oh dear: Chirac jokes about British food

[WageSlave1]

Re: i am stunned that

What about Simpon's-in-the-Strand?

[gingerjed1]

Re: i am stunned that

quote Le Gavroche, London, Britain



Would you get any traditional English dishes there ?


Probably not, but that just proves the point that we have a diverse pallet in this country and are not afraid to innovate.

The French shun just about every other nation when it comes food, you will find North African restaurants but that only reflects the local population.

[David Contractor Jr]

Chirac

Chirac, the french twat with garlic breath, is right about british food. He can shake my jambon anyday!!!

[hattra]

Re: Russian cuisine

Then again, what is British cuisine? I think of jellied eels(I have tried with an open mind, but I cannot pretend to like them),pork pies,bangers and mash etc

That gets to the heart of the question, doesn't it. Most of the stuff that you quote is a small part of British cuisine, and you are probably thinking of some factory-produced imitation of the real thing. Instead of Safeway's pork pie, try a home-made veal and ham or game pie. And there's now plenty of good sausage shops.

Real English cooking is not really a lot different from French cooking - historically, we (supposedly) had better quality meat, so we have a preference for roasts and pies and the French for "stews" (in all their different forms), which need longer cooking. But they produce good pies, and we produce good stews. The French use more herbs than we do, but we tended to use more spices than them. They also use wine in cooking as a tenderiser, whereas we used beer or fruit - basically, we each use what is cheaper and/ or readily available.

The Victorians did go off on their own tack, and were into a lot of things that would be too rich (and stodgy) for our tastes (look at Mrs. Beaton's recipes) - the cakes all start with things like "Take a dozen eggs, a quart of double cream, and five pounds of butter....." However it did give them enough energy to build the Empire, eh, wot!

My favourite "recipe" is from an old cocktail book of my Dads. Entitled "The Governor of Jamaica's Cocktail", it starts "First, have your servants empty and clean your fish pond . . . ."

Must have been one heck of a party!

BTW - I'm sure that there's plenty of good Eastern European food - I just had the Soviet era version of it - total cr@p, I'm afraid.