Is British Food Really That Bad Part Two: The Sampling

Why do so many traditional British dishes sound like euphemisms for sex?  “Oh aye, I gave her a right serving of me Ploughman’s Lunch.”  “Going home for a bit of the old Yorkshire Pudding (wink, wink, nudge, nudge).”  “She’s a lovely bit of Crumpet.”  Bangers and Mash doesn’t even require much imagination to make it sound naughty. Cream Tea anyone?

I ask you?  These people are so rude!  What do you mean it’s just me…

But wherever you are you gotta eat (words of wisdom from some mother no doubt).  This can be quite a worrying fact of human life when one is in a foreign country.  There are, of course, inevitable universals—like the McDonald’s sign indelibly fixed to part of the wall around the Tower of London pointing tourists in the right direction for the nearest heart attack.  More recently, Subway has firmly transplanted itself in the UK.  I remember vividly when the first beloved sandwich shop opened in Harrogate.  I did a little dance.  Literally.

Outside of fast food options, it seems anywhere you go in the Western World, you can find a version of a grilled cheese sandwich (in the UK, ask for a cheese toastie or simply “cheese on toast”) and apple pie (here they call it “apple pie” but you get it smothered in warm custard rather than with a scoop of ice cream).  Hot cheese on bread and apples in crust aside, there are aspects of English cuisine that seem exotic–or at least strange–right up until the time you actually eat it.

For those of you new to Britain, contemplating a trip to Britain or simply curious about what all this weird sounding food is really all about, let me offer the following anecdotes from my own explorations into British Food.

Bangers and Mash.  This is a rather risque name for a frankly vanilla sort of meal.  The “mash” is mashed potato and “bangers” are sausages.  (The term is also used by some as a slang term for breasts, but if you are ordering in a pub you will not get a bodacious waitress inviting you to eat potato from her cleavage.  Sorry to spoil the fantasy.)  English sausages can vary wildly in quality—from the utterly marvelous to the barely digestible.  If you are purchasing from a grocery store, the varieties of sausage will amaze you.  Like many food products, the varieties are given regional names: Lincolnshire, Cumberland, Aberdeen Angus etc.  Should be served with a rich, onion gravy or a tin of beans.

Crumpets.  Crumpets are very difficult to describe to an American because we really have no equivalent.  They are generally served in similar ways and under similar eating conditions as American biscuits (which the English have no concept of) or English Muffins (only here they are just called “muffins”).  Visually they are approximately the same size as a muffin and smothered with butter/butter-like product and either jam, honey or marmite.  (Marmite is a controversial topic deserving a separate post of its own).  But the texture of a crumpet is completely different.  They are chewy for starters, not flaky or crispy at all.  Though if toasted properly, they can get a slight crispy edge to the top.  They have a subtle sourdough flavour.  Serve warm with a hot cup of tea.

Ploughman’s Lunch.  This is another one of those English dishes that sounds far more terrifying than it actually is.  At most cafes in this country, including those at major and minor tourist destinations, you will see a Ploughman’s Lunch advertised, but mostly likely will avoid it out of sheer terror and/or confusion. A Ploughman’s Lunch could not be more Yankee friendly if it tried.  It’s basically a just a cold plate of cheeses, meats, salad and a roll generally served with some kind of relish, pickle or chutney.  I convinced my Dad to try it a few years ago and it has become his lunch of choice in the UK.

Black Pudding.  Also known as blood sausage, Black Pudding often takes a starring role in people’s nightmares about English food.  My sadistic brother-in-law, well-known fan of Black Pudding, could not wait to force it on me.  Interestingly, England is not the only country which has black/blood pudding on its menu.  Most European as well as many Asian countries produce a sausage whose primary ingredient is congealed animal (usually pig) blood and grain fillers such as oatmeal.  In the UK, Black Pudding commonly comes in a log and is sliced and fried as part of a cooked breakfast.  But what does blood sausage actually taste like?  Have I dared to eat it?  Could I even look at it without fainting?  Sorry to disappoint you, but Black Pudding tastes pretty much like a rich, meaty textured sausage.  Nothing scary at all.

Spotted Dick.  Even the Brits admit this one sounds like some kind of sexually transmitted disease.  It is, in fact, one of the many delicious varieties of steamed sponge pudding.  Imagine taking something that is essentially cake batter, but instead of baking it, you steam it in a sealed, buttered bowl.  I have no idea where the “dick” part comes into it, but the “spots” are raisins.  Drench it in warm custard and enjoy.

Yorkshire Pudding.  Contrary to logic, Yorkshire Pudding is not a dessert—though its basic recipe is similar to unsweetened pancake batter.  Yorkshire pudding is essentially a side dish for a savoury meal, usually roast beef or sausage, served with liberal amounts of gravy.  Perhaps the nearest example America has to it is the way biscuits are sometimes served with fried chicken or sausage gravy.  The flavour, texture and cooking method are like nothing else I have experienced.  It’s a crispy, chewy, slightly fluffy, sort of fried pancake.  My husband, eldest daughter and mother are utterly devoted to this dish.  Personally, I can take it or leave it but I usually keep my ambivalence quiet because folk in my neck of the moors get very passionate about their Yorkshires.

Is British Food Really That Bad? Part One: Adventures in Produce

It is a known fact on a nutritional level that we are what we eat.  There is a great deal of truth in that statement on a wider scale as well.  By microscoping what a nation puts on its table, you see into its very soul.  Many people sneer at British cooking—even the British in that self-deprecating way they have.  The duelling adjectives: bland and boring are frequently batted around in ignorant conversation, and I use “ignorant” here in the true meaning of the word: without direct experience. While preparing for my immigration back in America, I heard sinisterly whispered stories about blood pudding, crumpets, bangers and mash—food that sounded like it belonged in a horror film rather than on a plate.  What does all this say about Britain’s soul I wondered?

Therefore, one of my first acts as a foreigner planning on settling down for a good long stay, was to visit popular grocery store chain Sainsburys.  Here I might be able to satisfy my curiosity over these fear-mongering rumours.  In Sainsburys I was greeted by an entire aisle of Indian cooking ingredients, a wondrous pickle section of jars labelled Ploughman’s and Piccalilli (which I thought was a circus); a dizzying array of cheeses boasting local names like Lancashire and Wensleydale and only one kind of cheese was orange!  Imagine.

Sausages were made with pork, sage and apple, and the produce was the freshest and most varied I had ever seen outside of a farmer’s market.  To be fair, there was also a nauseating array of potted meat products–some actually having the nerve to simply call themselves “potted meat”.  Honestly, do these people have no imagination or sense of marketing?  Another label sporting Old Glory art work read: “American Style Hot Dogs”, subscript: “in brine” on a large glass jar containing what looked like floating…um…things that look a bit like hot dogs but aren’t. So far the scariest thing I had seen was an attempt at American food.

In typical English fashion, there were many things familiar to me, though they were called by different names.  Courgette instead of zucchini, eggplants were labelled aubergine, and when I asked if they carried Butternut squash, the confused assistant led me to an aisle full of what looked like Kool Aid in large plastic bottles.  Squash, I learned later that day, is a concentrated fruity liquid you mix with water to make a drink, which—funnily enough—tastes like Kool Aid.

I spent two and a half hours just walking around, ogling the differences.  It was better than a museum, and far more informative to a Yankee transplant yearning to blend in.  I filled my shopping basket with a wedge of Wensleydale with Cranberries, Cumberland sausages, Cox apples (I could go on for hours about the glory of English apples), Crumpets, a jar of something called Lemon Curd and a copy of BBC’s Good Food magazine—another valuable contributor to my culinary enculturation.

What struck me most deeply about my grocery experience was the variety.  In America we have a kind of variety.  We go the grocery store and get to choose from twenty different brands and types of peanut butter—Skippy or Jiff, smooth, crunchy, extra crunchy.  But in the grocery stores I have visited here, I find a real cornucopia of ingredients and products.  At least thirty different varieties of potted meat.

The produce was something else which stood out to me.  No Florida oranges here—they all come from Spain.  And the strawberries…gods above the strawberries!  A longer growing season and shorter distances mean that regional fruits and vegetables are easily available and fresh when they are in season.  Hundreds of traditional cheeses with local variations are a highlight, though British cheese is often over-looked in favour of its flashier French neighbour’s.  The influence of the nation’s growing plurality is having a very positive impact as well on the culinary variety in the British diet—Indian food in particular now widely recognised as being the country’s favourite meal.  More recently, Mexican food has also become common place.  When I first moved here, there might have been half a shelf featuring a few Old El Paso items.  Now there is a quarter aisle devoted to Tex-Mex ingredients.

What is best about British cooking is the use of fresh, local, if possible seasonal ingredients and a real sense of national identity and pride in food.  Unlike other aspects of British culture, affection for their own cuisine is something Brits can get behind.  If you want to see a Yorkshire man cry, ask about his mother’s Yorkshire Pudding.  If you want to get told off by a Yorkshire granny, suggest that cheese is a really stupid thing to serve with fruitcake.  And if you really want to get your ass kicked, bring up the superiority of French cuisine.

Love them or hate them, the likes of Jamie Oliver, Nigella Lawson and Gordon Ramsey have made English food sexy.  The British seem to have a real sense of pride and love in their traditional dishes and products.  From their mouths…to their hearts, to misquote the old Jewish saying.  Because food is not just about eating.  Food is family, it is politics, it is history, it is narrative and, no matter what your therapist says, food is love.

In the next blog post, I sample some of those scary British dishes and tell you what exactly what Blood Pudding, Crumpets and Haggis are really like.