What might surprise people and amuses my mum no end, is that although I’m now veggie I wasn’t as a kid and I’m not squeamish about offal etc.
That’s why it surprised mum a bit that I stuck with being veggie, because while I was not a fan of red meat (I always found it hard to digest and I now believe I’m intolerant of it following a few interesting incidents) I did like things like steak and kidney pudding (but used to leave the steak aside), liver and onions, faggots, oxtail soup, tongue sandwiches, stuffed hearts...
It’s really interesting when I indulge my foodie side (I don’t cook loads these days) and watch shows like masterchef, gbbo, great British menu and especially Nigel slater’s a taste of my life (wish there were more shows like this) how many people are returning to or at least warmly nostalgic about foods that are now considered unfashionable or even distasteful.
It’s also fascinating watching the social history programmes and seeing what foods and dishes were popular in the past.
Yes, often it was due to small household budgets, but not always.
The food we eat and enjoy says SO much about us...
From this thread - where we’re from, but also age, class, possibly ethnic background (I wonder if my own background as a Scot of Irish ancestry raised Catholic has influenced what we ate/made)
Certainly as an army brat I had many friends who’s homes I ate in where often the mums (mainly mums as back then women didn’t stay in the army after becoming mothers) were not British so I was able to eat a wonderful variety of delicious food that I never would have had the opportunity to try had I not been an army brat.
Ghoulash as already mentioned, loads of German and Cypriot dishes, Polish too of course, but also Caribbean, Kenyan, Sierra Leonian, Chinese (hong Kong still being an overseas territory then) etc
It was totally fascinating learning about the different cuisines and eating habits and I’m sure it was similar for those who came to us, I know a lot of them found that we almost always had soup and bread after school a bit odd! But it’s cheap and filling which I’m sure was the main reason, kept us going until dinner, and especially if it’s cold and even more especially if you’d got drenched on the way home it was warming! Healthier than the snacks a lot of my friends were eating after school in the 70’s/80’s too, which was mainly crisps, chocolate, biscuits etc
Please can someone start up a restaurant chain with a selection of all these regional things to try I think that would be an excellent idea but tricky with so many potential menu items to choose from!
I think the difference is we embrace food from other cultures more in Britain definitely, one of the few positives retained from our colonialism.
I remember reading on here ages ago why we can’t get decent Mexican here and of course the answer was obvious - due to geography and our not having colonised Mexico!
I was also really interested to learn from a restaurateur, the blindingly obvious answer as to why “Indian” food in Germany wasn’t the same as “indian” food in Uk - the recipes/menus are tweaked to be palatable to the customers they need to attract. In Germany the “indian” food was less hot spicy and had loads more garlic in it, just in case anyone was curious.
There’s been a few comments/posts on various threads on here too on how to find authentic non-British cuisine in the Uk.
Now a proper morning roll (not those disappointments masquerading as them available in English supermarkets) yes they’re so hard to find almost as soon as you get over the border and hard to describe, I would say lighter, more crusty and less yeasty than English rolls?
Amusing anecdote - my mum when she first moved south as an army wife/mum was horrified at the poor quality of the supposedly fresh fish in England. As a child for years I thought I didn’t like fish, she kept saying it was cos the fish was crap down there, she eventually managed to persuade me to try the fish when up visiting and it did taste completely different! But the funniest part was whenever she came across other “exiled” Scots they’d almost immediately “conspire” to supply each other with fresh fish from home if they were visiting up there (they’d buy it fresh then freeze it and transport in cool boxes!) we used to joke they were fish smugglers 😂
Even better when chips have vinegar on then your chip spice proper sticks to your chips. that reminds me of my mum whenever we got a chippy supper she’d tell em to put the vinegar on first - and then she’d get a weird look! That’s how all the chippys here do it and it’s definitely better.