I was doing a volunteer project abroad in Naples, living communally with people from all over the world. A French colleague decided he would make dinner the following night, and rang his dad to find the recipe he was thinking of. It involved creme fraiche, chicken and whatnot.
We were all chatting outside and he mentioned his plan to the boss, who was visiting. The boss informed him that creme fraiche is not to be found in Italy - the guy's face was such a picture, it really can't be put into words. He just said 'whut?' in his strong accent, in the most deadpan manner. He then stood up from the table and walked off as if he'd just learned his mother had been in a traffic accident or something.
Salt and vinegar, cheese and onion, ready salted. Aye, that's the essence of Britishness ladm8. Honourable mentions to pickled onion, smokey bacon and roast chicken though.
>Honourable mentions to pickled onion, smokey bacon and roast chicken though.
Each one of those taste like complete crap. Like the ball sweat of various Oriental traders after a long journey across the seas. Not that I'd know what that taste is of course.
Prawn Cocktail is very much a staple, lad. I don't expect you to remember the 70s, but you should at least be aware of their significance when discussing modern crisp culture.
The 70s in Britain were experienced through a haze of marie-rose sauce, frozen prawns and Prawn Cocktail flavoured crisps. The humble prawn was ingrained in our national psyche after that and PC flavour crisps were very much the snack of the aspiring lower-middle class i.e. Everyone that didn't work down T'mine.
Indeed. An actual prawn cocktail with real prawns in a proper glass and everything, served with a bottle of Blue Nun was about the height of continental sophistication in the aspirational Britain of the 1970s, or so we thought.
Decent Indian food, anywhere other than the UK. I'm not saying there isn't a half decent Indian restaurant somewhere in the world outside of our fair isle, but I'm buggered if I've found it yet. Also trying to get hold of something like a jar of Sharwood's cooking sauce anywhere abroad is serious mission that will require finding a sod-off-expensive imported food emporium where you'll probably pay £5 for the privilege. On the plus side you end up learning how to make a decent curry from scratch. Swings and roundabouts.
Same thing applies to mint sauce, now that I come to think about it. Only making mint sauce is easier than a curry.
Is it fuck. Maybe it's just a personal thing but I can whip up a dozen different curries with perfectly balanced flavours and textures, I can make them look like a marvel of modern science on the plate, I even put a little sprig of coriander on the top. My curries are excellent is what I'm saying.
But. Mint. Fucking. Sauce. I just can't fathom what the fuck I'm even supposed to do. It just ends up like vinegary piss water or something. I am never having mint sauce in my kitchen because it just reminds me of my failings as a chef. Bollocks to mint.
I just do what my granny used to do and make a mix of chopped mint leaves, vinegar and brown sugar. The trick is in getting the mix right so that you you get a decent-ish consistency with a good flavour. Note that this is mint sauce - not this modern "mint jelly" crap.
We still do that with lamb. Also do cucumber slices in vinegar to go with roast beef. Call me a heathen if you like, but it's the same idea as dill pickles in a burger.
To my eternal shame the first dish I ever got on a menu was a "play on" the prawn cocktail. That alone was embarrassing enough to admit, but the actual plate was crayfish tails in a little ramekin surrounded by various 90's style sauce smears and foam. And iceberg lettuce.
Fuck it, I'm going to defend the prawn cocktail. It's very british no matter how you look at it. Prawns - you can get them on the UK coast. Lettuce - We grow that. Marie rose sauce - ketchup, mayo, and lea and perrins - a holy trinity of the british palate. Even putting it in a cocktail glass is a nod to our dangerous and unhealthy drinking. Long live the prawn cocktail.
Exactly. It makes me proud to be British, though the more I think about it, the more likely it seems that it's french in origin, probably Escoffier. I'm scared to look it up now.
>>10821 I really like prawn cocktail, too. I don't give a fuck if it's fashionable or not, it's ridiculous that recipes can go in and out of fashion anyway.
