Dinners - are Brits only ones that make international food for dinner

[o9yhke89]

Was chatting with an Italian and Spanish friend about kids dinners - and mostly they just make whatever they grew up with i.e. Italian and Spanish food and really treasure their family recipes. Most of my English friends always try to have food from different cultures and this is seen as much more sophisticated and worldly. I've lived all over but was wondering whether the Brits just don't value their own cuisine especially when it comes to family meals.

No idea @saltinesandcoffeecups.
Bad cooking with poor quality ingredients is not just the preserve of the British.

I have eaten poor meals in very definitely untouristy parts of France and Spain. I just think that modern British cooking is up there with the best cooking in the world. I'm a big fan of The Great British Menu and watch with amazement at the creative skills of the chefs using everyday ingredients to create astonishing food.

We actually had an incredibly inventive food culture in Georgian times, we were the richest country in the world and had foodstuffs and spices from all over the world pouring into the UK. Our temperate climate means we can grow a wide variety of plants, it's why our gardens are world famous and it means we can grow a wide variety of food crops as well (not just roots). The agricultural revolution started here and we produce the best beef. Our lamb was famous from medieval times and Scottish salmon and shellfish (cold water makes the best shellfish) and game are fantastic. As PPs have said we have the perfect climate for apples, pears and soft fruit. We have as many different cheeses as the French, our baking is world class.

I think there's a few things going on. The Industrial Revolution started in the UK so we had much earlier urbanization than the rest of Europe so people lost their connection to the land centuries ago rather than in the last 70 years like most of the world. Then the impact of two world wars and the long tail of rationing, we had rationing until 1954, nine years after the war ended and the last country in the world to stop rationing postwar.

I think culturally we have a tendancy to credit other countries for foods we have eaten here for a long time. We think of garlic as French despite it having been eaten in the UK since Roman times (and wild garlic being native) and someone further up said omelette was French, as if we haven't been eating eggs every which way for as long as the French. Nobody would say tomatoes weren't part of Italian cuisine or chilli wasn't part of Thai cuisine or peppers part of Spanish cuisine but they are all foodstuffs that only came to Europe and Asia as part of the Columbian exchange.

I have to say if you criticize an entire countries cuisine that says more about you than the country you are criticising. Britain does have fabulous food for all seasons (what about a cold poached salmon or trout with freshly picked garden peas in a garden salad flavoured with a variety of leafy herbs and edible flowers on a summers day?) and it is not all bland and beige.

A dd working in SE Asia once shared a house with half a dozen Italians. They refused to eat any food that wasn’t Italian, none of the local cuisine. And there wasn’t much choice of Italian either, so it was non stop pizza or pasta.

Dd was genuinely shocked that they were so unadventurous - she’d thought it was only Brits who were supposed to be like this. And to be fair, dh once did a business trip to somewhere in Asia with a colleague who would only eat steak and chips!

and it is not all bland and beige.

Only people who can't cook would say that all English food is bland and beige.

I’m British. I love traditional English food and cook it a lot (am 37, if relevant). We cook English dishes more in winter, but there are lovely English things like asparagus tart and cold poached salmon with new potatoes to be enjoyed at this time of year.

I have a young DS, so cook lots of “international” food as well, because we all love curry, pizza, pasta, chilli etc. But I happen to think the U.K. has a great culinary heritage, which I don’t think we should lose, so I make sure to include English food several times a week. I also still do old fashioned things like steak and kidney pudding; but that really is a winter meal.

I agree with @JaninaDuszejko

Nothing beats a good ploughman's lunch.

You're right to point out some goof vegetarian options there. But I'm vegan and also love my spicy food.
Lentil soup is the only thing out of those that I'd contemplate (& I do make a good one)!

No

my South Asian family cook English food a little spice of often added doesn’t always make it nice

often home cooked foreign food is blander often heavy in carbs but it’s what you have you grown up with so comforting.

If all you are doing is boiling your veg, then it is your poor cooking skills that mean you can't turn veg into an appealing dish.

Great post.

People are talking about blandness and boiling. Sounds like they're just crap cooks, or have such poor palates that they can't detect subtle flavours (although plenty of British stuff has strong flavour if you cook it right).

I think it's a cultural thing. I used to live in Spain and one of the first questions people used to ask me was "How do like Spain?" I hardly ever get this question asked here. I think Mediterranean people are very proud of their culture.

a lot of truth in this - Italians can be incredibly anal about food. And at times their narrowminded bloodymindeness on the issue can veer into sheer racism. I once round an Italian dinner table had someone tell me that chinese food was rubbish and that EVERYONE he knew who had eaten it had thrown up.
And let's face it, pasta, though handy, isn't the most exciting stuff.
I was very amused to read a while ago that some refugees in an Italian holding camp had complained about the food - oh the outrage!
On the italian Brit food thing, I also remember seeing some Italian tourists in Britain being interviewed on RAI Uno (equivelent of BBC1) - asked how they were finding things - they said having a great time, but Oh the food - eyes roll heavenwards - everyone has a good laugh, presenter included.
It's also worth noting that this glorification of Italian food is quite recent - if you go back a couple of centuries it was apparently quite common for travellers in Italy to be horrified by the food.

I thought we were talking about traditional British food?
Not something made up by the marketing department...

I think it's a cultural thing. I used to live in Spain and one of the first questions people used to ask me was "How do like Spain?" I hardly ever get this question asked here. I think Mediterranean people are very proud of their culture.

I ask people this question about the U.K. when I know they have moved here recently.

:)
and whatever ploughmen ate when the sun was high, did they ever call it "lunch". Just after "elevenses" and before "high tea"?

Have a Bacon Badger and then tell me it's not nice.

Disagree but then I don't like plain food like pie and mash 🤷‍♀️ i prefer food with flavour / spicy food
Something incredibly broken with your palate if you can only taste flavour when spices are added. Poor you.

I would prefer a Thai curry over a pie and mash given the choice, but that is personal preference.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with a well made pie served with creamy mash, fresh vegetables and plenty of gravy. Although, not in this weather.

There is plenty of summer British foods - flans, salads, cold meats, poached fish, seeafood etc.,

I am a bit confused that people seem to think the sum total of British food is pie and mash, roast dinners and fish and chips.

You're clearly eating in the wrong places!

It's nothing to do with British food not being nice. British food can be as nice and varied as any other country.

It's just that Britain is a particularly multicultural place.

International food is incredibly popular here in Japan.

Chinese
Korean
Italian
Indian
BRITISH

99% of the Indian and Chinese food people eat in the UK is British. It’s racism that prevents it from being recognised so and also ignorance from people who haven’t travelled approached. In the UK Indian vegetarian food, outside of a few key Indian immigrant centres, is actually Indo-Kenyan (most often Kenyan-Gujarati) food from the British Empire. You won’t see this food in India or Kenya because it’s British and some of the recipies are ancient. Similarly most Indo-Pakistani-Bangladeshi meat dishes found here are British & either don’t exist outside of the UK or were brought out to south Asia by British tourists.

This idea that just flams, salads, roasts, cold meats are British is wrong. And racist.