi-hair-shirted PB Northerners who balk at spending even £40 a head in a restaurant, clearly having never done even the most rudimentary analysis of where £40 a head in a good restaurant goes.
Given such a large proportion of the English population continues to refuse to spend a reasonable proportion of its income on what it puts inside its own bodies, one can perhaps forgive (to some extent) the hackneyed stereotype held of us by our continental cousins that we are a nation of potato-faced barbarians.
An Italian colleague was lamenting Londoners calling themselves "foodies" recently, suggesting that in Italy it's just normal life. I think she's right. What we'd call a "foodie" in the UK is simply living normally in lots of European countries (notable exceptions include Germany and the Netherlands which also have the same shit food as the UK).
I defended us on the basis that the UK simply hasn't got a food culture the same as Italy, Spain or France because we have never been able to grow the same quality fruit and veg (lack of sunshine) which means our food is simply lacking in flavour. If you look at traditional British food it is basically warm, beige coloured and slightly salty. It's not easy to build a food culture out of that.
Quite simply, calories are cheaper now than at any time in human history. In living memory, we have stories of food (quite ordinary food) as a treat or luxury.
There's plenty of food culture in the UK. It has been deprecated by cheap-is-better.
The obesity epidemic is an artefact of this - our culture and society is not well adapted for a situation where too many calories is the problem.
Too many calories isn't the problem. The wrong type of food is the problem.
Indeed. A truth the French and Italians understand and that we do not. Hence the raft of processed "low fat" shite in our supermarkets which is packed full of additives and, often, sugar.
Yes, a simple step we could take is to phase out the sale of margarine entirely or have a huge public health campaign to prefer butter and ban the advertising of any perceived health benefits of margarine over butter (simply, there aren't any).
We could just ban the fake colouring of margerine, and see how people like it in its natural grey.
Wow are we cancelling margarine now? I like margarine, it's much easier to spread than butter.
You like margarine? Wow, Anabob's going to blow a gasket.
Amongst my general agreement with good, primarily home-prepared tasty food, I will admit certain inverted snobberies. You just need to be selective and make your own informed choices. So for me:
Margarine: vegetable oil chemically altered to do a job, namely, to be more spreadable and healthier than butter. It gives a good layer to separate filling from bread, and I'm easy with it being the product of a chemical process using metal catalysts. That said, its almost complete substitution with blended spreads is a step forward - nothing at all wrong with a spread. I despair of my wife's general reversion to butter a few years ago, doesn't she know my life insurance isn't THAT big - butter is for taste, but only when the butter is a taste you want to come through. Happy toix and match.
Coffee: a functional food, taken primarily for its drug qualities. Love a good espresso, saturated with sugar for a hit, but some cafetiere with bitter grounds in the bottom, no thanks. I'll take my chance with instant for a regular and consistent dosage (the difference between caffeine content of fresh coffees from I'm still dead (Starbucks) to bolt upright (many independents) is not what I want in my drugs. As for Nescafé Gold Blend, trying to recreate the authentic experience of grounds in an instant - wtaf. So. I'm on Sainsbury's own brand now
Pizza with pineapple: look Italians eat ham with peaches and it's lovely. Pineapple is itself an acquired taste, it's not authentic, but I don't accept the ban. Ironically, you want a good thin tomato heavy Italian pizza, not an Americanised slab of bread - pineapple with too much bread and overly cheese heavy isn't great.
It's not healthier than butter.
Indeed, it's a fraud that has been perpetrated by Unilever on the British public that margarine is healthier than butter. Not as bad as the tobacco companies but still damaging. Butter has so many essential nutrients in it and fat from dairy is very good for us.
It boils my blood when they target older people with those loathsome ad campaigns emotionally telling people to 'make the switch'. Thankfully those seem to have calmed down these days.
They've moved on to the 'plant based' cash cow. Buy processed shit to make your grandkids happy. Veggie is fine, the 'plant based' processed muck not so much
https://twitter.com/jane__bradley/status/1524647337557172225 ... One of the Conservative Party's biggest donors, and its former treasurer, is suspected of secretly funnelling hundreds of thousands of pounds to the party from a Russian bank account –– according to a report filed to the National Crime Agency....
And nowhere to be seen in UK media . It’s an astonishing story but for some reason isn’t getting any air play here.
Becuase the last few months have shown that the "Tories have been bought by Russia" narrative is absurd.
Not absurd at all. Circumstances have meant that they have quite rightly changed tack. However, there is no doubt in my mind that Russian interference in British politics and society will have encouraged Putin to think that the West would not punish him for his aggression. The taking of Russian money by British politicians, and not just Tory ones is a disgrace to our democracy. Labour and Scottish Nationalists also have form. The "Russia Report" was a scam and a cover up. I hope our politicians learn from this, in the same way I hope other countries learn form their dependence on Russian oil and gas. Pretending it didn't happen won't help at all.
Oh, I don't doubt that Russia tried to interfere. But whatever they paid, it wasn't worth it.
In brief defence of Ottolenghi; these are my favourite fishcakes, and with no rare ingredients. I highly recommend them!
"Smoked fish and parsnip cakes I love these for breakfast, but they’re good at any time. If you don’t want to make the cream, serve with a wedge of lemon instead. Serves four.
4-5 parsnips (550g) 260g smoked cod or haddock fillets, skinless and boneless, chopped into 4cm pieces 25g fresh white breadcrumbs (about 1 thin slice of bread, crust removed) 5g dill, roughly chopped 5g chives, roughly chopped 10g parsley leaves, roughly chopped 1 garlic clove, crushed 4 spring onions, finely chopped Finely grated zest of ½ lemon 1 egg, lightly whisked 20g unsalted butter 2 tbsp olive oil Salt and black pepper For the horseradish cream 2 tbsp finely grated fresh horseradish (or 1 tbsp horseradish sauce) 150g soured cream 2 tsp lemon juice
Preheat the oven to 200C/390F/gas mark 6. Mix together the ingredients for the horseradish cream with an eighth of a teaspoon of salt and a good grind of black pepper. Keep in the fridge until needed.
Place the parsnips on a small baking tray and roast for 30-35 minutes, until cooked through and soft. Once cool enough to handle, peel off and discard the skin. Place the flesh in a large bowl (you should have 270g cooked parsnip) roughly mash and set aside to cool.
Place the fish in a food processor and pulse a few times (you want it roughly chopped rather than minced) then add to the parsnip, with a half-teaspoon of salt, plenty of pepper and the remaining ingredients apart from the oil and butter. Mix well and form into eight patties: they should be about 8cm wide and 2-3cm thick. At this stage you could cover the patties and refrigerate until ready to cook, up to 24 hours ahead of time.
Add the butter and oil to a large frying pan and place on a medium-high heat. Once the butter starts to foam, add the patties and fry for six to eight minutes, turning over halfway through, until the fish is cooked and the patties are golden-brown. Serve warm, with a spoonful of the horseradish cream alongside."
Who the heck is ever going to do that FOR BREAKFAST (for four?!). It’s about 60-90 minutes of prep and cooking for something you will scoff in 2 minutes then head out
I love this bit:
“1 tsp caraway seeds, toasted and roughly crushed”
It does sound delicious but Jeeez
It's a bit more fancy than Go To Work On An Egg for sure
Sure, but you can do a perfect scrambled egg in about three minutes. Shred a bit of smoked salmon on top perhaps, or grate in some fresh turmeric if you want fancy.
Don't keep your butter in the fridge during the day, we have ours on a butter dish with a nice lid and the first one out of bed just takes it out of the fridge while the coffee machine heats up, by the time the other of us is downstairs it's perfect for spreading on toast. Just need to put half of a small block out at a time. Not looking forwards to making the switch to unsalted though.
You won't miss salt if you gradually phase it out. My wife and I largely stopped using salt about thirty years ago, pretty much without noticing. It wasn't a conscious health-kick particularly, we just found ourselves using less and less added salt most of the time, and eventually none except on a few things like tomatoes. We certainly don't miss salted butter - in fact, it tastes rather unpleasant now.
What’s wrong with salt? It’s like fat. It gives the flavour
Camargue fleur de sel or Ynys Mon sea salt. Of course.
Gosh, we agree again. Salt is only a problem if you have high blood pressure or a propensity or family history of said malady. Otherwise, the rest of us would rather not indulge in tasteless food.
Where Lee Anderson is correct is that a shocking amount of people in this country cannot cook and have no discernible interest in food. But that is certainly not limited to the poor.
Take PB – we have fully grown professional men on here who earn £70k+++ who cannot even find their way around a saucepan, and luxuriate in eating ready meals and assorted other shite in service stations, after starting their day with coffee-flavoured dust and hot water (job done!).
We also have the quasi-hair-shirted PB Northerners who balk at spending even £40 a head in a restaurant, clearly having never done even the most rudimentary analysis of where £40 a head in a good restaurant goes.
Given such a large proportion of the English population continues to refuse to spend a reasonable proportion of its income on what it puts inside its own bodies, one can perhaps forgive (to some extent) the hackneyed stereotype held of us by our continental cousins that we are a nation of potato-faced barbarians.
An Italian colleague was lamenting Londoners calling themselves "foodies" recently, suggesting that in Italy it's just normal life. I think she's right. What we'd call a "foodie" in the UK is simply living normally in lots of European countries (notable exceptions include Germany and the Netherlands which also have the same shit food as the UK).
I defended us on the basis that the UK simply hasn't got a food culture the same as Italy, Spain or France because we have never been able to grow the same quality fruit and veg (lack of sunshine) which means our food is simply lacking in flavour. If you look at traditional British food it is basically warm, beige coloured and slightly salty. It's not easy to build a food culture out of that.
We have amazing produce in the UK, eg possibly the best seafood in the world, so that doesn’t explain it. We can’t grow oranges but English strawberries are superb etc etc
I’ve always understood it as the fault of the Industrial Revolution which disconnected people from rural life and the source of all their food, and of course that happened first in the UK, and in a bigger way in the UK than almost anywhere else
And British food is vastly better now (and much better than Germany or the Netherlands). TV cooking shows are a major reason for this. Maybe THE reason
I feel like somewhere between the Industrial Revolution to the hang ups from WW2 rationing and the homogenisation of species/supermarket offerings, the country forgot what culinary gifts it was blessed with. We now have world class meat produce too, not just sea food, and some fabulous traditional ways of seasoning it. Same for fruit.
The war is the biggest single recipient of blame for destroying the British diet. Powdered eggs. Everything tinned. Horrendous food trends that linger to this day. Look at the photos of the winning England team in 1966 - the teeth (or lack of). That's a legacy of the WW2 diet.
The war greatly improved health for a lot of people who ate better than otherwise. Brown bread, vitamins, British Restaurants, and so on. Perhaps more the relapse into peace. I don't think cooking changed greatly from before the war.
No, I'm afraid that's simply a myth, espoused by those who back low fat and other discredited diet methodologies. Have you seen the allowances for butter, milk and cheese in the rations? Those nutrient dense foods cannot be replaced by munching on a home grown carrot, laudible though the effort is. Sugar rationing was probably the only beneficial part of it.
Wasn't it simply that rationing meant everyone could afford to eat enough, which wasn't the case in the 1930s? Not that the mix of food was better.
Very little white bread - shift to wholemeal was a significant improvement. Vitamin enriched stuff for children.
I don't know precisely what 'vitamin-enriched' foods you're speaking of, but I do know that the origin of 'fortified with vitamins and iron' on foods was because they were replacing foods that contained natural vitamins and iron. So typically this would not be a net gain, and indeed, given that synthetic vitamins and minerals are less absorbable than those naturally occurring in foods, would represent a net loss.
I was thinking of the rosehip syprup with VitC. The wholemeal bread didn't have the vitamins taken out in the first place.
Further to this I checked. National Loaf was mainly wholemeal (maybe bulked out with oats/odd flour) but did also have added vitamins as well. So better all round.
But it was (and is) a shadow nutritionally of its natural country bread predecessor, that had to wait to absorb natural airborne yeast, rather than use fast acting brewer's yeat (a product of industrialisation). That slow process eliminated the phytic acid we discussed last week, making the natural nutrients in the grains accessible.
Also, some 'fortification' is rather dubious, for example, we still adulterate our bread with chalk (calcium carbonate) because we see this as a benefit. It's actually not too likely that our bodies and bones can absorb chalk in the way that is intended.
The chalk wouldn't be absorbed as chalk. The ions would dissociate in the stomach to Ca2+ and CO3 2- which last would vanish in the acid environment. So same calcium as always. There is an issue with chelation to phytic acid IIRC so it's seen as useful to ensure some extra, but I'm not an expert on this.
In brief defence of Ottolenghi; these are my favourite fishcakes, and with no rare ingredients. I highly recommend them!
"Smoked fish and parsnip cakes I love these for breakfast, but they’re good at any time. If you don’t want to make the cream, serve with a wedge of lemon instead. Serves four.
4-5 parsnips (550g) 260g smoked cod or haddock fillets, skinless and boneless, chopped into 4cm pieces 25g fresh white breadcrumbs (about 1 thin slice of bread, crust removed) 5g dill, roughly chopped 5g chives, roughly chopped 10g parsley leaves, roughly chopped 1 garlic clove, crushed 4 spring onions, finely chopped Finely grated zest of ½ lemon 1 egg, lightly whisked 20g unsalted butter 2 tbsp olive oil Salt and black pepper For the horseradish cream 2 tbsp finely grated fresh horseradish (or 1 tbsp horseradish sauce) 150g soured cream 2 tsp lemon juice
Preheat the oven to 200C/390F/gas mark 6. Mix together the ingredients for the horseradish cream with an eighth of a teaspoon of salt and a good grind of black pepper. Keep in the fridge until needed.
Place the parsnips on a small baking tray and roast for 30-35 minutes, until cooked through and soft. Once cool enough to handle, peel off and discard the skin. Place the flesh in a large bowl (you should have 270g cooked parsnip) roughly mash and set aside to cool.
Place the fish in a food processor and pulse a few times (you want it roughly chopped rather than minced) then add to the parsnip, with a half-teaspoon of salt, plenty of pepper and the remaining ingredients apart from the oil and butter. Mix well and form into eight patties: they should be about 8cm wide and 2-3cm thick. At this stage you could cover the patties and refrigerate until ready to cook, up to 24 hours ahead of time.
Add the butter and oil to a large frying pan and place on a medium-high heat. Once the butter starts to foam, add the patties and fry for six to eight minutes, turning over halfway through, until the fish is cooked and the patties are golden-brown. Serve warm, with a spoonful of the horseradish cream alongside."
Who the heck is ever going to do that FOR BREAKFAST (for four?!). It’s about 60-90 minutes of prep and cooking for something you will scoff in 2 minutes then head out
I love this bit:
“1 tsp caraway seeds, toasted and roughly crushed”
It does sound delicious but Jeeez
It's a bit more fancy than Go To Work On An Egg for sure
Sure, but you can do a perfect scrambled egg in about three minutes. Shred a bit of smoked salmon on top perhaps, or grate in some fresh turmeric if you want fancy.
Zero effort.
Indeed. And I do funnily enough! (Not turmeric, might try that though) But I also sometimes just have a boiled egg and a bit of bread or kippers or etc etc.
Don't keep your butter in the fridge during the day, we have ours on a butter dish with a nice lid and the first one out of bed just takes it out of the fridge while the coffee machine heats up, by the time the other of us is downstairs it's perfect for spreading on toast. Just need to put half of a small block out at a time. Not looking forwards to making the switch to unsalted though.
You won't miss salt if you gradually phase it out. My wife and I largely stopped using salt about thirty years ago, pretty much without noticing. It wasn't a conscious health-kick particularly, we just found ourselves using less and less added salt most of the time, and eventually none except on a few things like tomatoes. We certainly don't miss salted butter - in fact, it tastes rather unpleasant now.
What’s wrong with salt? It’s like fat. It gives the flavour
Camargue fleur de sel or Ynys Mon sea salt. Of course.
Gosh, we agree again. Salt is only a problem if you have high blood pressure or a propensity or family history of said malady. Otherwise, the rest of us would rather not indulge in tasteless food.
It's also necessary for life. Every animal needs their salt lick.
Where Lee Anderson is correct is that a shocking amount of people in this country cannot cook and have no discernible interest in food. But that is certainly not limited to the poor.
Take PB – we have fully grown professional men on here who earn £70k+++ who cannot even find their way around a saucepan, and luxuriate in eating ready meals and assorted other shite in service stations, after starting their day with coffee-flavoured dust and hot water (job done!).
We also have the quasi-hair-shirted PB Northerners who balk at spending even £40 a head in a restaurant, clearly having never done even the most rudimentary analysis of where £40 a head in a good restaurant goes.
Given such a large proportion of the English population continues to refuse to spend a reasonable proportion of its income on what it puts inside its own bodies, one can perhaps forgive (to some extent) the hackneyed stereotype held of us by our continental cousins that we are a nation of potato-faced barbarians.
An Italian colleague was lamenting Londoners calling themselves "foodies" recently, suggesting that in Italy it's just normal life. I think she's right. What we'd call a "foodie" in the UK is simply living normally in lots of European countries (notable exceptions include Germany and the Netherlands which also have the same shit food as the UK).
I defended us on the basis that the UK simply hasn't got a food culture the same as Italy, Spain or France because we have never been able to grow the same quality fruit and veg (lack of sunshine) which means our food is simply lacking in flavour. If you look at traditional British food it is basically warm, beige coloured and slightly salty. It's not easy to build a food culture out of that.
We have amazing produce in the UK, eg possibly the best seafood in the world, so that doesn’t explain it. We can’t grow oranges but English strawberries are superb etc etc
I’ve always understood it as the fault of the Industrial Revolution which disconnected people from rural life and the source of all their food, and of course that happened first in the UK, and in a bigger way in the UK than almost anywhere else
And British food is vastly better now (and much better than Germany or the Netherlands). TV cooking shows are a major reason for this. Maybe THE reason
I feel like somewhere between the Industrial Revolution to the hang ups from WW2 rationing and the homogenisation of species/supermarket offerings, the country forgot what culinary gifts it was blessed with. We now have world class meat produce too, not just sea food, and some fabulous traditional ways of seasoning it. Same for fruit.
The war is the biggest single recipient of blame for destroying the British diet. Powdered eggs. Everything tinned. Horrendous food trends that linger to this day. Look at the photos of the winning England team in 1966 - the teeth (or lack of). That's a legacy of the WW2 diet.
The war greatly improved health for a lot of people who ate better than otherwise. Brown bread, vitamins, British Restaurants, and so on. Perhaps more the relapse into peace. I don't think cooking changed greatly from before the war.
No, I'm afraid that's simply a myth, espoused by those who back low fat and other discredited diet methodologies. Have you seen the allowances for butter, milk and cheese in the rations? Those nutrient dense foods cannot be replaced by munching on a home grown carrot, laudible though the effort is. Sugar rationing was probably the only beneficial part of it.
Wasn't it simply that rationing meant everyone could afford to eat enough, which wasn't the case in the 1930s? Not that the mix of food was better.
Very little white bread - shift to wholemeal was a significant improvement. Vitamin enriched stuff for children.
I don't know precisely what 'vitamin-enriched' foods you're speaking of, but I do know that the origin of 'fortified with vitamins and iron' on foods was because they were replacing foods that contained natural vitamins and iron. So typically this would not be a net gain, and indeed, given that synthetic vitamins and minerals are less absorbable than those naturally occurring in foods, would represent a net loss.
I was thinking of the rosehip syprup with VitC. The wholemeal bread didn't have the vitamins taken out in the first place.
Where Lee Anderson is correct is that a shocking amount of people in this country cannot cook and have no discernible interest in food. But that is certainly not limited to the poor.
Take PB – we have fully grown professional men on here who earn £70k+++ who cannot even find their way around a saucepan, and luxuriate in eating ready meals and assorted other shite in service stations, after starting their day with coffee-flavoured dust and hot water (job done!).
We also have the quasi-hair-shirted PB Northerners who balk at spending even £40 a head in a restaurant, clearly having never done even the most rudimentary analysis of where £40 a head in a good restaurant goes.
Given such a large proportion of the English population continues to refuse to spend a reasonable proportion of its income on what it puts inside its own bodies, one can perhaps forgive (to some extent) the hackneyed stereotype held of us by our continental cousins that we are a nation of potato-faced barbarians.
An Italian colleague was lamenting Londoners calling themselves "foodies" recently, suggesting that in Italy it's just normal life. I think she's right. What we'd call a "foodie" in the UK is simply living normally in lots of European countries (notable exceptions include Germany and the Netherlands which also have the same shit food as the UK).
I defended us on the basis that the UK simply hasn't got a food culture the same as Italy, Spain or France because we have never been able to grow the same quality fruit and veg (lack of sunshine) which means our food is simply lacking in flavour. If you look at traditional British food it is basically warm, beige coloured and slightly salty. It's not easy to build a food culture out of that.
Quite simply, calories are cheaper now than at any time in human history. In living memory, we have stories of food (quite ordinary food) as a treat or luxury.
There's plenty of food culture in the UK. It has been deprecated by cheap-is-better.
The obesity epidemic is an artefact of this - our culture and society is not well adapted for a situation where too many calories is the problem.
Too many calories isn't the problem. The wrong type of food is the problem.
Indeed. A truth the French and Italians understand and that we do not. Hence the raft of processed "low fat" shite in our supermarkets which is packed full of additives and, often, sugar.
Yes, a simple step we could take is to phase out the sale of margarine entirely or have a huge public health campaign to prefer butter and ban the advertising of any perceived health benefits of margarine over butter (simply, there aren't any).
We could just ban the fake colouring of margerine, and see how people like it in its natural grey.
Wow are we cancelling margarine now? I like margarine, it's much easier to spread than butter.
You like margarine? Wow, Anabob's going to blow a gasket.
Amongst my general agreement with good, primarily home-prepared tasty food, I will admit certain inverted snobberies. You just need to be selective and make your own informed choices. So for me:
Margarine: vegetable oil chemically altered to do a job, namely, to be more spreadable and healthier than butter. It gives a good layer to separate filling from bread, and I'm easy with it being the product of a chemical process using metal catalysts. That said, its almost complete substitution with blended spreads is a step forward - nothing at all wrong with a spread. I despair of my wife's general reversion to butter a few years ago, doesn't she know my life insurance isn't THAT big - butter is for taste, but only when the butter is a taste you want to come through. Happy toix and match.
Coffee: a functional food, taken primarily for its drug qualities. Love a good espresso, saturated with sugar for a hit, but some cafetiere with bitter grounds in the bottom, no thanks. I'll take my chance with instant for a regular and consistent dosage (the difference between caffeine content of fresh coffees from I'm still dead (Starbucks) to bolt upright (many independents) is not what I want in my drugs. As for Nescafé Gold Blend, trying to recreate the authentic experience of grounds in an instant - wtaf. So. I'm on Sainsbury's own brand now
Pizza with pineapple: look Italians eat ham with peaches and it's lovely. Pineapple is itself an acquired taste, it's not authentic, but I don't accept the ban. Ironically, you want a good thin tomato heavy Italian pizza, not an Americanised slab of bread - pineapple with too much bread and overly cheese heavy isn't great.
It's not healthier than butter.
Indeed, it's a fraud that has been perpetrated by Unilever on the British public that margarine is healthier than butter. Not as bad as the tobacco companies but still damaging. Butter has so many essential nutrients in it and fat from dairy is very good for us.
Sad to see that otherwise educated PBers still, even now, believe margarine to be healthier than butter. What absolute garbage.
https://twitter.com/jane__bradley/status/1524647337557172225 ... One of the Conservative Party's biggest donors, and its former treasurer, is suspected of secretly funnelling hundreds of thousands of pounds to the party from a Russian bank account –– according to a report filed to the National Crime Agency....
And nowhere to be seen in UK media . It’s an astonishing story but for some reason isn’t getting any air play here.
Becuase the last few months have shown that the "Tories have been bought by Russia" narrative is absurd.
Not absurd at all. Circumstances have meant that they have quite rightly changed tack. However, there is no doubt in my mind that Russian interference in British politics and society will have encouraged Putin to think that the West would not punish him for his aggression. The taking of Russian money by British politicians, and not just Tory ones is a disgrace to our democracy. Labour and Scottish Nationalists also have form. The "Russia Report" was a scam and a cover up. I hope our politicians learn from this, in the same way I hope other countries learn form their dependence on Russian oil and gas. Pretending it didn't happen won't help at all.
Oh, I don't doubt that Russia tried to interfere. But whatever they paid, it wasn't worth it.
Comments
7th it says here, beaten mainly by the cheese-and-vodka countries.
No idea how this will end up changing anything, or by how much.
It’s a serious question and I’ve never seen any research on it.
Edit; I see they are not “first” but they are right up there. It requires explanation.
Camargue fleur de sel or Ynys Mon sea salt. Of course.
But NZ is a small market and so producers tend to put out overly-commoditised stuff.
if you grow one vegetable, grow asparagus.
The level of support that some expectant mothers require to do even the most basic things is extraordinary. They simply know nothing, and evidently have learned nothing from either the education system or their families. They even have to be taken out, and accompanied, to go to the High Street for a walk or to shop.
And we're surprised they're not conjuring up imaginative meals for their children.
I do wonder if we really need to see a drastic reorientation in our schools towards basic life-skills, especially for the less-academic.
Day1 Crepes in the 6th, day 2 the obligatory for Brits steak frites and a decent bottle of red at a random place.
Can't beat it. You can take your persian dim sum, tasting plate, waiter explains the concept, no reservations, happening new restaurant in London and stick it up your arse.
As for the queue at Gare du Nord to come home, how embarrassing. A complete mob with customs all over the shop and clearly uncomfortable UK Border Force agents asking French families of two adults and two toddlers what the purpose of their trip to the UK was.
Stupid Brexiter arseholes.
Every kitchen should have it.
A national challenge of "Just Do It"
Just fry an egg
Just get on a bike
Just........
Absolute crap; a real stinker. The 1970s were really odd, sexually. I presume it was a kind of collective insanity produced by loosening the repression of earlier times.
I also don’t “get” Marlon Brando. Even in “On the Waterfront”.
If a bit same-ish after a while.
"Smoked fish and parsnip cakes
I love these for breakfast, but they’re good at any time. If you don’t want to make the cream, serve with a wedge of lemon instead. Serves four.
4-5 parsnips (550g)
260g smoked cod or haddock fillets, skinless and boneless, chopped into 4cm pieces
25g fresh white breadcrumbs (about 1 thin slice of bread, crust removed)
5g dill, roughly chopped
5g chives, roughly chopped
10g parsley leaves, roughly chopped
1 garlic clove, crushed
4 spring onions, finely chopped
Finely grated zest of ½ lemon
1 egg, lightly whisked
1 tsp caraway seeds, toasted and roughly crushed
20g unsalted butter
2 tbsp olive oil
Salt and black pepper
For the horseradish cream
2 tbsp finely grated fresh horseradish (or 1 tbsp horseradish sauce)
150g soured cream
2 tsp lemon juice
Preheat the oven to 200C/390F/gas mark 6. Mix together the ingredients for the horseradish cream with an eighth of a teaspoon of salt and a good grind of black pepper. Keep in the fridge until needed.
Place the parsnips on a small baking tray and roast for 30-35 minutes, until cooked through and soft. Once cool enough to handle, peel off and discard the skin. Place the flesh in a large bowl (you should have 270g cooked parsnip) roughly mash and set aside to cool.
Place the fish in a food processor and pulse a few times (you want it roughly chopped rather than minced) then add to the parsnip, with a half-teaspoon of salt, plenty of pepper and the remaining ingredients apart from the oil and butter. Mix well and form into eight patties: they should be about 8cm wide and 2-3cm thick. At this stage you could cover the patties and refrigerate until ready to cook, up to 24 hours ahead of time.
Add the butter and oil to a large frying pan and place on a medium-high heat. Once the butter starts to foam, add the patties and fry for six to eight minutes, turning over halfway through, until the fish is cooked and the patties are golden-brown. Serve warm, with a spoonful of the horseradish cream alongside."
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/aug/20/yottam-ottolenghi-fishcake-recipes
Really disappointing. And they have Marks and Sparks.
Culture cuckoos innit
The UK is doing it all wrong.
Stay the fuck away from sugar and carbs.
Japanese food is great. Japanese food IN JAPAN is incredible. Possibly the best cuisine in the world alongside Vietnamese (also salty, and they’re also thin as fuck)
That was in the Armed Forces schools in Cyprus. Came home as a 14-year old to Plymouth to a grammar school and don't recall any of those subjects on offer.
Same applies to a lot of stuff, that its shock value masks its basic crapness. Oscar Wilde's posh Lords whose Hideous Secret Can Only Be Hinted At, don't really work in a world where Lord X would be married to his male butler and tweeting about which one prefer rimming/being rimmed. And I had to sit through a stage production of Breakfast At Tiffany's on, oddly, Brexitrefnacht 2016, and the point of that seemed to be Hey, She Drinks Gin And Puts Out For Money!!!! I mean, wow.
https://twitter.com/jane__bradley/status/1524647337557172225
... One of the Conservative Party's biggest donors, and its former treasurer, is suspected of secretly funnelling hundreds of thousands of pounds to the party from a Russian bank account –– according to a report filed to the National Crime Agency....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_effects_of_salt#Long-term_effects
But really - the Eurostar experience has been completely transformed. The UK Border Force person I showed my passport to had the decency to be embarrassed, as we both looked over at the French family undergoing the third degree as to why they wanted to come to the UK.
Queues meanwhile stretching along nearly to the top of the escalators.
And we voted for it all ourselves. Bravo.
But these things are hard to untangle, as excess salt consumption often goes hand in hand with other risk factors, such as extremely processed food, high fat, high sugar. So hard to link to salt per se.
*you can of course find 'come studies' to show almost anything, but I think these were fairly reputable, ones I came across in the course of work
BP, heart disease and stroke are the risks but not if you monitor yourself ok.
Salt rules. Obviously not the road gritting shit for 59p a giant pot in the chippy but even a half serviceable pot of Anglesey or Maldon etc as a finishing salt adds everything and isn't too pricey if you don't go nuts
Margarine: vegetable oil chemically altered to do a job, namely, to be more spreadable and healthier than butter. It gives a good layer to separate filling from bread, and I'm easy with it being the product of a chemical process using metal catalysts. That said, its almost complete substitution with blended spreads is a step forward - nothing at all wrong with a spread. I despair of my wife's general reversion to butter a few years ago, doesn't she know my life insurance isn't THAT big - butter is for taste, but only when the butter is a taste you want to come through. Happy toix and match.
Coffee: a functional food, taken primarily for its drug qualities. Love a good espresso, saturated with sugar for a hit, but some cafetiere with bitter grounds in the bottom, no thanks. I'll take my chance with instant for a regular and consistent dosage (the difference between caffeine content of fresh coffees from I'm still dead (Starbucks) to bolt upright (many independents) is not what I want in my drugs. As for Nescafé Gold Blend, trying to recreate the authentic experience of grounds in an instant - wtaf. So. I'm on Sainsbury's own brand now
Pizza with pineapple: look Italians eat ham with peaches and it's lovely. Pineapple is itself an acquired taste, it's not authentic, but I don't accept the ban. Ironically, you want a good thin tomato heavy Italian pizza, not an Americanised slab of bread - pineapple with too much bread and overly cheese heavy isn't great.
I love this bit:
“1 tsp caraway seeds, toasted and roughly crushed”
It does sound delicious but Jeeez
...In connection to this, I am deeply concerned by the Conservative party’s use of lawfare to bat away the questions I have asked about potential national security threats that predate the issues we are discussing today. In February 2019, I wrote to the then chair of the Conservative party, the right hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Brandon Lewis), asking him to investigate donations by Ehud “Udi” Sheleg, who had been reported in the media as having strong connections to Russia and as probably not being able to afford the £1.8 million of donations that may or may not be connected to his being appointed treasurer of the Conservative party—I would not wish to speculate.
The reply I received from the right hon. Gentleman made it clear that Mr Sheleg should not need to reveal the source of his wealth. It also threatened me with libel action, with the right hon. Gentleman, who is now Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, using the same tactics that Russian oligarchs have been using to silence criticism and block investigations.
Madam Deputy Speaker
(Dame Rosie Winterton)
Order. I need to make sure that the hon. Gentleman is referring to the matter in hand, which is Lord Lebedev and the appointment process.
Stephen Kinnock
Thank you, Madam Speaker. What I am trying to do is set out clearly the worrying pattern of behaviour, but I take your feedback and I will move on...
Who the f*** gives a flying sh*t about anything these people say or do and why is it front page news? Why is it even in the courts? It all sounds like it belongs in the infants' school playground.
Gasket now duly blown.
Must be a uniquely Eurostar thing.
I wonder if they have a refugee issue on the trains.
I just arrived in Samos island from Turkey (a major refugee route, you can see refugees in the Samos streets and you can see the German Italian frontex boats in the harbour)
It took well over an hour to go through passport control. This was a little ferry very obviously full of
European and other tourists. Yet still we had to queue for a looooooong time. A lot of people got a lot of scrutiny. Including me. I’ve never had my passport examined so carefully before - not even at Ben Gurion
So my guess is that Eurostar have a refugee issue/policy and this may not be entirely or even at all a Brexit thing, which at least saves you having another prolapse
Now have a gin
5g dill,
5g chives,
10g parsley leaves,
1 garlic clove,
4 spring onions,
go in the food processor
add the fish in the food processor, with the bread crumbs.
That means you have the body of the fish cakes in about 5 minutes.
EDIT: Just steam the parsnips.
Also, some 'fortification' is rather dubious, for example, we still adulterate our bread with chalk (calcium carbonate) because we see this as a benefit. It's actually not too likely that our bodies and bones can absorb chalk in the way that is intended.
The state of it 😣
And no to gin. I have my gin from the freezer and the tonic from the fridge. No ice, no lemon. Makes having a gin outside my home a not possible event.
Or put the fish in a Cullen skink for lunch instead
She's lost it.
Veggie is fine, the 'plant based' processed muck not so much
Shred a bit of smoked salmon on top perhaps, or grate in some fresh turmeric if you want fancy.
Zero effort.
But I also sometimes just have a boiled egg and a bit of bread or kippers or etc etc.