Many Belarusians ask me about cooking in Britain. I’ve resisted writing about it so far, but next week the embassy will take part in the Minsk international Book Fair for the first time. We want to convey a better understanding of contemporary Britain. One of the themes we will feature is cooking.
Britain hasn’t been an important country for cuisine as Wikipedia’s sparse entry suggests. Perhaps our greatest contribution has been the sandwich – two slices of bread with something in between. It was supposedly invented by a British aristocrat, who wanted a snack while playing cards (but I’m glad that, in Russian, the proper name сэндвич may be displacing the German origin бутерброд).
I’m delighted to see television programmes with Jamie Oliver on the Russian cookery channel Kuchnia TV. From that channel, I’ve also discovered Valentine Warner, who I’d never heard of before. He has a programme called (on British television) “What to Eat Now” about which fresh food to eat in season.
I find it disconcerting that there are at least two British cooks on a Russian language cookery channel. I’m old enough to remember going abroad and politely listening to jokes about the indifferent food in Britain.
That’s changed – and here’s why I think so.
First of all, like many countries, Britain has undergone a major revolution in how we view health. There is far greater emphasis on preventive medicine, including diet. The expression “you are what you eat” is more relevant today than ever. We’ve had public health campaigns to promote such as “5 a day” – 5 portions of fruit and vegetables.
With so many Britons holidaying in Southern Europe, there have been changes in what consumers want from supermarkets. The consumption of olive oil has increased nearly ten times in the last 25 years. Demand for other ingredients of the Mediterranean diet has similarly increased.
Other changes in lifestyle include many more families with both parents who work. With less time to prepare meals, this seems to have had two effects. Firstly, there’s been a rising volume of eating in restaurants, as more people choose to spend their time eating out rather than cooking at home. And if they stay at home, they don’t want to spend too long cooking, so we’ve had a major surge in sales of “ready meals” by the supermarkets.
The increased interest in eating out has been particularly strong in London. Demand for more chefs and increased competition between restaurants has created a “restaurant scene” that didn’t exist, or was much weaker, when I first lived in London in the mid-1980s. While you have always been able to eat well in London, far more people wanted to eat out at different restaurants than before.
This in turn gave far more opportunity for chefs. A generation learnt their trade in the 1980s, who went on to make the television programmes that are being shown by the likes of Kuchnia TV. French readers will be pleased to know that many of them trained under French cooks, such as brothers Michel and Albert Roux who came to Britain in the 1960s or Raymond Blanc who came in the 1970s.
Our cooking programmes may be more accessible abroad due to a wider knowledge of English – I imagine there are many cookery TV programmes made in France, Italy and Spain too. But the focus on cooking programme in Britain has been particularly strong in the last decade or more led by the likes of Jamie Oliver, Gordon Ramsey and others. In the later 1990s and early “noughties”, lifestyle TV was dominated by gardening programmes.
Together with a greater interest in eating, there has also been increased focus on the food we produce. We have had our share of problems with disease in the food supply chain. The reaction has been much closer attention on how food is produced, and in organic foods. There has been a boom in local shops and farmers’ markets selling locally produced food.
A more recent explanation for the popularity of cooking on television lies in the recent economic downturn. With falling disposable incomes, more people can’t afford to eat out. So there’s renewed interest in eating at home. And given the busier lifestyles and ready meals available in the shops, many Britons probably haven’t ever learnt how to cook properly. Television can now show them how.
One of our traditions has been home baking especially of cakes, tarts and other dishes to eat with a cup of tea in that quintessential British meal, the high, or afternoon, tea. Although this meal only came about in the 19th century, a nice piece of cake is a comfort food for many Britons. So it’s not so surprising that one of the most successful shows on TV is “The Great British Bake Off” – a competition to find the best amateur baker.
There is a practical side to some of our meals. The great English breakfast with bacon, eggs and any number of other elements sets you up for a good long day outdoors. The Sunday lunch, of a roast piece and two or more vegetables (one usually potatoes) is a good chance to sit down with familty and friends and catch up.
Some of our better known dishes aren’t really British – fish and chips only came into being 150 years ago. Jewish refugees introduced deep fried fish in the 17th century from Iberia, and chips came from Belgium.
Indeed, fusion dishes are what we excel in. It may surpise readers in Belarus, but according to one former eminent colleague of mine, our national dish should be chicken tikka masala, an Anglo-Indian dish of fried chiken in a thick curry sauce. Like the balti, a type of South Asian influenced dish, the origin may be open to debate, but a visit to any British supermarket will show you how popular curry dishes are in Britain.
The popularity of foreign foods may seem strange to some of our European neighbours. But some of that is due to our colonial past – no town in Britain seems to be without at least one restaurant we call “Chinese” (but usually from Hong Kong) or “Indian” (but from any number of regions in South Asia). But a more recent phenomenon is that most towns now also have a Thai restaurant.
East or west, home is always best. My favourite meal would include gravy, the sauce made from the juices of roast meat, as made by my mother.