to think that Britain hasn't got a national cuisine any more?

[TheFourthLobster]

My parents were telling the DCs about the stable British diet of meat and two veg. The DCs were saying they never had meat and two veg for their meals so what was the stable British diet now? We couldn't agree on what it was, so what meals do you regularly eat in your house? Does Mumsnet have a staple cuisine and is that more reflective of British food today than meat and two veg?

This last week we have had fusilli bolognese, fajitas, achari curry, roast turkey (the only roast we've had all year), thai green chicken curry and pizza.

What have you eaten in your house?

This week: Sunday - roast lamb. Monday - pizza. Tuesday - cous cous and left over lamb. xmas eve - fish pie and green beans, xmas day - roast turkey, stuffing and gammon and roast veg & sprouts, boxing day - roast stuffed duck with herb buttered new spuds, broccoli and carrots. Today - leftover meat, new pots and cauli cheese. Tomorrow - pot roast veal.

We do actually tend to do meat and 2 veg/traditional type food. DH isn't keen on pasta and i tend to low carb so find it easy to just not have the spuds. DS (2) wont eat pasta, rice, cous cous...basically anything other than meat/fish and mash pots/swede/parsnip. So i often do a couple of meals of that combo and have enough for leftovers on the days we are sick of it don't have it.

We probably have a tagine/curry/chilli/stir fry once a week. Roast once a week. Salmon and veg once a week. then some combination of: Sausage & mash/toad in the hole. Chops and stuffing and veg. Chicken thighs, veg and potato wedges. Chicken and mushroom/Steak and onion pie and veg. Pork, butter bean and chorizo casserole and veg. Beef casserole. Gammon steaks, fried egg and chips and peas. Chorizo, potato and red pepper frittata. Meat balls and linguine. Lasagne. Pizza and salad. Quiche. Jacket spuds. Fajitas. Shepherds/Cottage pie.

smoked salmon

smoked eel is very nice too but apparently you have to be careful with eels as they are a bit overfished.

I agree that 'typical' food from each part of England have been swallowed up (pardon the pun) a lot by fast food and adapted versions of the food of other nationalities who have settled here over the years. Which seems very sad.

I'm Jewish (atheist ) and eat a lot of food you'd find in Israel, Lebanon, and Iran. Lots of veg tagines and dishes using lentils and chickpeas, fish and chicken. A lot of the things we have you'd find in many Middle Eastern countries - Lots of rice and couscous, tabouleh, pitta and flatbreads, as opposed to potato based carbs. Lots of roast veg too. Salads with onion, tomato, cucumber and mint. If anyone wants anything after the main course, it's either fresh fruit or fruit stewed with cinammon, cloves, nutmeg and served with plain yoghurt. Occasionally I make rice-pudding or semolina.

I love traditional British food like roasts, roast potatoes, yorkshire puds, veggies, fish and chips, pies and ALL the puds. I don't have the confidence to make it myself (apart from some of the puds that don't need a lot of practice like crumble and trifle.

we just made homemade pizza for the first time ever and it was LUSH.

So yay for non british cuisine

"What people eat every day"

is different to

"The traditional food of the country"

Or it is where I live at least, and I am very glad of that.

No matter how lovely Italian/French/Vietnamese food might be, I'd be very bored if I lived somewhere where people ONLY ate their local traditional foods.

i am just about to buy madhur jefferies "great british" curry cook book - much nicer than meat and two veg

I'm 55, British and have never cooked a roast turkey dinner. On the 25th I roasted 4 pheasants for Christmas dinner. The last time I cooked a "meat and 2 veg" meal was probably 25/12/13.

I doubt in all the years since I left home I've cooked "meat and 2 veg" more than once or twice a year. There was a brief period when son's favourite meal was roast chicken (which I can't abide) where I cooked this more often.

We are not a vegetarian family although we don't eat a lot of red meat but when we do it'll be in stews, casseroles, hot pots, curries etc.

melted, whilst i agree with you to a certain degree about different nationalities bringing their food with them i also think we have brought stuff back ourselves, just look at the good old cup of tea. people travel do much more these days and experience different cuisines and bring them back. The ingredients are widely available unlike before.

i think its a good thing.

i think you have to ask someone who is from and lives in another country to find out what is perceived as "traditional british food" as we all have ideas

eg
india -curry
Spain -paella
italy -pasta
japan-sushi

i doubt those things are the only things those countries eat but that's my perception

I'd suggest cawl, Glamorgan's sausages and bara brith as traditional Welsh dishes, as well as Welsh cakes.

Piper and Fluffy a traditional Welsh dish would be cawl - a lamb broth with lots of veg served with bread and cheese.

shadow great minds X post!

We holidayed in Italy last year and I found the food boring. Basically cheesey antipasti, pesto type pasta, then a grilled piece of meat (we were in the alps) for every meal. I'd much rather live in our island nation where we take influences and ingredients from all over the place.

Re fish and chips: don't know about the origins but in the Scottish cities it was very much popularised by Italian immigrants who set up the first fish and chip shops.

I agree we tend to enjoy trying different foreign foods and assimilating them into our national cuisine and this is very British, as a pp said historically we have done this with foods that have come in to our country through travellers of various kinds. But we do still like our roasts and old fashioned plain meat dishes. For school meals the most popular dishes are roast dinner and fish and chips, so kids still like these.

What people eat for tea on a Tuesday is not the same as 'national cuisine'. I doubt many French families have cuisses de grenouille for Tuesday tea but it's still classic French national cuisine.

English typical dishes: roast dinner, shepherd's pie, smoked salmon, various sausages and cheeses, game pie, summer pudding, bakewell tarts, custard, fish and chips, treacle sponge pudding, etc etc etc. Of course there is an English national cuisine

OTOH I collect classic cookery books and a quick glance at my 1784 Hannah Glasse makes it clear that our national cuisine has evolved. For example the advent of central heating and fridges means we probably eat fewer of the type of heavy seasoned puddings designed to stick to your ribs and keep for ages in the pantry.

Roast dinner and its variations
Cottage or Shepherd's pie
Pie, mash and peas (or liquor (sp?))
Jellied eels
Tikka masala
Pasty (be it Cornish or otherwise)
Bangers and mash
Crumble and custard
Spotted dick and any steamed puddings
Fruit pie
Yorkshire pudding

Not what we've eaten this week by the way but traditional English/British food. Don't think its too sparse a list!

I thought fish and chips was an adaptation of a Portuguese import?

I think staple diet and national cuisine are different things.

I would suggest national cuisine is seen by others as traditionally British such as fish and chips, roast dinners, sausage and mash, balti.

However most British inhabitants staple diets consist of much more international food. We always have chilli con carne, tagine, mauritian curry, moussaka and mediterranean style salads a few times a month - they are our staple dinners. Lunch times are much more 'traditionally' british - sandwiches & jacket potatoes which I guess is both staple and a national cuisine.

I also was under the impression that fish and chips were a Portuguese invention.

No country eats their traditional food all the time IME.

I live abroad and I would say the definition is more "stuff which would be strange in other countries". So it would be (IME) - meat and two veg type stuff, roast dinners (I didn't realise but actually this is pretty unique to Britain), pies with pastry, pies with mashed potato on top, in fact any kind of meal based around mash and gravy. Fish and chips. Stuff on toast - baked beans, cheese on toast, egg on toast. Eaten elsewhere but all very "British".

What we tend to eat day to day:
Noodles, ramen or stir fry
Pasta
Pizza
Meat and veg/meat and chips
Pasta bake/some kind of pie
Casserole or stew

I see what you mean lemis. With more travel and internet their is far more scope than ever before to try replicate food from different countries, at home.

About half a century ago, people probably ate more of what they'd grown up eating and what you were offered in cookery books and magazines.

I think it's brilliant that you can buy the right items to make stuff from around the world. The range of spices and products even in the supermarkets, is nothing like what was available up to about 5 years back. And thanks to youtube, you can find people who can show you exactly how to make meals authentically. It's very exciting.

Lot of countries think that we are very weird to eat a jacket potato with stuff on top and call it a meal.

When I was growing up though in the 90s/2000s, although we'd have the occasional stir fry or shepherd's pie or spag bol, it would always always always be meat and veg - the "meat" might have been Bird's Eye crispy chicken, or a beefburger, or something else processed, potatoes probably smiley faces or alphabites and the veg might sometimes have been a kind of ratatouille type mix, although usually it was carrots, broccoli, sweetcorn, cauliflower, green beans, etc, but almost all of our meals followed that pattern of being a meat/fish portion, a potato portion and two veg portions.

Amazing that their are so many creative dishes and they all have a place in our weekly or monthly routine when shopping and cooking. Geographical influence has allowed the British taste buds to be developed far more i feel than other north western european countries. This does still leave the question unanswered and that is i believe an evolving debate.

Cumberland sausage.
Eccles cakes.
Regional cheeses (cheddar, wensleydale etc).
Cornish pasties.
Haggis.
Yorkshire puddings.
Cullen Skink.

Not all together though :)

As well as all the dishes mentioned here all of the extras we have are very British.

Digestives
Cheese and pickle sandwiches
Fry ups
Buttered toast
Crumpets
Muffins
Cakes of all sort - Victoria sponge, coffee and walnut, fruit cake
Hot cross buns
Puddings - crumbles, custard, trifle, steamed sponge, Bakewell tart

I can confirm that Italians eat nothing but Italian food and think the only food worth eating is Italian. Got told by an Italian employee that the scrambled eggs, English muffin and smoked salmon we were eating was Italian