My parents eat complete shite- It amazes them that I even cook the majority of my miles rather than just shoving something in the microwave or ordering a chinese. They tell me I should be a chef when all I've done is make a simple bolognese or marinated some chicken breasts overnight.
I think it must be a generational thing. LI imagine that the state of food in this country during the 60s and 70s was far from fantastic- Any older chaps care to tell us what it was like? I remember seeing a TV documentary where it was talking about how pretty much everyone in those days ate frozen and microwave meals because it was the latest, space-age in-thing, and nobody had started to figure out how awfully unhealthy they all were yet.
>>15632 It probably helps that we're among the first generation to grow up plugged-in enough to know to just google for a decent recipe. That sentence smacks of unwarranted elitism but I think it's fair to say if you're using gs you're more inclined to make use of the internet than y/our parents.
British food used to be absolutely shit. Before the 1970s, we had hardly any foreign food, so everything was unbearably bland. Most people learned to cook like the dad in >>15613 - plain meat and veg, boiled to death. A lot of that generation never really caught up, I think in large part because they never shook off the idea that any sort of foreign food is strange and exotic. They grew up in an age where cooking skills were inherited and largely static, rather than something you can just have a go at.
Ready meals came quite late to the party, relatively speaking. Any sort of prepared food was an expensive treat for most people until at least the mid 1980s, and was seen as quite aspirational. It wasn't until well into the 1990s that they took on the image of being a bit grim and lazy. Ready meals might be iffy now, but they used to be properly dreadful, partly because the food technology wasn't sufficiently advanced, partly because a lot of recipes were made excessively bland and sweet to cater to the palates of people who weren't used to it, partly because we just didn't know any better as consumers.
Likewise, restaurant and takeaway food was enormously expensive relative to income, with a typical restaurant meal costing nearly a week's wages in the early 1970s. Our wider horizons in terms of food happened in sync with the broader improvements in living standards, particularly the package holiday - people would come back from "the continent" with a newfound excitement about food.
For context, here's Delia Smith in 1978, explaining in painstaking detail how to cook, serve and eat Spag Bol:
>>15643 This is what I've heard too, apparently my grandad used to view pizza as a strange exotic foreign food.
Speaking of 'exotic food', I managed to try camel, kangaroo, springbok and wild boar recently, all washed down with expensive whiskey and champagne like the posho twat I'm really not.
>>15644 I have a family member who's 90, and she views olive oil with extreme suspicion, and won't eat any food that wasn't widely available in Britain during the 50s.
A lot of those exotic meats end up being pretty uninteresting in my experience. I don't know why I expect them to taste so magical, but they just taste like variations on pork/beef/chicken/deer. Though I did go into the Chinese supermarket the other day to get some sour plum juice and sugared winter gourd, and the Chinese fellow working there acted like I'd just walked on the ceiling because he said it's rare for British people to enjoy that sort of Asian food. I guess he wants to be my friend.
>>15643 And when you think about it, we really shouldn't have had such a shit food culture. We had both India and Hong Kong. Both of those have an absolutely brilliant and varied food culture and the fact we didn't take any of it (just like we took everything else) is just so weird.
>>15644>>15646 If my parents ever go out for a meal with my uncle, who's in his seventies, then they're either limited to carvery or somewhere serving steak and chips. My dad, his younger brother by at least ten years, isn't like this but his cookery is by and large boiling unseasoned veg (although to be fair he makes great mash). Actually, I tell a lie, he seasons with salt and chilli powder.
I'm fussy with onions; I don't like the texture, so if I'm cooking with them I'll whizz them up into the sauce so I don't have any awful crunchy bits.
Kangaroo and wild boar I've had and really enjoyed. Haven't had the other 2 but can add Beaver to the list. Tastes very much like beef. Would like to try crocodile one day.
Used to have a friend who claimed to be allergic to mushrooms. So we'd put mushrooms in his food to see what would happen. He really enjoyed it.
Hongkonglad here, actually the Chinese are genuinely like this - they are incredibly proud of their cuisine (the Mandarin for "how are you" is "have you eaten today?"), and also well aware that most foreign devils will have no idea about it. If you know it and love it it goes down fucking well out here, let me tell you that.
>>15651 I heard a radio doc on importing western TV shows to China (where they can get audience figures of 60 million or more...) One format that never works is 'Masterchef' or cookery shows in general - because everyone in China's mother/grandmother/aunt is already the best cook in the country.
Food in the 1970s, aside from the lack of choice we have now, was poorer quality. Example - You used to get bits of bone in bacon rashers, & even butcher's shop bacon exuded that milky gloop & shrank to half its size when you fried it.
We didn't eat much processed or ready-meals - they were bit of a treat - for which I'm glad now, as I've always cooked most of my meals from fresh. We always had curries though, as my great granny was Anglo-Indian.
>>15649 >I'm fussy with onions; I don't like the texture, so if I'm cooking with them I'll whizz them up into the sauce so I don't have any awful crunchy bits.
I used to do this and acquired a food processor mainly for this purpose, but over time it got to be more hassle than it's worth, what with the extra washing up and whatnot. If your onions are getting crispy then you're probably cooking them too hard and caramelising them (which would also make the dish sweeter, incidentally), but if it's just the regular onion crunchiness you dislike then try adding a handful of water halfway through cooking them and cooking them longer and at a lower heat.
(Sage for unsolicited and possibly unwanted cooking advice.)
I'm currently making >>8648 to try to prove to him that vaguely Italian cuisine doesn't just come out of pots. It's not really fair as I'm a shit cook, but I don't respect Italy anyway, so who cares if I let them down?
>>15659 I used to be fussy with onions. Then I realised it's all in how you cook them. For some reason my mum would always fry the beef first then put the onions in so they don't really cook properly and just end up limp and boiled. Whereas if you put the onions on first then add beef (or whatever) later they taste a lot better. Plus the smell of frying onion is just lovely.
>>15665 A poor workman blames his tools. There's only so much a walkthrough written for utter retards can do; no amount of words is going to teach the retard how to chop an onion if he can't even manage that. Practical skills don't come out of books.
But I didn't blame my tools. Or are you talking about other, non-apparent retards?
My dad said it tastes fine, and usually he's wrong about everything, but this time he's definitely correct.
I think the main issue was that I bought the wrong kind of tomatoes and added too much water towards the end. I'unno, I'm sure it'll get better once it's stood.
>>15670 You do need to help break them up a bit if you want a smoother sauce, usually just by squeezing them in your hand when you add them to the pot or chopping through them with the spoon. Plum tomatoes in cans come whole as standard - if you want chopped ones, buy chopped.
>>15679 What's the point of plum tomatoes anyway? As in, they're put next to the chopped tomatoes on the shelf in equal quantities, yet given most dishes will just require a sauce having them chopped is more appropriate for that purpose.
In Hong Kong nobody cooks, we all eat out every night. It's expensive but we can afford it. My girlfriend usually picks the restaurant but I get to pick the desert if you catch my drift.
I'm not fat. It's 30 degrees here. Is it 30 degrees there? No? Then shut the fuck up. I'm getting drunk on expensive alcohol in 30 degree heat and later I'll be pounding my 10/10 Asian girlfriend up the arse. Have you ever even been to Hong Kong?
Err...did you not see the "I am Spartacus" post? As the actual HKlad, sorry, but it does need to be said, this was fuck all to me. As are most of the posts over the last God knows how long...I've been at work all day, m7. As usual...fuck knows what has happened in my absence. Noncery, I think...
You are clearly insecure and I hope your ban is for a long time. No one cares. You come across as a prat. Enjoy HK without narcissistically filling this place up with your terrible posts.
>>15646 This made me go get some olive oil for making dressings with the other day, so thanks for that.
It's a bit odd for my 60 y/o uncle, he seems fixated with the idea that adding taste to something is by lacing is pretty heavily with chilli powder, even when it most definitely doesn't go with whatever's on offer. It seems extremely counter intuitive to sprinkle loads of chilli powder onto a salad which effectively obliterates any and all flavours that might be there, even if some rocket has found its way in there. Everything else is definitely not safe to eat unless his parents dutifully presented it to him as food "a la mode Northern England 1960".
