Bhorta with fish fingers, anyone? Let's make a new England, one recipe at a time | Lewis Bassette
What comes to mind when you think of English cuisine? Maybe it's eccles cake and yorkshire pudding. Hand-risen pies with thick brown crusts and a bit of translucent jelly under the lid. Maybe it's baked apples with cinnamon and custard, buttered crumpets, smoked kippers, or fish and chips drizzled with tea.
But we have to be honest. While some of us will think of English cuisine in terms of affection and nostalgia, most people will turn their noses up in disgust. In the rest of Europe, English cuisine is widely considered unpalatable.
That wasn't always the case. As Ben Rogers documents in his book Beef and Liberty, French travelers to England in the 18th century marveled at the quality and enormous quantities of beef, mutton and beer consumed on these islands. Travelers' letters document festivities at which whole cows were roasted on open spits, sometimes with a thick pie-like crust, while flour, breadcrumbs and eggs were applied in the final stages. The same letters also speak of smaller joints turned in front of domestic fires by clockwork or, occasionally, on rotating spindles driven by a cogwheel. At that time, England was something of a culinary destination.
Since then, England has gained a negative reputation for its cuisine - and not without reason. Investigating why English cuisine lags behind many of its peers, which I did for my podcast, the Full English, immersed me in the country's history. It turns out that our early industrialization is largely to blame. Late medieval enclosures, which first appeared after the Black Death, effectively privatized common lands, creating an important source of wealth for the crown as well as the world's first modern working class. p>
Slowly, as the agricultural revolution allowed more and more peasants to be freed from the land, towns and industry in England began to flourish. The social conditions were laid for the Industrial Revolution, which was supported by the growth of the British Empire. While the latter may have brought new ingredients to these islands, the combination of industry and empire undermined England's inland peasantry. Why is this important? Because the English have generally lacked a deep connection to the soil. There's no denying that, say, Italian cuisine, with its huge regional variations - from rich tomato sauces in the south to blue cheese and cream gnocchi in the north - reflects a lived social connection to the land we've lost there. long ago in England.
A second important point about "English cuisine", which I discovered, is that unlike many other national cuisines, it is incredibly difficult to define . Take a dish like bhorta with fish fingers. The recipe calls for cooking fish sticks and then mashing them with fried onions, ginger, chilli and mustard. It's an invention of writer and journalist Ash Sarkar's grandmother, and was popularized by Nigella Lawson after Sarkar shared it on Twitter.
Where does this dish fit in the traditional English culinary imagination? It's made with bland, processed food that feels, well, distinctly English. But it wasn't created for a white, English-speaking audience, like chicken tikka masala was. Instead, it was made by and for immigrants from a once vast empire, seeking a taste of home within the confines of what was available in post-war English stores. Is English able to adapt to these experiences?
Maybe so. Our ideas about English are changing. Research from think tank British Future has found that an increasing number of people, especially young people from ethnic minorities, perceive English as including those who are not white. Research shows that while older generations of immigrants fought to be included in the idea of Britishness, their children and grandchildren are now seeking their place within Englishness.
< p class="dcr-1of5t9g">As the pandemic has shown, it's not just England's food that's hard to pin down – its political institutions are too. While important public health decisions have been taken by regional governments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, it is
What comes to mind when you think of English cuisine? Maybe it's eccles cake and yorkshire pudding. Hand-risen pies with thick brown crusts and a bit of translucent jelly under the lid. Maybe it's baked apples with cinnamon and custard, buttered crumpets, smoked kippers, or fish and chips drizzled with tea.
But we have to be honest. While some of us will think of English cuisine in terms of affection and nostalgia, most people will turn their noses up in disgust. In the rest of Europe, English cuisine is widely considered unpalatable.
That wasn't always the case. As Ben Rogers documents in his book Beef and Liberty, French travelers to England in the 18th century marveled at the quality and enormous quantities of beef, mutton and beer consumed on these islands. Travelers' letters document festivities at which whole cows were roasted on open spits, sometimes with a thick pie-like crust, while flour, breadcrumbs and eggs were applied in the final stages. The same letters also speak of smaller joints turned in front of domestic fires by clockwork or, occasionally, on rotating spindles driven by a cogwheel. At that time, England was something of a culinary destination.
Since then, England has gained a negative reputation for its cuisine - and not without reason. Investigating why English cuisine lags behind many of its peers, which I did for my podcast, the Full English, immersed me in the country's history. It turns out that our early industrialization is largely to blame. Late medieval enclosures, which first appeared after the Black Death, effectively privatized common lands, creating an important source of wealth for the crown as well as the world's first modern working class. p>
Slowly, as the agricultural revolution allowed more and more peasants to be freed from the land, towns and industry in England began to flourish. The social conditions were laid for the Industrial Revolution, which was supported by the growth of the British Empire. While the latter may have brought new ingredients to these islands, the combination of industry and empire undermined England's inland peasantry. Why is this important? Because the English have generally lacked a deep connection to the soil. There's no denying that, say, Italian cuisine, with its huge regional variations - from rich tomato sauces in the south to blue cheese and cream gnocchi in the north - reflects a lived social connection to the land we've lost there. long ago in England.
A second important point about "English cuisine", which I discovered, is that unlike many other national cuisines, it is incredibly difficult to define . Take a dish like bhorta with fish fingers. The recipe calls for cooking fish sticks and then mashing them with fried onions, ginger, chilli and mustard. It's an invention of writer and journalist Ash Sarkar's grandmother, and was popularized by Nigella Lawson after Sarkar shared it on Twitter.
Where does this dish fit in the traditional English culinary imagination? It's made with bland, processed food that feels, well, distinctly English. But it wasn't created for a white, English-speaking audience, like chicken tikka masala was. Instead, it was made by and for immigrants from a once vast empire, seeking a taste of home within the confines of what was available in post-war English stores. Is English able to adapt to these experiences?
Maybe so. Our ideas about English are changing. Research from think tank British Future has found that an increasing number of people, especially young people from ethnic minorities, perceive English as including those who are not white. Research shows that while older generations of immigrants fought to be included in the idea of Britishness, their children and grandchildren are now seeking their place within Englishness.
< p class="dcr-1of5t9g">As the pandemic has shown, it's not just England's food that's hard to pin down – its political institutions are too. While important public health decisions have been taken by regional governments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, it isWhat's Your Reaction?
