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?

I tend to alternate between a meal with rice, meal with pasta and meal with spuds. Plus a noodle meal maybe, pizza, a salad or a takeaway interspersed. Even the potato meals are only meat, pots and veg on a Sunday, I pretty much never serve this any other day!

Veg stew all the way! My DS eats more veg stew than anything else, as he likes it, it's cheap, and even though I'm generally a rotten cook I'm quite good at stew. Except when we go to grandma's, then it's roti and dhal.

When I'm getting fancy I put dumplings in the stew.

Veg stew has to be one of the most traditional British dishes! Probably eaten here for thousands of years in some form.

Ime, which includes time spent living in Southern Europe, the British eat dishes from all over the world regularly in a way other European nationalities/countries don't.

A pp mentioned paella as a Spanish national dish. In Valencia, where rice is grown, paella is the traditional Sunday lunch dish.

A lot of traditional British food was designed to fuel people working hard, manual jobs - as the nature of work undertaken has changed, so has the diet.

We were recently on holiday in spain and I was really surprised that the main course option on the set menu was often meat and potatoes. This wasn't a British resort - the menus were always only in Spanish. I've found that quite often in Greece too. I think the British element is the sauce and boiled veg.

We eat meat and veg once or twice a week as it's quick and DS likes it. The rest of the time it's pasta, risotto, fajitas, curry etc.

Livegoldrings - ha, that's very true! However, I've clearly got all modern and daring as I usually include some of the glorious New World delicacy that is the potato.

What's interesting about Quangles list is they are all baked goods . I would ash 'baking' is quintessentially British, from bread, to biscuits, to pies, to pastries.

This week we had bolognese, bean curry, Thai red curry, chicken stir fry and roast chicken (but with a soy lime sauce).

I think curry is very British. Agree it's not the same as traditional. It's about what the average British would perceive as normal food. And what is traditional anyway. Roast Turkey is a new thing from the Americas and now obviously traditional for Christmas.

Liver and onions with mash
Fry up/mixed grill
Bubble and squeak
Cod and chips
Bangers and mash
Lamb/pork chops with potatoes and veg
Beef stew with dumplings
faggots with mash and veg
rabbit stew

Roast on a Sunday mostly beef. Sometimes pork, lamb/mutton.
Chicken was a rare treat.

This was the norm for me growing up in the 1960s.

Don't think we ate badly but we also had a proper pudding every day. Not much fruit and only what was in season with the exception of bananas which we always seemed to have......in sandwiches.

I'm not even sure what meat and 2 veg is. Do the spuds count as a veg?

Is it like, a gammon steak with boiled pots, peas and carrots type thing? If so, that's kind of super-70s isn't it?

If I have an organic lamb steak with a minted crust, with buttered jersey royals, asparagus, and (fails to think of another exotic veg) baby carrots, does that count as meat and 2 veg?

It was spuds and two more veg. For us it was frozen peas and one other often carrots or cabbage but green beans or something else in season. Lots of sprouts in the winter too. Root veg in a stew of course.

Britain definitely doesn't have as comprehensive and all-prevailingall-prevailing a cuisine as many other countries, like France, Italy, China, India etc.

But it is great that we have embraced so many other cuisines and adopted them into our everyday eating habits. It makes for supermarkets and restaurants being much more varied and interesting than in the aforementioned countries IME.

Out of interest does anyone know what English national costume is?

I can argue quite happily that there is stacks of English food cos there is but what is our national costume? I am English and have no clue whatsoever and DH and I were talking about it the other day and he had no idea either. The only thing we could come up with was morris dancers and I'm sure that's not it

Oh and I mean scottish and welsh i can picture but english? flummoxed.

According to the Pole and Algerian in this house the English national dish is Roast Beef.

omni I was going to say Morris dancers too.

One half of my ancestry is of English peasant stock - people who worked on the land. Not farmers (too posh) but the kind of people who worked for farmers. I can remember a family gathering about 20 years ago when everyone brought a homemade dish, and what it meant was that there was every possible variation on pig + pastry, but very little else. (It was fantastic, although possibly not all that healthy.)

I think class has a lot to do with what you consider "traditional" food, too. My mum liked all the wobbly bits of the animal (trotters, black pudding, etc) not because she was some avant-garde foodie, but because those were the worthless bits of the pig you kept and ate yourself when you killed the household pig and sold the meat.

Interesting to think spag bol and chicken tikka massala are English dishes. Agree root veg stew with maybe a bit of meat is probably as traditional as it gets.

I think it's a pretty sad state of affairs if children have never experienced meat and two veg meals (even if the meat is substituted with vegetarian options if you're that way inclined)
Meat and vegetables type Sunday roast is a classic staple and perfectly healthy for growing children.
Every child should experience at least one, for varieties sake.
If you're completely adverse to them though I'd suggest as proper British fayre:

• Toad in the hole
• Shepherds pie
• cottage pie
• Yorkshire pudding with gravy, mash potatoes and peas
• Lancashire hotpot
• fish and chips

I'm not even sure what meat and 2 veg is. Do the spuds count as a veg?

No. Spuds are essential, but they don't count as one of your veg. You have your potatoes, and at least two portions of vegetables as well. Eg broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, parsnips etc.

Yorkshire pudding is very traditional English food. I can remember my grandma saying she often had it before the main dish. This was to fill you up so that you didn't eat so much of the more expensive main meal.

She was born in 1897 and clearly remembered the working men being given the meat and the younger children and women having veg and gravy when families had little money.

Fish and chips originated in Mossley (Lancashire) despite many southerners claims.

I find the difference in chip shops around the country fascinating. In the Valleys in South Wales you could rarely get gravy with your chips and when you could it was shite, but you could get faggots and peas and saveloy's. The Scots do some mad stuff in batter and down South, the fish is always expensive, but curry sauce seems to go with everything.

For me traditional British/English food (from a northerners perspective)

Fish and chips
Roast beef, with Yorkshire pudding
Roast chicken with roast spuds and veg
Cottage/shepherds pie
Hot pot
Rag pudding
Liver and onions (yuck)
Tripe
Chops, spuds and veg
Chips and gravy

I love the fact that in the UK we take on so many other cuisines and tailor recipes to suit our taste.

Welsh: stew, roast beef, eggs & bacon, pie, welsh cakes, pancakes, fish, trout / salmon. I've tried loads of food over the years but the kids like trad food so am back to that now!

Oh yes lamb chops and mint with boiling water/ sugar/ vinegar sauce: yum

The first fish and chip shop was opened in 1860 by Josept Malin, an East end Jew, but Jewish refugees from Portugal and Spain (not east europe apparently, although therewere many Sephardic jews who fled there also)probably introduced the battered fish concept to the UK, and would sell fried fish from trays from the 16th century I believe.
Deep fried potatoes were popular in the North of England, and at some point the fish started getting put with the chips, and there was also a chippy opened in Lancashire a bit afterJoseph malin (This last bit from Wikipedia).