A Balic

Wilfrid - sorry, I was using statistics from the wrong century. What can I say? It was early and I was shaking with rage over Plotnicki's attack on Steak 'n' Kidney pudding. The heathen.

I had never said "G'day mate" until moving to the UK, then I was forced to say it so that ignorant British types didn't mistake me for a South African or (God preserve) a New Zealander! I haven't had Moose, but I have had some Elk (Moose that lives in Europe) sausage. Yeh, they were kind of black coloured.

They shut down? Good, I hate those so-called Australian theme places. I had not seen any until moving to Edinburgh, they have several here and they are complete shite, bearing no relationship to anything that I have ever seen in Australia with the possible exception of those "Ye Olde English/Irish" chain pubs. Anyway, it was proberly staffed by Canadians and they would have sustituted moose for kangaroo in the burgers, eh?

Ellen - even with the removal of the "White Australia" policy post-WWII, there was still a large amount of British immigrating to Australia. We even have a nick-name for them "Whinging Poms" . All the statistics you may wish to find are at: http://www.immi.gov.au/statistics/ Fish 'n' chips are very popular (and on a very subjective basis (ie. variety, freshness, skill of cooking) better then many UK versions. However, recently they have lost ground to South-East Asian foods, in terms of popularity. In Australia, I would almost exclusively eat Fish 'n' Chips only when going down to the beach, when I was a kid we would take them home and have them as a family meal.

Tony - you have made me all home sick . Tradionally the top restaurants in Melbourne were "French" (even though there was very little French immigration to Australia), I think this was part of our Anglo-Saxon heritage that good food = French food. I think that Plotnicki would have loved Australia in the 1980's -90's.

Plotnicki - a small thing, you can't claim sugar + fruit as a French thing. It's Moorish/Muslim thing, if anything. Anyway the history of marmalade (as in British Orange Marmalade) is really well documented and widely know (It's Scottish). The name comes from the Spanish for "Quince" as did the original Seville Oranges that the marmalade. Man, do I have to educate you on everything? Boy, in the future all this is going to make some funny reading. Some anthropology student is going to read all these comments and say "Can you believe this Plotnicki guy* , he says that "French" cooking was the best? God, these people ate some shite and thought that it was not only edibile, but great food! Bugger this for a joke, I'm off to have a Steak 'n' Kidney Pud." *"Plotnicki" beaten to death with smoked haddock by enraged English pie seller (Hence "Haddock Plot. Day"), now know as the start of the Great Food Revolution. This violence continued, until all French influence was removed from the popular food culture and what we now know as the True British Food Laws were placed in the constitution.

Steve - many things teach you I will, but you must let the rage flow out of you [cuts to scene with Plotnicki fighting dark Wilfrid like character. Plotnicki kills Wilfrid and takes off mask only to see his own face!]. Wilfrid - the statistics are are from a real source but what does that mean, right? The offical census from 1851 gives about 50% of the population over the age of ten working in the fields or as servants. Obviously these figures would be higher before the industrial revolution of the 18th C. More later, I have this work crap to do.

Adam Balic's guide to Egullet survival: Rule No. 1. 1). Never make assumptions about anything when there is a Plotnicki involved.

An Italian friend gave us a recipe for Porcini risotto that uses white beer (such as Hoegaarden) instead of wine. It gives a nice fruitiness to the end product. I think that wine, except fino sherry, sucks when paired with Sushi etc. I would rather have a beer. "Milk stout" were originally made of nursing mothers. They contain added lactose (hence Milk stout) which yeast can not break down, so it is a good diet supplement for lactating mothers who may not have access to fresh milk.

Steve - one of the reason why various wars effected the English food culture to a greater extent then either France or Italy, is that neither of these countries had the same social structure as Britain. By the mid-19th C. about 85% of the population was in service. Not running there own little peasant plots of land and developing their own peasant cuisine, with charming little wines to match. Couple this with several other facors, such as the English puritanical streak, the active suspicon of foreign food and several laws that prevented the rural poor from hunting or earning very good wages to buy food, and this isn't much of a way to develop a rich food tradition. With the industrial revolution and the several wars, you can see how you get a comparitive decline in English food. There are all types of statistics on a census that was made on the general health of the English male population in 1917 of military age. Out of every nine men (that had not been involved in the war) three were fit, two were of middling health, three were physical wrecks and one was a chronic invalid. These are mostly the working class and the lower middle class so no food, let alone food culture, for them. Times were tough on the upper classes as well and in England they are the people who count in terms of food culture. In 1942 restuarants were limited to offerning meals worth a maximum of five shillings and was apportioned by protein content. So if you want oysters (four shillings a dozen at Simpson's) you had to miss out on the meat course. Rationing actually improved the general diet of the population (in terms of nutrition), but it didn't do much for English food culture. None of this happend in France or Italy. Times were tough in these countries as well, but they got the good roll of the dice in terms of there social history and food culture, to allow them to cope a bit better.

Steve - if you look at the 19th C. English cooking, it wasn't a time of stagnation it was a time of innovation. A flood of French chefs coming over the water bringing over all their skills and creativity that had been developing in France since the 17th C (eg. their cooking started to look like mordern food, rather then medieval/Renaissance cookin). Soyer developing the gas range to Escoffier founding modern cooking all occured to a grat degree in London. But, this doesn't have anthing to do with British ethnic cooking, which was replaced by the "New Style" of cooking (French). So when I said that British food died out in the 18-19th C. I mean that the British (lets face it English) ethnic food died out. Proberly the one only real traces that remained at top end dining was the British love of large Joints of plain roasted meat or plain roasted game. Basically, the English had a puritanical streak about food at all levels of society (keep it plain and simple) and there meat sources were more abundant and better quality. While the French developed their cuisine the English didn't (some of this was most likely the English response to what was seen as French). The end result was when times changed, the old English type of cooking just could not compete. So to answer your question, then yes, adherence to known and internal custom did hurt the development of English cooking. And no doubt having the Michelin system proberly does hurt the development of French cooking, depending on how dynamic that system is.

Well, that brings us back to Britain V France. France food = life; Britain = fuel. I mean fine dining is all very well, but it's only one part of the food culture of a country. In the cultures/countries that have a celebrated cuisine, it is seems to be based very firmly on peasant/lower middle class home cooking. Britain had a strong tradition of middle class cooking, but not so much from the urban poor. British country cooking? Well it's was there but it just didn't seem to be incorporated into the mainstream. At the end of the 18th C. there wasn't much between France and Britain. Then France got Boulanger and his "restaurant" for the lower middle classes, while Britain stayed with its chop shops etc to feed the masses. Has Britain ever had an environment that encouraged food for pleasure, rather then fuel, for the urban poor? Maybe not until after rationing ended. Take away the dining of the more well heeled in Britain and there just wasn't that much food culture left. When things got tough, that's what seemed to happen. Still, things are on the move now. I would love to see British ethnic cooking to be brought more to the fore, though. "Hindles wake" in a smart setting in London, I wonder how many people would guess that it was a native dish?

I don't have a "comfort food" for when I'm feeling low, but I do have "comfort gin".

I have only been here for two years, have only a few things to day on the subject of British food. Basic food stuff can be mind blowing, fantastic. Raspberries, Un-pasteurised cheeses, heirloom apples, game, pork (yes, it is a poor mans meat, but it is good), pork pies (nice local terrines), preserved fish (finnan haddocks, Arbroath smokies, Kippers, Smoked Salmon, eels). British fresh seafood is great (wild Scottish salmon and salmon-trout are amazingly good and cheap), but it is easier (and cheaper) to buy it in France then it is in the UK. My local fish monger sells Canadian lobster, not the Eurpean species. Beef and lamb can be good, but again a large proportion of what is avalible is not British. There's the rub. At the level of the lower-middle-class (I think that's what I am here), the everyday food of the people is not very good. Cheap and avalible, seems to be more important then good quality and tasty. Every meal I make has ingredients from at least three different countries (rarely from the UK though). It is always of the same quality. The UK has excellent produce, but who eats it and who appreciates its quality? In my social group, mostly me and a few French friends, most I my British work mates would rather eat battered haddock the year round then eat seasonal wild Salmon-trout. I don't think that this a British thing alone, I have seen it in Australia and in the US (where BTW, I have had the worse bread I have ever eaten, it was sweet (not in a good way) for gods sake). Considering the what happened in the 20th C to the UK, I would say that it is doing amazingly well, food wise, and will hopefully continue to improve. I just hope there is a trickle down effect to the lower, non-fine dining Brits. :confused:

Or it is perfectly harmless microbes that the traveler just hasn't encountered before. I have had lots of sniffles etc since moving to the UK, most likely because I just haven't been exposed to a lot of the UK microflora.

I'm more of a Thompson Twin man myself.

Hmmm. The information I have in the link I posted, suggests that Pomelos are the ancestor of grapefruit and were named Shaddocks,after the seacaptain who bought back some seed of a pomelo back from SE-Asia. So a bit of contradiction. That's the problem with internet sources.

Carbonic maceration - is basically when you take whole bunches of grapes (or undamaged grapes) and layer them with carbondioxide. This means that rather then the fermentation taking place in the juice/skin mixture as per normal wine making, it occurs inside the intact grape itself. After a couple of weeks, you crush lightly, and remove the skins and ferment as normal. The result of this is that you get lots of colour, fruit flavours etc without having to extract large amounts of tannins, so it is popular with certain types of fruity red wines. Bubbles in a normal still wine can be because carbondioxide (CO2) is often pumped over grapes/juice for to prevent oxidation during transport/ early wine making. Some of the CO2 can be absorbed during this period and comes out in the wine as those small bubbles. It's not really a wine fault as such, just a consequence of modern wine making. Having said all that I recently had a bottle of Pinot noir that had bubbles in it and was brown and cloudy, that was from bacterial contamination and should not be drunk. Unfortunately, I was drinking it by candle light and took a mouthful in.

I had my first pommelo when traveling in Malaysia. In Malaysia there seemed to be a huge number of varieties. Some where yellow fleshed some pink/red fleshed. The flavour also varied a great deal. At the time I hated grapefruit (I was only fourteen), but the some of the pommelo's had enough sweetness for me. The individual citrus cells (?) in each segement can be seperated out and tossed through salads, kind I like pomegranate. They sell them here in Scotland, of all places. but they are not that nice, not ripe enough. Oooh. I just found out from the following site, that pommelos are a native of Malaysia, so no wonder there was some many differnt types! http://www.geocities.com/familysecrets/pomelo.htm

Snigger, that was really easy.Wilfrid, do those Americans tease you about being British ?

Wow, that sounds wonderful. Sicily, is has been on the list of must go places, but this confirms it. I have made the chick pea fritter (they also eat it in the North-west of Italy and in the South of France) at home, but it just isn't the same has having it as street food.

Oh thanks, I thought that antipasto was pasta made by the British, where al dente is a foreign land.

Those ICONS are the best thing I have ever seen. Where/how do you get them?

Jim - sorry, I didn't see your reply to my post until now. Here are some food notes from Midnight in Sicily, so you don't have to re-read the book. You read this before going there? It would have terrified me to much I think. http://www.duffyandsnellgrove.com.au/Teacher....resence

Teeheehee