# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Looking for a bite to eat? We've got you covered with our ultimate guide to that great British staple, the pub! Check out our easy-to-follow infographic of the best in British pub grub!

No trip to the UK is complete without a visit to the great British pub for some traditional pub grub. Value for money, a relaxed, casual environment and tasty British food - all the magical ingredients you need for a delicious lunch or evening out. So we've put our heads together to create a guide to pubs and their grub.

Image via Pinterest

Relaxed environment

If you're looking for a cosy atmosphere and home-cooked food, look no further than a pub. Casual dining is very popular in the UK and you can enjoy pub food without having to sit on ceremony. You often won't need to book, and (depending on the size and type of pub) you can sit in the bar area or a separate section for dining. Best of all, pub grub offers value for money and large portions!

Fun for all the family

Most pubs offer family-friendly opportunities to enjoy a meal out in a relaxed atmosphere (although we recommend you double-check first). When it comes to pub grub, there's usually something for everyone. And if there isn't a specific kid's menu, you can ask for smaller portion sizes or share some side dishes. A lot of pubs have beer gardens - great for the summer and even better if there's some play equipment for the kids.

Good draught beer

Draught beer, bitter or ale are what pubs are famous for and traditional British beers are seeing a revival. It's hard to beat the quality and choice of beer in other eateries, so if you're in a pub why not try a beef and ale pie? Or a delicious beer battered cod, with chunky chips?

What's on the menu?

Traditional British pub dishes haven't changed much over the years, although you can now find the addition of non-traditional favourites inspired by cooking from all over the world. Check the menu before you choose your pub - you may be in for a surprise. Some, for example, serve Thai food only. Having said that, here are some traditional British pub grub faves:

Sunday roast: Usually served at lunch time, the roast is often chicken, beef, lamb or pork. Served with roast potatoes, a mix of fresh vegetables and gravy. And don't forget the trimmings! Roast beef isn't complete without Yorkshire pudding (a baked batter pudding, best filled with gravy), mustard and horseradish sauce. Pork is delicious with apple sauce; roast lamb and mint sauce were made for each other. Don't worry too much if it's not a Sunday - many pubs offer roasts throughout the week.

Steak and kidney pie: A savoury pie with a pastry lid, filled with a mixture of diced beef and kidney, fried onion and brown gravy. Not for the faint-hearted, it's a great winter warmer and delicious with a side order of vegetables.

Bangers and mash: A British staple made of mashed potatoes and sausages, usually served with peas and gravy. The type of sausage may vary, but is usually made of pork. Filling and comforting - exactly what you want from British pub grub.

Toad in the hole: Not as strange as it sounds and nothing to do with toads! This is another sausage dish, but this time the sausages are baked in Yorkshire pudding batter. It's usually served with gravy and vegetables.

Fisherman's pie: Not in the mood for meat? Fisherman's pie is classic pub grub. The pie is made with smoked whitefish in a white or cheddar cheese sauce, topped with mashed potato. It can also contain prawns and hard boiled eggs. Best served with garden peas!

Fish and chips: No trip to the UK is complete without fish and chips, and the best thing about ordering this dish in a pub is that the batter will often have been made with some of the pub's delicious draught beer. Try it with some tartare sauce and mushy peas.

Ploughman's lunch: A traditional lunch brought out to the fields by ploughmen, this cold plate of cheese, pickle and crusty bread is simple yet delicious. You might also have some apple, boiled eggs, ham or pickled onions on the side. As its name suggests, it's usually eaten at midday and not something you'd see on an evening pub menu.

Treacle pudding: Still hungry? Try this typical British dessert - steamed sponge, with treacle on top and usually served with hot custard or ice cream.

Knickerbocker glory: Here's one for the kids, a colourfully layered cream, ice cream and fruit sundae served in a tall glass. A long spoon is essential if you want to get to the bottom!

Vegetarian: Don't worry if you're veggie - most pubs have a great selection of vegetarian dishes, including vegetarian nut roasts with onion gravy, as well as rice and pasta dishes. If nothing takes your fancy, you can always request the chef to make up something for you.

Specials: Don't forget to check the specials board! You'll most likely find interesting 'twists' on pub favourites like special pies, curry, burger or even sausages of the week!
If you're looking for good food and friendly service in a relaxed atmosphere, you can't go wrong with a British pub. The menu will vary from place to place (from gastro-pubs to carveries and independent locals to national chains), but you'll often find staple pub grub favourites to suit every appetite and occasion. Bon appétit!
Feature image sourced via Pinterest

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
london card - london pass - london sightseeing pass

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Quintessential Guide to British Pub Grub - London Pass Blog

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
No trip to the UK is complete without a visit to the great British pub for some traditional pub grub. Value for money, a relaxed, casual environment and tasty British food - all the magical ingredients you need for a delicious lunch or evening out.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Deliciously Ella

If you haven't head of Ella Woodward, where have you been? Here's the low-down: after being diagnosed with postural tachycardia syndrome, Ella underwent a complete lifestyle change and now focuses solely on eating and creating whole, plant-based foods. On Deliciously Ella she features incredibly healthy versions of typically unhealthy dishes. She has her own app, two bestselling cookbooks and a deli in Central London.

Eat Like a Girl

Irish-born Niamh Shields is a London-based food and travel blogger. She describes herself as a wanderer, and when she's not wandering, she can be found in her kitchen or a restaurant or wine bar. Eat Like a Girl focuses on recipes, restaurant recommendations and food-based travel stories. Featuring plenty of gratuitous 'food porn' photos, Niamh's posts are either her own recipes or those that she's picked up on her travels.

Must try: kimchee quesadilla

Greedy Gourmet

Greedy Gourmet was established February 2007 and has ever since been dishing out recipe posts and photographs that make your mouth water. With a tagline reading 'Always thinking of the next meal', Michelle has certainly got us flicking through recipe after recipe and planning what we're going to be cooking up next. If you're in need of a little bit of food porn on your Insta feed, Greedy Gourmet is one to follow.

Must try: slow cooker Nutella fudge

Pinch of Nom

This Slimming World recipe hub is a dream come true when it comes to sourcing new, flavoursome yet healthy meals. Pinch of Nom not only has a banging selection of recipes, but they also update you on foodie news. They offer recipes for all of those fast-food chains we love and plenty of veggie and vegan offerings, too.

Must try: firecraker chicken

Cook Sister

Blogger Jeanne Horak-Druiff features food, photos and tales of faraway places on Cook Sister. She moved to London 18 years ago from South Africa and works in law alongside her blogging career. As a freelance recipe developer and writer, Jeanne has spoken at blogging conferences, covering topics from the legal aspects of blogging to recipe writing and editing. Jeanne feels that the story of what she eats is the story of her life and that food and travel are the two things that she has been in love with since childhood. Cook Sister derived its name from the South African dish koeksister, a deep-fried, syrup-dipped pastry.

Must try: tomato, pesto and thyme tarte tatin

The Little Loaf

Blogger Kate Doran was nicknamed ' The Little Loaf' when she was a child by her great aunt, who noticed her appetite for bread. But don't worry; this isn't just a blog on bread baking! There's plenty of other carby goodness in the form of cakes, brownies and pies! Kate's Insta feed is a mix of cakes, cookies and her cute kiddies; we feel a #FamilyGoals coming on!

Must try: peanut butter and jam cups

Tinned Tomatoes

Jacqueline Meldrum calls herself 'the Scottish vegetarian', and Tinned Tomatoes features more than 500 vegetarian and vegan recipes. The name 'Tinned Tomatoes' is a reminder to Jacqueline that there's more to vegetarian cooking than just that, as it used to be her staple ingredient when she first began creating recipes. The site has been going since 2007 and features bakes as well as savoury choices for vegetarians.

Must try: Oreo and caramel cheesecake

Maison Cupcake

Blogger Sarah Trivuncic describes herself as a 'cake coveter and homeware hoarder', and her site Maison Cupcake specialises in food, life and travel. In 2009, Sarah started blogging about making cupcakes, writing recipes and taking photos. When she finished her project she realised that she didn't want to stop blogging, so she just kept going. She specialises in all types of baking, not just cupcakes. She is the author of Bake Me I'm Yours... Sweet Bitesize Bakes (2012)and the 2012 winner of the Best Tasty Blog at BritMums' Brilliance in Blogging Awards.

Must try: chocolate pumpkin mug cake

Foodstuff Finds

Set up in 2008 as an outlet for a group of people obsessed with all things edible, new and different, Foodstuff Finds specialises in 'foodies, snackies and munchies'. It features new items in supermarkets and intriguing items from import shops. The blog was recommended by The Guardian in 2010 and grew from there. Nearly 2,000 items have been reviewed on the site so far, and with a new review added every day, it continues to grow.

Check out: crocodile burgers

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Top British Food Blogs You Should Follow

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
If you haven't head of Ella Woodward, where have you been? Here's the low-down: after being diagnosed with postural tachycardia syndrome, Ella underwent a complete lifestyle change and now focuses solely on eating and creating whole, plant-based foods. On Deliciously Ella she features incredibly healthy versions of typically unhealthy dishes.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The cider orchards of Herefordshire are an exquisite pleasure on warm summer days, and the Cider Route Tour takes you through this balmy landscape to 10 of the county's farms and producers. Some of the stops on the daylong trail are tucked away down little lanes and in rural outposts. But exploration adds to the fun, and most of the enterprises on the trail try hard to make the experience worthwhile. Make a call at Butford Organics in Bodenham, to try some of its cider brews, or sample the apple juice at Once Upon a Tree near Ledbury. Many farmers will let you stroll through their orchards and most sell local food, including Herefordshire cheese. Do your groundwork at Hereford's Cider Museum before you set off on the 60-plus mile loop, making detours as the fancy takes you. The south-east slice of the loop, around Little Marcle, is perhaps the most beautiful of all. Plan your visit for the months of September and October to catch the various cider festivals, details of which are on the website below.

Map, details and cycling routes (01432 260621; www.ciderroute.co.uk). Castle House Hotel in Hereford (01432 356321; www.castlehse.co.uk) is owned by a local farmer, with double rooms from £185 a night.

Isle of Wight

Some visitors to the Isle of Wight get no further than the beach, but the island's peaceful and wonderfully diverse interior is rich with farms, orchards and market gardens. The island has developed in recent years a reputation for good-quality produce, from its garlic and sweetcorn to fish and award-winning cheeses. The farmers' markets at Ryde (Saturday) and Newport (Friday) are consequently big attractions, while local food is found on the menus of many pubs and restaurants. The ferry company Wightlink has devised a 60-mile food tour that takes in Rosemary Vineyard at Ashey, Captain Stan's Fish Store in Bembridge (for excellent crab pasties) and The Tomato Stall at Newport market, where the eponymous product is gorgeously oak-smoked.

Scotland east and west

Find out everything you ever wanted to know about Scottish whisky but were too woozy to ask on the Malt Whisky Trail in Speyside. It takes you from Aviemore in north-east Scotland, through magnificent landscapes to seven, beautifully situated working distilleries including Glenfarclas, Aberlour, Tomintoul and Macallan. You can expand the experience by staying at Muckrach Lodge Hotel near Aviemore, which stocks more than 70 whiskies and arranges visits to local distilleries.

Alternatively set your sights on Scotland's western shores and take in the magnificent scenery of the West Coast Whisky Trail, which includes visits to the Tobermory distillery on the Isle of Mull and the Talisker distillery on Skye.

For The Malt Whisky Trail in Speyside see www.maltwhiskytrail.com, or call Elgin Tourist Information Centre (01343 562608).

For West Coast whisky tour see www.whiskycoast.co.uk; McKinlay Kidd (0844 804 0020; www.seescotlanddifferently.co.uk) offers various food and whisky tours of Scotland, including a seven-night West Coast Whisky self-drive trail from £595 per person including b & b accommodation, distillery tours and island ferries.

Abergavenny

There are so many good restaurants clustered around the Welsh market town of Abergavenny that you can plan a gastronomic tour without travelling more than a few miles in any direction. Start by driving to the Michelin-starred Walnut Tree, on the B4521, two miles east of Abergavenny, where many of the ingredients are local, the food excellent and the tone casual. A further 10-mile journey east takes you to The Bell at Skinfrith, whose chef, Rupert Taylor, has worked at the Fat Duck at Bray and Fifteen Cornwall, while a few miles south is the excellent Crown at Whitebrook (with another Michelin star). If you have the stamina, finish with a meal at the Hardwick, a gastropub on the edge of Abergavenny itself, which prides itself on simple food cooked well. Dedicated gastronomes should plan their visit to coincide with the Abergavenny Food Festival, when the streets of the town are filled with stalls of local produce and chefs run tastings and masterclasses.

East Sussex

Start in Hastings, which has the largest beach-launched fishing fleet in Europe, so you can see your fish arrive before buying it at nearby shops. This, and the Fishermen's Museum, gives the place a salty feel, though there's more to the town than fish. Drop in to Judges Bakery in Hastings Old Town for great breads and cakes, then move on to the excellent cheesemonger, Penbuckles, next door. Then head east to Winchelsea Farm Kitchen, a delicatessen with a wide range of Sussex produce, before cutting back west to visit the Carr Taylor Vineyard at Westfield for a tasting (try the award-winning sparkling wines).

On to Battle, where the Great Park Farm Shop sells own-grown fruit and vegetables plus home-made pies and local honey. Finally, back to Hastings beach for fish and chips at Maggie's in Rock-a-Nore Road. In Hastings Old Town stay at the Swan House b & b (01424 430014; www.swanhousehastings.co.uk); doubles from £115 a night.

Ribble Valley, Lancashire

Someone in Lancashire must have had fun researching the Ribble Valley Food Trail; it's not so much a trail as a great roll-call of 36 restaurants, delicatessens and food shops, all of which share a devotion to good local produce.

This being Lancashire, cheese gets a fair crack - try Parlick Fell at Cheesie Tchaikovsky in Clitheroe or the creamy Lancashire at Leagram Organic Dairy. But there's plenty more on the menu. Tina's Corner Bakery in Longridge sells local speciality Goosnargh cakes (shortbread flavoured with caraway); Hudson's Ices, sold from The Old Toll House at Chatburn, are made from local eggs and milk, and you can watch the brewers at work in the Bowland Brewery in Bashall Town before buying their Sky Dancer or Headless Peg beer. The trail also takes in some excellent local restaurants, such as Michelin-starred Northcote in Langho. You could spend a good two or three days exploring this area, tucked neatly, if unromantically, between the M65 and M61

Suffolk

Food Safari, based in the attractive town of Framlingham, works with local food and drink providers to offer a range of tours involving wild food gathering, cheese production, food-smoking and winemaking. The Seafood in a Day tour, for instance, sends you on a boat trip to catch lobsters off the lonely East Anglian coast near Orford, then to an oyster farm at Butley Creek, and finally to a local restaurant to learn how to carve salmon - before you eat your handiwork.

Other tours let you try your hand at milking, or take you to visit local breweries. Most are daylong but longer bespoke tours, combining many of these elements, can be arranged. Groups of at least eight are preferred.

Food Safari (01728 621380; www.foodsafari.co.uk); the Seafood in a Day tour costs £275 per couple. Tailored tours can be arranged with recommended accommodation such as Sutherland House, Southwold (01502 724 544; www.sutherlandhouse.co.uk); double rooms from £140 a night.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The cider orchards of Herefordshire are an exquisite pleasure on warm summer days, and the Cider Route Tour takes you through this balmy landscape to 10 of the county's farms and producers. Some of the stops on the daylong trail are tucked away down little lanes and in rural outposts.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Consider the following:

Consider the following:

1) Every week there are 43 cook shows on British terrestrial telly. There are a further 97 on the digital channels. There are three channels devoted exclusively to food. (These figures are approximate; I can't bring myself to read the listings.)

2) Every week the London broadsheet newspapers publish between 30,000 and 40,000 words devoted to food, drink, restaurants, recipes and cook shows on television. (Again the figures are approximate.)

3) Ludlow, population 8,000 (that is accurate to within a couple of hundred) possesses five independent butchers, a weekly market selling farm butter, farm cheeses, farm eggs, poultry, game in season, non-industrial veg. Early each autumn the town stages a food and drink festival. A marquee is raised within the castle keep and producers from the Marches (and some from Ludlow's Norman twin town) sell their wares. There are bacon curers, brewers, cheesemakers, cidermakers and perrymakers, cider distillers, bakers, ice-cream wallahs, apiarists, etc. The town also supports three restaurants which have been awarded a star by Michelin.

4) Over the past decade an indefatigable woman called Henrietta Green has brought out two editions of the Food Lovers' Guide to Britain, a directory of some 750 producers and secondary sources of, say, bison, kid, elvers, samphire, pickles, damsons, chitterlings and haslet. The guide would be even more compendious were it to list as well the stores selling imported goods and those British makers of such things as samosas, dim sum, salami, and so on. Ms Green has also established Food Lovers' fairs around the country.

5) London, population 7.5 million, has about a dozen farmers' markets. Borough Market, near London Bridge, styles itself "London's Larder".

6) London is the restaurant capital of the world.

7) We live, in the journalist Simon Jenkins's phrase, "in a golden age of the table".

Golden? Jenkins wrote that in 1993. We must be in the platinum age by now. We must be, because things are forever changing, forever improving. Amelioration's momentum is unstoppable. The quality of our gastronomic life proceeds by exponential leaps for the better. Milk and honey? Unpasteurised single-herd Jersey milk and rosemary combs from hand-chosen bees? Manna - organically ground and without E numbers? Body and blood? We've got the lot.

And as for the choice we enjoy! Big tomatoes, little tomatoes, round tomatoes, plum tomatoes, tomatoes attached to green twig, even tomatoes "grown for flavour". We have spices from Orissa, Madras, Gujerat, Hyderabad; light soya sauce, heavy soya sauce, in-between soya sauce; fish sauce from Thailand; fruit from China; olive oils from named estates in Catalonia, Var, Puglia, Crete, olive oils whose virginity has been safeguarded by chastity belts of the most traditional cut. We have five-grain bread, soda bread, ciabatta bread, sundried tomato bread, country bread. We have ready-to-heat moussaka, navarin, green curry, red curry, brown curry, lasagne, noodles, paella, couscous, gratin. And so it goes. We 're blessed with abundance. We inhabit a treasure-house of the world's victuals. We should be the very model of peptic content. We never ate it so good.

Really? Am I alone in wondering whether this country's appetite for and susceptibility to the soothing nostrums of PR "presentation", spin and lies has not quashed whatever gastronomic discernment it may once have had? No, I'm not quite alone. For years Dr Digby Anderson banged on in newspapers about the paucity of quality produce available in Britain. So that makes two of us. And I have a friend who lives near Bristol who believes that one ate as well, if not better, in that city in the 1970s. Two and a half, then. I once asked the great Burgundian chef Marc Meneau what he thought of British produce. He replied with signal tact: "C'est, hein, different."

In his critique of American art, The Painted Word, Tom Wolfe took a long time to illustrate a truism; that conceptual art is only granted meaning (and comprehensibility) by a text accompanying the work. That text may be the work of the artist if he or she possesses the gift of arranging words as well as the gift of arranging rubber gloves or tampons, or it may be the work of a critic who interprets the work in a catalogue essay, a newspaper, a magazine. The text is an integral part of the work, which is bereft and mute without it, and the critic is complicit in the work, a sort of secondary creator - and not, then, a critic at all, but a propagandist, a proselytiser, an image engineer.

At an even baser level there is a similar compact between, on the one hand, the majority of the people who write and broadcast about food in this country and, on the other, the producers, the restaurant industry, the brewers, the wine trade. When I say "at an even baser level" I know what I'm talking about. Some years ago I was invited to judge the Glenfiddich Awards for food writing. I forget how many categories there are - too many certainly; I mean, "Whisky Writer of the Year"? I checked into a hotel to work my way through the submissions. This was a uniquely dispiriting experience: the vast majority of entrants could barely parse a sentence. I suggested to David Grant, of the firm that sponsored this pygmy Olympiad with such rash generosity, that there were at least three or four categories in which no award should be made on the grounds of illiteracy, incompetence, witlessness, etc. He was shocked by my presumption and explained that the point of the awards was to celebrate "writers" who celebrate food/wine/restauration. And of course he was right to be shocked. This branch of journalism may be styled a form of consumer journalism but it is the very opposite; it is producer journalism, a kind of covert advertorial, a cosy conspiracy that finds writers abandoning all pretence of independence to ghost chefs' books or to drool over supermarkets' products in magazines owned by those supermarkets.

When I began writing about restaurants I had two friends in the trade. Now I have three or four more. That may say something about my incapacity for friendship (which I am capable of distinguishing from amiable acquaintanceship). But had I been a greyhound-racing correspondent I doubt that I'd have made a special effort to party with the dogs. It's equally probable that they'd have made no effort to party with me. When I began reviewing restaurants, in the summer of 1986 I weighed 89kg (14 stone, or 196lb). By summer last year I weighed 122kg (19.5 stone, 272lb) - an increment of 2.4kg (5lb) per year, or approximately 28g (1oz) per restaurant I visited.

Eighteen months previously I had been to Buenos Aires in preparation for a telly film (which was, predictably, cancelled; a BBC contract is worth about as much as a football manager's). Day after day I had walked the rectilinear labyrinth of that greatest of modernist cities for up to six hours. On my return my right knee gradually gave out. I went at last to see a specialist, who said: "I can tell you're not a professional soccer player, but you do have a soccer player's injury." He added with a certain winning candour that the operation he could perform had no more than a 66 per cent chance of success. I'd be far better off losing weight.

By the time I ended my near 16-year stint as a restaurant reviewer I was down to 79kg (12.5 stone, 175lb). I lost a third of my body weight over the course of a year: I lost it, and I still don't know where to find it. This, surely, should have proved a task as monumental as the figure I cut. Well, no, not actually. Indeed, given Dr Jeffrey Fine's persuasive counsel, it was all too easy - after all, I reported mostly on restaurants in London and the rest of Britain. And they were in general more rewarding to write about than to eat in. Going to restaurants I hadn't been to before - that is, new restaurants - became a chore. "That I should have your chore", I can hear you say...

I have little capacity or willingness to amend my taste to keep pace with the change for the worse that has afflicted British taste. And that makes me an old fart, an anachronism, out of step with his time. It is impossible, I'd contend, to report in good faith on any craft or endeavour if you are essentially out of sympathy with it. And if it's doing you no good. It was, incidentally, my own cooking that abetted my generically determined propensity to put on weight - my mother lived on rabbit food to keep her figure. It was not due to restaurant meals, which I became increasingly inclined to leave largely uneaten. My domestic repertoire was my corporeal undoing: potato gratins, potato purées, aligot, cassoulet and, most of all, vast quantities of cheese - the economy of Roquefort-sur-Soulzon may never recover from the effects of my near abstinence. I still cook. Different things, though.

Let us return to the subjects I listed at the beginning. Ludlow is the exception that proves the rule that British provincial towns are gastronomic deserts. It is deafeningly atypical. Hence hardly a month passes without the appearance of a lazy article, based on previous lazy articles, citing its position at the vanguard of a culinary renaissance. To which the all too obvious reply is - where's the back-up? If such a broad renaissance exists, why is Ludlow the only example?

Ludlow's position in this phoney renaissance derives from an unparalleled set of circumstances, certain of which are entirely unrelated to the food chain. It is remote and unusually self-contained. Its road links render it unappealing to Birmingham and Black Country commuters. Its rail links are appalling. It has an attractive housing stock, which causes its middle class to live in the town. It is in the centre of a rare part of Britain where hill farms, orchards, hopyards and fruit holdings are still common. And until recently its only supermarket was a downmarket affair. That has changed with the advent of a Tesco.

How long the town will remain consequently unchanged can only be guessed at. Supermarkets thrive on the British indifference to flavour, freshness and quality, the British preoccupation with the appearance of foodstuffs, the British insistence on choice. Kingsley Amis warned more than 30 years ago in a Black Paper contribution on education that "more will mean worse".

What goes for tertiary education goes for foodstuffs too, especially those which are imported. Fruit and vegetables are bound to lack flavour because they are harvested too early in order to obviate loss of profit occasioned by deterioration during transit, during distribution, during shelf life. For the same reason even domestic meat is seldom properly hung. If all small British towns were like pre-Tesco Ludlow then there would be no need for Henrietta Green's enterprises: we wouldn't need to be told where to obtain proper food because proper food would be on our doorstep. It would be a norm rather than something the mass of the population regards as a phoney sybaritic indulgence, and too expensive: cheapness, which is not the same as value for money, is this nation's paramount criterion in the selection of foods.

The second criterion is that foods should not foment our squeamishness. We are a fastidious people, liable to be prompted to disgust by anything that reminds us that it was once an animal's muscle or, worse, an animal's organ, by anything that recalls the farmyard, by anything whose connection with the mucky earth is too readily discerned. Abattoir slurry is just fine if it is an unspoken component of a burger or sausage (and it is). But undisguised offal is inadmissible. What we have here is the national tendency to sweep under the carpet applied to food.

A third criterion is exoticism of the base'n'easy sort. The food industry plunders the world's larder then traduces it: the pizza that no Neapolitan would recog-nise; "fresh" pasta; "curry"; anything... So long as the packaging is appealing, Britain will swallow it. Not only fastidious, not only cheapskate, but gullible too.

But isn't London the "restaurant capital of the world"? We've been conned (see gullibility, above) into believing so. Rather, we've been Conranned into it. The inelegant epithet is Sir Terence's. He is hardly a disinterested party. There can be no question that his vast, opulently glamorous restaurants are great institutions (or may become so). They are as peculiar to London of the 1990s as bevelled glass gin-palaces were a century before, and roadhouses were to the suburbs of the 1930s. They are habitually deprecated as bridge-and-tunnel or Weybridge-and-Epping, but so what? The enduring Parisian brasseries, which Conran took as his model, have not survived on the exclusive patronage of poets who - in Cyril Connolly's phrase - were "willing to die of syphilis in a garret for the sake of an adjective". They are demotic playgrounds for anyone with the entrance fee (which is typically only half in Paris what it is in London).

But "restaurant capital", whatever that means, is one thing, gastronomic capital is quite another. Quality of cooking is increasingly incidental to the success of London restaurants. Architecture and design are of greater moment. Restaurants have merely replaced, or begun to replace, pubs as places of casual social interaction. Witness Barry Venison on Manchester United's sometime strikers Dwight Yorke and Andy Cole: "They're mates. They go out to restaurants together." Ten years before that a soccer pundit such as Mick Channon would have said of Brian McClair and Mark Hughes: "They're mates. They go down the pub together for a few lagers."

Restaurant-goers are people who eat - I swear I'm not making this up - crocodile rillettes with crostini and papaya sauce. At home they eat M&S prepared meals, which taste of nothing. Thus there exists a situation where huge dosh is spent on design-led pretension and gimmickry, on being seen, on eating novelty cooking wrought by bumfluff antipodeans and where, at home, food is something shoved in a microwave.

So what are all those tossers in telly kitchens doing if they're not teaching us to cook? Ainsley, Brian the Bluff, the whole stable run by the wretched Bazalgette, chirpy Jamie, the cheery gnome Wozza - they, and all their bathetic peers, are a) filling airtime as cheaply as it is possible to fill it, b) adhering to the British standard tradition of refusing to take food seriously, and c) turning themselves into full-fledged celebrities.

The broadsheets, meanwhile, are fostering the delusion that this country is in the throes of a culinary revolution. It isn't. An awful lot gets written about very little. The same names recur over and over again. Ludlow, evidently, Lidgates the butcher, La Fromagerie, Paxton & Whitfield, Neal's Yard... The repertory company of likely subjects is straitened. There are as many decent food suppliers in a single Parisian arrondissement as there are in the whole of London. The notion that London has somehow "caught up" is risible, born of chauvinism, Francophobia, pig ignorance and wishful thinking. Golden age? Platinum age? EPNS age, more like - you know, the way the plating soon wears thin to reveal the base metal beneath.

Our gastronomic mores may be changing for the better, but there is, really, only so far they can go. The weight of going on five centuries is a massive inhibition to improvement. This is a formerly Protestant country. It is Catholic and formerly Catholic countries (France is de jure a secular state) that eat properly in Europe. We suffered enclosures, the aristocratic theft of land that caused the flight of smallholders to cities, and which opened the way to industrial agriculture - which is founded on the basis that quality is the enemy of profit.

And it is agri-industrialists whom governments have consulted in forming policies which do not differentiate between the interests of "farms" owned by pension funds or the Mormon Church of Salt Lake City and those owned by people who work the land themselves, care for their stock and eat what they produce. We live on a crowded island yet resist the idea of density in our cities. Exurbia, merely sprawl with a fancy moniker, is pusillanimously accepted by those in power as an inevitability. Which of course it is, because governments are in the business of ingratiating themselves, and to oppose sprawl is to deny the right of every Englishman to his castle with three-car garage on a greenfield site which might be used for growing or rearing.

The absurd reduction of this process is that within the next couple of centuries Britain will be forced to import all its food. Many better London restaurants already do. Paris's wholesale market at Rungis is only four hours away. The supermarkets of Calais and St Omer are even closer - they make the most ambitious Sainsbury's or Tesco look like a Kwiksave (there's a name to lift a British heart). Perhaps we shouldn't even bother to try to emulate those countries whose implementation of European Union regs on cheese, apple size, hand-reared geese and so on is lax because the people who are charged with the scrutiny are those who will eventually eat the gear. That is not the case here. Until jobsworth inspectors are persuaded to join the eating classes there's no hope, and they won't join - won't have the wherewithal to join - until small-scale production ceases to attract a premium. It's a vicious circle.

This article is extracted from 'Incest and Morris Dancing' by Jonathan Meades, which is published this week by Cassell Illustrated at £20.00

Reuse content

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Consider the following: Consider the following: 1) Every week there are 43 cook shows on British terrestrial telly. There are a further 97 on the digital channels. There are three channels devoted exclusively to food. (These figures are approximate; I can't bring myself to read the listings.)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
British food from the Romans to Sunday roast dinners, fish and chips and the great British curry!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Sales of stilton, real ale and chicken tikka masala are up in France. Are the French learning to love British food?

You're eating at a pavement cafe in France. "You are Engleesh?" the waiter asks.

His pitying expression says it all. Whatever you order will be a delight after the boiled nursery food you've been brought up on.

You can't trust a country with such bad food, Jacques Chirac said of the UK.

To many French people the English are les rosbifs - a people unhealthily obsessed by roasting cows. That, and fish and chips and a few messy puddings and you have the extent of the UK's culinary repertoire, went the argument.

But something is changing across the Channel. People are buying British.

Stilton and cheddar are making inroads in a land where camembert, brie and roquefort are national symbols on a par with Shakespeare in the UK.

Scotch whisky now accounts for half a billion pounds in exports to France. Real ale is on the march, and sparkling wine from Sussex and Kent is winning awards, and prompting comparisons with champagne.

The tale of two cuisines

Early Normans brought French cooking to Britain where it was adopted in the royal courts

British cuisine was not adopted in France, but in the 18th Century it was widely accepted that British produce was of a superior quality

After the 1789 French revolution a wave of chefs came to Britain - some, like Antonin Careme, became celebrities and earned huge wages

By 19th Century it was British culinary equipment the French were raving about, with British manufactured goods dominating world trade

At the same time a few British dishes did catch on in France, including plum pudding and elaborate jellies

Source: Food historian Ivan Day
BBC Food: Try some classic British dishes BBC Food: Famous French recipes
The minister with responsibility for food, Owen Paterson, is taking a delegation to Paris to celebrate the success of British produce in France.

Last year British food exports to its Gallic neighbour reached £2.2bn a year, double the figure from 2000 when adjusted for inflation.

Among some Parisian chefs, Scottish beef is now held in higher esteem than France's own beef - a huge turnaround from the jokes about the UK's mad cows. Le crumble is a trendy addition to the dessert menu in even rural France.

Marks and Spencer's Champs Elysees store sells more chicken tikka masala than any branch in the UK and the fifth highest number of BLT sandwiches.

A second M&S Paris store opened last week, with two more large stores planned as well as a number of smaller Simply Food branches.

Jonathan Meades, a broadcaster and food critic living in Marseille, says the young, urban French see British food differently to Chirac's generation.

There are about a third of a million French living in London who bring back stories of the British capital's booming restaurant scene and culinary diversity - Indian food in particular - that much of France lacks.

"This generation travels," says Meades. "They realise that something has changed pretty fundamentally in London. They're not as gastronomically xenophobic as they used to be."

The UK has been through a food revolution in the last two decades. It boasts an outward-looking food culture that absorbs influences freely, while its culinary traditions have been reinvented by chefs like Fergus Henderson at St John and Rowley Leigh at Le Cafe Anglais.

Popular British dishes in France

Fruit crumble - French are discovering the delights according to chef Raymond Blanc

Sandwiches - British lunch staple has rocketed in popularity, according to Lady Penny Holmes who wrote sandwich recipe book for the French

Cheese - UK now produces more types of cheese than the French - 700, according to World Cheese Awards, and are selling more across the Channel

BBC Food: Classic crumble recipes BBC Food: The quintessential British sandwich
Leigh is a Francophile who named his restaurant to represent a fusion of English cooking and French techniques. He believes that British sparkling wine and soft cheese still have a long way to go before they can challenge champagne and camembert.

But Aberdeen Angus beef, hard cheeses like Montgomery cheddar, and Scottish langoustines, are as good as anything the French can produce. And the French "go mad over grouse as there's nothing like it there".

A blind tasting organised by the Financial Times last year gave English cheese a 5-1 win over their French equivalents.

The balance of culinary power has shifted. "There's no doubt that standards of cooking in France have declined over the last 30 years," Leigh says. "Since nouvelle cuisine, they've lost their mojo."

The backlash against France has taken many guises. From bad coffee to overly rich sauces and fussy presentation, the country whose cooking bible is the doorstop Larousse Gastronomique seems out of step with the innovations taking place in Spain and Scandinavia, or the simple, regional cooking found in Italy.

"I can't do all the foamy sauces they go in for these days, or all the plate decoration," Nigella Lawson said recently of French chefs.

But gastronomy is woven into France's national identity. And France is a proud country.

Just because the rest of the world decides it has fallen a notch or two on the culinary ladder doesn't mean the French will start eating toad in the hole, bangers and mash or braised oxtail.

For some French, eating British produce would seem unpatriotic, argues food writer Fiona Beckett.

France still out-punches Britain on food exports. It sells almost twice as much food and drink - £4.1bn - to the UK as vice versa. And even the increased performance of British goods in France might not be all it seems.

Whisky, which has always been popular among the French, makes up about a quarter of the sales figures.

There's also a question mark over who is really buying British food in France.

French rural supermarkets are stocking more and more UK products. Some like Super U even have dedicated British sections, groaning with Marmite, Branston Pickle, baked beans, and London Pride.

But many say it's rare for a French person to pause at these shelves to inspect so much as a Dairylea triangle.

Could it be that they're there for the estimated 150,000 British residents in France, the 200,000 second home owners, and many tourists, rather than Monsieur and Madame Dupont?

It's got to be the oldest cliche in the French book of cliches. That and the one about England's weather. But still it keeps on coming. Even today, I find it astonishing how often acquaintances here feel free to make wisecracks about our supposedly substandard cuisine.

But, as the man said, I am afraid the last laugh is on the other foot.

The revolution in British attitudes to food is now so fully entrenched as to be no longer a revolution. It's the reality. After Elizabeth David in the 1950s, our middle classes consciously adopted what they imagined to be the culinary sophistication of France and the Mediterranean.

But the odd thing is that in the same period, many French households were losing the cooking knack. The ping of the microwave replaced the bubbling of the cocotte. Gastronomy became a preserve of the elite.

Today it's shifting yet again. The French middle classes are going through a media-led rediscovery of the joys of cooking - indeed of all kinds of non-native cuisine. Which is wonderful. But please, messieurs, no more of the jokes.

The rural French haven't embraced British food in the same way as city dwellers, says Meades.

"People in villages in France are very incurious. Their view of England is people wearing bowler hats eating boiled food."

Agnes Poirier, a French journalist who divides her time between London and Paris, says the Anglo-Saxon media's talk of French gastronomic decline is wrong. France has always had a national cuisine whereas modern Britain has some traditional recipes cobbled together with lots of borrowed Mediterranean cooking, she argues.

Meades agrees that the demise of French food has been overblown.

"The quality of the produce is better in France. The vegetables actually taste of something, the meat is much better. A greater assiduousness is paid to cooking."

The fascination with M&S sums up the French attitude to British food, Poirier argues. Mint sauce with lamb, the triangle sandwich, coleslaw - these are alien concepts.

"It's quirky. They look disgusting, so people are absolutely entranced to find they like them." Then there's all the cakes, scones and biscuits, which are hard to resist.

"It goes from repulsion to attraction with British food," Poirier says. "But it is not taken seriously."

To talk of a new love might seem a little de trop.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Is France learning to love British food?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Sales of stilton, real ale and chicken tikka masala are up in France. Are the French learning to love British food? You're eating at a pavement cafe in France. "You are Engleesh?" the waiter asks. His pitying expression says it all. Whatever you order will be a delight after the boiled nursery food you've been brought up on.

# data[].attributes.body
Food in Britain from BC

# data[].attributes.body
British food, a selection

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
With dictionary look up. Double click on any word for its definition.
This section is in advanced English and is only intended to be a guide, not to be taken too seriously!

British Cuisine!

Yes, we do have a wide and varied cuisine in Britain today, no more do we suffer under the image of grey boiled meat! After years of disparagement by various countries (especially the French) Britain now has an enviable culinary reputation. In fact some of the great chefs now come from Britain, I kid you not!

However Britain's culinary expertise is not new! In the past British cooking was amongst the best in the world. Mrs Beeton is still one of the renowned writers of cookery books, her creations have now gained international popularity, years after her death.

Traditional British cuisine is substantial, yet simple and wholesome. We have long believed in four meals a day. Our fare has been influenced by the traditions and tastes from different parts of the British empire: teas from Ceylon and chutney, kedgeree, and mulligatawny soup from India.

A brief history

British cuisine has always been multicultural, a pot pourri of eclectic styles. In ancient times influenced by the Romans and in medieval times the French. When the Frankish Normans invaded, they brought with them the spices of the east: cinnamon, saffron, mace, nutmeg, pepper, ginger. Sugar came to England at that time, and was considered a spice -- rare and expensive. Before the arrival of cane sugars, honey and fruit juices were the only sweeteners. The few Medieval cookery books that remain record dishes that use every spice in the larder, and chefs across Europe saw their task to be the almost alchemical transformation of raw ingredients into something entirely new (for centuries the English aristocracy ate French food) which they felt distinguished them from the peasants.

During Victorian times good old British stodge mixed with exotic spices from all over the Empire. And today despite being part of Europe we've kept up our links with the countries of the former British Empire, now united under the Commonwealth.

One of the benefits of having an empire is that we did learn quite a bit from the colonies. From East Asia (China) we adopted tea (and exported the habit to India), and from India we adopted curry-style spicing, we even developed a line of spicy sauces including ketchup, mint sauce, Worcestershire sauce and deviled sauce to indulge these tastes. Today it would be fair to say that curry has become a national dish.

Among English cakes and pastries, many are tied to the various religious holidays of the year. Hot Cross Buns are eaten on Good Friday, Simnel Cake is for Mothering Sunday, Plum Pudding for Christmas, and Twelfth Night Cake for Epiphany.

Unfortunately a great deal of damage was done to British cuisine during the two world wars. Britain is an island and supplies of many goods became short. The war effort used up goods and services and so less were left over for private people to consume. Ships importing food stuffs had to travel in convoys and so they could make fewer journeys. During the second world war food rationing began in January 1940 and was lifted only gradually after the war.

The British tradition of stews, pies and breads, according to the taste buds of the rest of the world, went into terminal decline. What was best in England was only that which showed the influence of France, and so English food let itself become a gastronomic joke and the French art of Nouvell Cuisine was adopted.

British Cuisine Today

In the late 1980's, British cuisine started to look for a new direction. Disenchanted with the overblown (and under-nourished) Nouvelle Cuisine, chefs began to look a little closer to home for inspiration. Calling on a rich (and largely ignored) tradition, and utilising many diverse and interesting ingredients, the basis was formed for what is now known as modern British food. Game has enjoyed a resurgence in popularity although it always had a central role in the British diet, which reflects both the abundant richness of the forests and streams and an old aristocratic prejudice against butchered meats.

In London especially, one can not only experiment with the best of British, but the best of the world as there are many distinct ethnic cuisines to sample, Chinese, Indian, Italian and Greek restaurants are amongst the most popular.

Although some traditional dishes such as roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, Cornish pasties, steak and kidney pie, bread and butter pudding, treacle tart, spotted dick or fish and chips, remain popular, there has been a significant shift in eating habits in Britain. Rice and pasta have accounted for the decrease in potato consumption and the consumption of meat has also fallen. Vegetable and salad oils have largely replaced the use of butter.

Roast beef is still the national culinary pride. It is called a "joint," and is served at midday on Sunday with roasted potatoes, Yorkshire pudding, two vegetables, a good strong horseradish, gravy, and mustard.

Today there is more emphasis on fine, fresh ingredients in the better restaurants and markets in the UK offer food items from all over the world. Salmon, Dover sole, exotic fruit, Norwegian prawns and New Zealand lamb are choice items. Wild fowl and game are other specialties on offer.

In fact fish is still important to the English diet, we are after all an island surrounded by some of the richest fishing areas of the world. Many species swim in the cold offshore waters: sole, haddock, hake, plaice, cod (the most popular choice for fish and chips), turbot, halibut, mullet and John Dory. Oily fishes also abound (mackerel, pilchards, and herring) as do crustaceans like lobster and oysters. Eel, also common, is cooked into a wonderful pie with lemon, parsley, and shallots, all topped with puff pastry.

Regional Specialities

Despite recent setbacks beef is still big industry in England, and the Scottish Aberdeen Angus is one of our most famous beef-producing breeds. Dairy cattle are also farmed extensively -- England is famous for its creams and butters and for its sturdy and delicious cheeses: Stilton, Cheshire and its rare cousin blue Cheshire, double Gloucester, red Leicester, sage Derby, and of course cheddar.

Some of our more interesting dishes include:-

Beefsteak, Oyster, and Kidney Pudding: Oysters may seem unlikely in this meat pudding, but their great abundance in the Victorian age and earlier eras inspired cooks to find ways to incorporate them creatively in many different recipes. This steamed pudding combines the meats with mushrooms, onions, tomatoes, and Worcestershire, then wraps the whole in a suet pastry.

Black Pudding: invented in Stornoway, Isle of Lewis black pudding is often served as part of a traditional full English breakfast.
Black Pudding Recipe
Cock-a-Leekie : This Scottish specialty can be classified as a soup or a stew. It combines beef, chicken, leeks, and prunes to unusual and spectacular ends.

Crown Roast Lamb: The crown roast encircles a stuffing of apples, bread crumbs, onion, celery, and lemon.

Eccles Cake : Puff pastry stuffed with a spicy currant filling.

Hasty Pudding: A simple and quick (thus the name) steamed pudding of milk, flour, butter, eggs, and cinnamon.

Irish Stew: An Irish stew always has a common base of lamb, potatoes, and onion. It could contain any number of other ingredients, depending on the cook.

Likky Pie Leeks: pork, and cream baked in puff pastry.

Mincemeat: Beef suet is used to bind chopped nuts, apples, spices, brown sugar, and brandy into a filling for pies or pasties - not to be confused with minced meat!.

Mulligatawny Soup: What this soup is depends on who is cooking it. Originally a south Indian dish (the name means pepper water in tamil), it has been adopted and extensively adapted by the British. Mullitgatawny contains chicken or meat or vegetable stock mixed with yogurt or cheese or coconut milk and is seasoned with curry and various other spices. It is sometimes served with a separate bowl of rice.

Syllabub: In the seventeenth century, a milkmaid would send a stream of new, warm milk directly from a cow into a bowl of spiced cider or ale. A light curd would form on top with a lovely whey underneath. This, according to Elizabeth David, was the original syllabub. Today's syllabub is more solid (its origins can also be traced to the seventeenth century, albeit to the upper classes) and mixes sherry and/or brandy, sugar, lemon, nutmeg, and double cream into a custard-like dessert or an eggnog-like beverage, depending upon the cook.

Trifle: Layers of alcohol-soaked sponge cake alternate with fruit, custard and whipped cream, some people add jelly, but that's for kids.

Welsh Faggots: Pig's liver is made into meatballs with onion, beef suet, bread crumbs, and sometimes a chopped apple. Faggots used to be made to use up the odd parts of a pig after it had been slaughtered.

Welsh Rabbit (or Rarebit): Cheese is grated and melted with milk or ale. Pepper, salt, butter, and mustard are then added. The mix is spread over toast and baked until "the cheese bubbles and becomes brown in appetizing-looking splashes" (Jane Grigson in English Food, London: Penguin, 1977).

Westmoreland Pepper Cake: Fruitcake that gets a distinctive kick from lots of black pepper. Other ingredients include honey, cloves, ginger, and walnuts.

Pies, Puddings, Buns and Cakes

Pies and puddings are related phenomena in British culinary history. Originally, both solved the problem of preparing dinners made with less expensive meats. Pies covered a stew or other ingredients with a crust; puddings were made from butcher's scraps tucked into a sheep's stomach, then steamed or boiled. Pies have remained pies, although, in addition to savory pies, there now exist sweet variations, which tend to have two crusts or a bottom crust only.

Pie crusts can be made from a short dough or puff pastry. Snacks and bar food (Britain's fifth food group) are often in pie form: pasties (pronounced with a short "a" like "had") are filled turnovers.

Over time, however, in a confusing development, pudding has become a more general term for a sweet or savory steamed mixture -- as well as a word that describes desserts in general. For example, black pudding is actually made with pig's blood. Whereas plum pudding is a Christmas treat consisting of a steamed cake of beef suet (the white fat around the kidney and loins) and dried and candied fruits soaked in brandy. And, of course, one can't forget rice pudding.

Amongst cakes, buns and pastries local delicacies include Bath Buns, Chelsea Buns, Eccles Cakes, and Banbury Cakes.

The Great British Breakfast!

"And then to breakfast, with what appetite you have." Shakespeare

The great British breakfast is famous (or notorious) throughout the world! Actually nowadays it is a bit of a myth, today many British people are more likely to have a bowl of cornflakes or a cup of coffee with a cigarette than to indulge in the wonders of this feast!

However that is not to say that the traditional breakfast is dead, far from it, it's just not often eaten every day of the week. Speaking as a true Brit I occassionally push the boat out and treat myself to the full monty (not to be confused with the film of the same name).

The typical English breakfast is a 19th century invention, when the majority of English people adopted the copious meal of porridge, fish, bacon and eggs, toast and marmalade, that has now appeared on English breakfast tables for 100 years.

The annual consumption in the United Kindgom is 450,000 tonnes of bacon, 5,000 tonnes of sausages and millions of eggs, so you can see the Great British Breakfast is very much alive and well. It has retained its popularity as one of the country's favourite meals, and survived a whole series of eating trends and food fads.

Mrs Beeton would have recommended a large list of foods for breakfast such as, bread, rolls, toast, toasted teacakes, Sally Lunns; eggs cooked in various ways; fish, baked halibut steaks, fried whiting, broiled fresh herrings, soused herrings, fishcakes, broiled kippers, 'Findon' haddock, sprats fried in butter, fish kedgeree, fried salmon, salmon pie, baked lobster, codfish pie, cod's steak, croquettes of cod's roe, herrings stuffed with fish. Fruit such as stewed figs, stewed prunes, and fresh fruits in season. Game and pheasant legs, brawn, devilled drumsticks, and meat dishes both hot and cold, such as collared tongue, kidneys on toast, sausages with fried bread, pig's cheek, Melton pork pie, ham, galantine, spiced brisket, pressed beef...

So what does the great British breakfast consist of nowadays?

Simpsons in the Strand, a well know (and expensive) restaurant, serves breakfast daily. Their full English breakfast consists of the following:-

The GREAT BRITISH BREAKFAST at £13.95 includes:- Toast with jam or marmalade, pastries, fresh orange juice, freshly brewed coffee, a choice of cereals, porridge, stewed fruit or half a grapefruit, The Simpson's Cumberland sausage, scrambled egg, streaky and back bacon, black pudding, grilled mushrooms and tomato and a daily newspaper (not for consumption).

In addition to the GREAT BRITISH BREAKFAST, for serious breakfast eaters, Simpson's offers THE TEN DEADLY SINS - at £15.95 per person this includes: Toast with jam or marmalade, pastries, fresh orange juice, freshly brewed coffee Choice of cereals, porridge, stewed fruit or half a grapefruit The Simpson's Cumberland sausage, fried egg, streaky and back bacon, black pudding, lamb's kidneys, fried bread, liver, bubble & squeak, baked beans, grilled mushrooms and tomato.

Guests may also choose from an à la carte selection of classic breakfast dishes such as: Smoked Haddock Kedgeree; Poached Finan Haddock; Quail's eggs with haddock; Smoked Salmon with Scrambled Eggs; Grilled sirloin steak with grilled mushrooms and tomato and welsh rarebit. There is also a selection of plain, cheese, bacon, herb, mushroom and smoked salmon omelettes.

The Sunday Roast

Every Sunday thousands of British families sit down together to eat a veritable feast of roasted meat served with roast potatoes, vegetables and other accompaniments. It is a tradition with a long pedigree, so read on...

How it all began

In medieval times the village serfs served the squire for six days a week. Sundays however were a day of rest, and after the morning church service, serfs would assemble in a field and practice their battle techniques.

They were rewarded with mugs of ale and a feast of oxen roasted on a spit.

Nowadays

The tradition has survived because the meat can be put in the oven to roast before the family goes to church and be ready to eat when they return.

Typical meats for roasting are joints of beef, pork, lamb or a whole chicken. More rarely duck, goose, gammon, turkey or game are eaten. The more popular roasts are often served with traditional accompaniments, these are:

roast beef - served with Yorkshire pudding; and horseradish sauce or English mustard as relishes.
roast pork - served with crackling (the crispy skin of the pork) and sage and onion stuffing; apple sauce and English mustard as relishes
roast lamb - served with sage and onion stuffing and mint sauce as a relish
roast chicken - served with pigs in blankets, chipolata sausages and stuffing, and bread sauce or cranberry sauce or redcurrant jelly

Any self respecting Sunday roast should be served with a gravy made from the meat juices.

Bangers and Mash

You might see this on offer in a pub or cafe. Simply put, bangers are sausages, and mash is potato that's been boiled and then mashed up (usually with butter). The sausage used in bangers and mash can be made of pork or beef with apple or tomato seasoning; often a Lincolnshire, or Cumberland sausage is used.

The dish is usually served with a rich onion gravy. Although sometimes stated that the term "bangers" has its origins in World War II, the term was actually in use at least as far back as 1919.

Bubble and Squeak

Bubble and squeak (sometimes just called bubble) is a traditional English dish made with the shallow-fried leftover vegetables from a Sunday roast dinner. The chief ingredients are potato and cabbage, but carrots, peas, brussels sprouts, and other vegetables can be added. It is usually served with cold meat from the Sunday roast, and pickles, but you can eat it on its own. Traditionally the meat was added to the bubble and squeak itself, although nowadays the vegetarian version is more common. The cold chopped vegetables (and cold chopped meat if used) are fried in a pan together with mashed potato until the mixture is well-cooked and browned.

There are various theories as to the origin of its name, one of them being that it is a description of the action and sound made during the cooking process.

You can even by pre-p repared frozen and tinned versions, but they're pretty disgusting.

Fish and Chips

Fish and chips is the traditional take-away food of England, long before McDonalds we had the fish and chip shop. Fresh cod is the most common fish for our traditional fish and chips, other types of fish used include haddock, huss, and plaice.

The fresh fish is dipped in flour and then dipped in batter and deep fried, it is then served with chips (fresh not frozen) and usually you will be asked if you want salt and vinegar added. Sometimes people will order curry sauce (yellow sauce that tastes nothing like real curry), mushy peas (well it's green anyway) or pickled eggs (yes pickled).

Traditionally fish and chips were served up wrapped in old newspaper. Nowadays (thanks to hygiene laws) they are wrapped in greaseproof paper and sometimes paper that has been specially printed to look like newspaper. You often get a small wooden or plastic fork to eat them with too, although it is quite ok to use your fingers.

Steaks - an American tradition?

When you think about steak America always seems to come to mind, with cowboys and Texan cattle millionaires. However in the past steaks were so British that our elite troops were referred to as beefeaters, you can still see them in their traditional costume at the Tower of London.

The term Porterhouse for a special large kind of steak cuts has nothing to do with porters or luggage carriers but originates from British pubs where a special brand of dark beer, Porter beer, was served, and where a snack consisted of a steak some 2 lbs (about 900 grams) by weight - a single portion for a single man.

British Cheese

Cheese is made from the curdled milk of various animals: most commonly cows but often goats, sheep and even reindeer, and buffalo. Rennet is often used to induce milk to coagulate, although some cheeses are curdled with acids like vinegar or lemon juice or with extracts of vegetable rennet.

Britain started producing cheese thousands of years ago. However, it was in Roman times that the cheese-making process was originally honed and the techniques developed. In the Middle Ages, the gauntlet was passed to the monasteries that flourished following the Norman invasion. It is to these innovative monks that we are indebted for so many of the now classic types of cheese that are produced in Britain.

The tradition of making cheese nearly died out during WWII, when due to rationing only one type of cheese could be manufactured - the unappealingly named 'National Cheese'.

The discovery and revival of old recipes and the development of new types of cheese has seen the British cheese industry flourish in recent years and diversify in a way not seen since the 17 th century.

I have written a quick guide to British cheeses here.

The Humble Sandwich - yes that's ours too!

Where would British be without the cheese sandwich? The origin of the sandwich is as British as it could be. The name refers to the Earl of Sandwich who lived 1718 to 1792. The British have always been keen on betting and gambling, but the Earl of Sandwich overdid it even by our standards. During his gambling days, taking meals was considered by him as highly unwelcome interruptions. He therefore invented a kind of meal not requiring him to exchange the gambling table for the dining table: sandwiches.

Indian Cuisine in the UK

The word curry, meaning 'to spice' has been used since the medieval period. Nowadays, a night out in the pub, followed by a curry, is a tradition in many cities. Ever since the Victorian era, during the British Raj, Britain has been "borrowing" Indian dishes, and then creating Anglo-Indian cuisine to suit the British palate. Back then we came up with kedgeree, coronation chicken and mulligatawny soup, all traditional Anglo-Indian dishes, but they are not that popular today. More recently many varieties of Indian curry of which chicken tikka masala and balti are the best known have been popularised. In fact chicken tikka masala is now considered one of Britain's most popular dishes, you can even buy chicken tikka masala flavoured crisps.

The future

The food industry in Britain is now undergoing major changes. From a resurgence of interest in organic food to the other extreme - genetically modified (GM) food. GM food has so incensed the general public that there have been mass demonstrations against it all over the country.

Genetically modified food

Enough sites found for GM farm trials (13 March 2000)

taken from simplyfood.co.uk

Farm-scale trials of genetically-modified (GM) crops look set to go ahead after enough sites were found to carry out the experiments, following a meeting of the Scientific Steering Committee, an independent group overseeing the trials.

A Cabinet Office spokeswoman said: 'The outcome of the meeting was that there are sufficient sites to allow trials to go ahead. They will be advising ministers next week and an announcement will be made as soon as possible.'

It had been reported last month that the trial site organisers were 'struggling' to find enough farmers to take part. Ministers were said to want about 75 farm-scale trials of GM crops this year to test whether they damage the environment. They need to choose from a pool of 150 farms for the first phase of the three-year scientific experiment.

Peter Melchett, executive director of Greenpeace UK, said: 'If these trials go ahead it will be a potential tragedy for the environment. Britain will be bombarded with GM pollen without any regard for wildlife, people, or GM-free farmers. The whole process has been nothing short of genetic tyranny with an almost complete absence of public consultation.'

A Friends of the Earth spokesman urged farmers who had volunteered for the trials to 'think again'. He said: 'Farmers who have signed up for these very large trials should realise that they have also signed up to a packet of potential problems. Issues such as liability for cross-pollination of neighbouring crops and contamination of honey have not been resolved. The main beneficiaries of GM crops could well be lawyers rather farmers.'

Some Interesting Websites for Foodies!

You can find some traditional British recipes from the English magazine on the recipes page. All tried and tested by yours truly.

Another interesting site can be found at //www.nutrition.org.uk/ including a great information section.

One of the staples in the English person's diet is cheese, if you don't believe me just watch Wallace and Grommit. This great site is all about cheese: All about cheese

Iceland - no not the country! Learn all about frozen food here.

Find out all about the rules, regulations and government bodies in control of food in the UK at: http://www.foodstandards.gov.uk
Interesting Food facts

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
British Food - British culture, customs and traditions

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
British culture, customs and traditions - Food