Author Topic: At least British food isn't as rubbish as it used to be  (Read 9984 times)

At least British food isn't as rubbish as it used to be
« on: 01 January, 2018, 01:48:40 pm »
As an attempt at a bright side to start the year, here's an example of a recommended recipe from a few decades ago:



Tins of vegetable soup and stewing steak enlivened with Worcestershire sauce  :sick:

Re: At least British food isn't as rubbish as it used to be
« Reply #1 on: 01 January, 2018, 08:48:27 pm »
Probably best served with a light dusting of fag-ash.

Torslanda

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Re: At least British food isn't as rubbish as it used to be
« Reply #2 on: 02 January, 2018, 02:15:30 am »
Who's been in my kitchen?
VELOMANCER

Well that's the more blunt way of putting it but as usual he's dead right.

T42

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Re: At least British food isn't as rubbish as it used to be
« Reply #3 on: 02 January, 2018, 08:12:50 am »
"49p" so post-1971, then.  Two tablespoons of 1970s L&P would have been pretty incendiary.  I can remember spoiling a meal that way. Peely-wally stuff these days.
I've dusted off all those old bottles and set them up straight

ian

Re: At least British food isn't as rubbish as it used to be
« Reply #4 on: 02 January, 2018, 09:59:32 am »
I suspect L&P would have been far too exotic for my parents (remember, my parents won't eat pasta because it's foreign). The line was drawn with salt and white pepper (I don't think I knew black pepper existed until I went to university, though as I came from a mining town in the East Midlands, I could say the same about black people). The cutting edge of exotic condiments was HP, which in those terms was furiously spicy. I'm not sure how that got an exemption, it's full of dangerously esoteric ingredients like garlic and tamarind.

I am blessed with a nostalgia for 80s era British food – a time when most things came in orange breadcrumbs and could be cooked in the oven. Fish fingers, crispy pancakes, you name it. I sailed with the good Captain Birdseye aboard the HMS Findus. Potato waffles, they're wafflely versatile. Even mash came out of the package after all, for mash get Smash, and frankly what kind of right-thinking Martian would peel a potato.

It wasn't all bland though, we had packets of Knorr parsley sauce.

Re: At least British food isn't as rubbish as it used to be
« Reply #5 on: 02 January, 2018, 10:10:14 am »
My Dad doesn't like potato salad, too fancy and modern.
He also doesn't like anything with "seasoning".
I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that.

Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
Re: At least British food isn't as rubbish as it used to be
« Reply #6 on: 02 January, 2018, 10:10:44 am »
Typeface looks 1970s.
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

ian

Re: At least British food isn't as rubbish as it used to be
« Reply #7 on: 02 January, 2018, 10:25:12 am »
I think if it was a eighties, the serving suggestion would be to sprinkle it on crispy pancakes or potato croquettes.

My dad went mental when he accidentally ate a mouthful of rocket and refused to eat anything else. It was that bad he's never eaten in a restaurant since (11 years, it was our wedding dinner, so way to go at acting like a dick, dad). I'm not even joking. My mum had to go and sit in the back room at Morrisons (where she worked) if anyone dropped a jar of any kind of coloured cooking sauce as she'd get sick from seeing it. These days she pretty much lives off white bread and mild cheddar just in case.

They cook steaks for 25 to 30 minutes, minimum, and believe olive oil is 'for your ears.' They both have such an aversion of to garlic that frankly even a vampire would find extreme. Except in HP sauce.

Re: At least British food isn't as rubbish as it used to be
« Reply #8 on: 02 January, 2018, 10:52:52 am »
My mother went from cooking superb Lancashire hotpots, deep-frying chips in lard, and generally cooking from scratch (okay, the veg would be boiled to a pulp) in the 1960s, to packaged, tinned, processed foods from the Co-op and tiny Tesco as the 70s drew nigh. 

My father's proud boast was that he couldn't even cook toast.

citoyen

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Re: At least British food isn't as rubbish as it used to be
« Reply #9 on: 02 January, 2018, 11:43:42 am »
My mother-in-law is another who would never touch garlic or onions. She also believed that mushrooms "smelt of death". Those quirks aside, she was a very competent cook.
"The future's all yours, you lousy bicycles."

ian

Re: At least British food isn't as rubbish as it used to be
« Reply #10 on: 02 January, 2018, 12:21:23 pm »
You'd never use the words 'competent cook' and 'my mother' in the same sentence. She was quite good at chargrilled fish fingers. She'd even manage to burn boil-in-the-bag stuff. Her most advanced culinary construction was meat and potato pie, which as far as I recall was merely potatoes in bisto with a packet pastry rolled over the top. We'd try and find the piece of the meat that was allegedly in there somewhere.

Mushrooms are made out of dead people, so your mother-in-law is technically right about that. I don't much like them. I can't do food with weird textures. At least compared to my parents, I'm only modestly weird. I did eat my first curry at a youthful 22.

Not sure where I learned to cook either, I'm pretty sure our home economics class was mostly the teacher trying to stop use setting fire to ourselves or each other. She probably would have been more understanding, but that was during the blancmange lesson. I've no idea why they thought blancmange making was a life skill. At no point in my life to date have I sat back and thought this is a situation that calls for blancmange.

T42

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Re: At least British food isn't as rubbish as it used to be
« Reply #11 on: 02 January, 2018, 01:31:04 pm »
They cook steaks for 25 to 30 minutes, minimum, and believe olive oil is 'for your ears.' They both have such an aversion of to garlic that frankly even a vampire would find extreme. Except in HP sauce.

My maternal grandmother was a lady's maid, so my mother inherited very clear ideas of what was "correct" and what wasn't. She would never have allowed a bottle of HP on the table, frowned at L&P and referred to the EPNS cutlery as "the silver".  She was a dab hand at turning steak into kevlar before kevlar was invented. My dad once put her into terminal miff by asking for the last.
I've dusted off all those old bottles and set them up straight

Re: At least British food isn't as rubbish as it used to be
« Reply #12 on: 02 January, 2018, 01:43:23 pm »
Of course some British food is still awful.  I could mention a few cafes and pubs in the SW where the food is comically bad.

Eccentrica Gallumbits

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Re: At least British food isn't as rubbish as it used to be
« Reply #13 on: 02 January, 2018, 02:12:06 pm »
They cook steaks for 25 to 30 minutes, minimum, and believe olive oil is 'for your ears.' They both have such an aversion of to garlic that frankly even a vampire would find extreme. Except in HP sauce.

My maternal grandmother was a lady's maid, so my mother inherited very clear ideas of what was "correct" and what wasn't. She would never have allowed a bottle of HP on the table, frowned at L&P and referred to the EPNS cutlery as "the sliver".  She was a dab hand at turning steak into kevlar before kevlar was invented. My dad once put her into terminal miff by asking for the last.
My paternal gran was a brilliant baker, but a horrible cook. My dad had no idea vegetables had different colours, flavours and textures until he left home and joined the airforce. My brother once asked her for another slice of rice pudding.
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Wowbagger

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Re: At least British food isn't as rubbish as it used to be
« Reply #14 on: 03 January, 2018, 11:30:38 pm »
My father's proud boast was that he couldn't even cook toast.

Some time during her late 80s, my mother fell down a flight of stairs and broke her leg so spent some time in hospital. That was the only time, I think, in their 64 years' marrid, that he had to look after himself. My older daughter was in the sixth form at the time and, since it was her summer holiday, went over with one of her pals to give my dad a hand with domestic chores (he would have been in mis mid-80s at the time).

They happened upon him in the kitchen with some food under the grill. It was a piece of bread, covered in baked beans. He fancied beans on toast for lunch.
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ian

Re: At least British food isn't as rubbish as it used to be
« Reply #15 on: 04 January, 2018, 08:55:04 am »
My grandmother had to even extract the biscuits from the packet for my grandfather. And she'd make his coffee (Camp, of course) in the morning and afternoon. After she'd got first, lit the fire, warmed the house etc. All meals had to happen at precise times.

I dunno how she did it. I'd have bashed him over the head. Considering how he died, quite possibly she did.

Jaded

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Re: At least British food isn't as rubbish as it used to be
« Reply #16 on: 04 January, 2018, 09:11:08 am »
My dad taught my mum to cook after they got married.
It is simpler than it looks.

Re: At least British food isn't as rubbish as it used to be
« Reply #17 on: 04 January, 2018, 11:29:56 am »
My paternal gran was a brilliant baker, but a horrible cook.
That's me, that is. We play guess the veg- will they be mush or raw.

Cooking's dull. Baking's magic.

ian

Re: At least British food isn't as rubbish as it used to be
« Reply #18 on: 04 January, 2018, 11:44:42 am »
I grew up in a dessert desert. Which probably explains why I mostly don't like sweet things. The only cake I remember was the occasional Victoria sponge my mum would bring home on a Saturday and I'd always get told off for getting cream on my nose. Mind you, as kids, we'd mostly eaten two kilos of broken biscuits each by that point in the proceedings, so really didn't need more sugar. Do they still sell broken biscuits on the market? Every Saturday, me and my cousins (and given my mother has eleven siblings, there were a lot of us) would do the matinee at the cinema and then get a large bag of broken biccies from the market and go create sugar-fueled sundry unsupervised mayhem.

Anyway, in our tenure together, my wife has cooked only the one meal (when we first met). It's not something I'm planning the repeat. The microwave gets some exercise every time I'm away.

Re: At least British food isn't as rubbish as it used to be
« Reply #19 on: 04 January, 2018, 12:56:07 pm »
and believe olive oil is 'for your ears.'

When dating my mother in the 1960's the only thing my father used olive oil for was to slick his hair back. Apparently it went quite runny under the hot lights in the Café Dansette!

These days though they are both quite adventurous cooks so it's not all bad.
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Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
Re: At least British food isn't as rubbish as it used to be
« Reply #20 on: 04 January, 2018, 01:02:03 pm »
Indian women use olive oil as a hair conditioner, it's good for achieving the black, silky look which is the epitome of Indian women's fashion.
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

Re: At least British food isn't as rubbish as it used to be
« Reply #21 on: 04 January, 2018, 04:24:09 pm »
and believe olive oil is 'for your ears.'

When dating my mother in the 1960's the only thing my father used olive oil for was to slick his hair back. Apparently it went quite runny under the hot lights in the Café Dansette!

These days though they are both quite adventurous cooks so it's not all bad.

The olive oil available in the 60s was probably only fit for external applications.

Re: At least British food isn't as rubbish as it used to be
« Reply #22 on: 04 January, 2018, 09:50:27 pm »
I suspect L&P would have been far too exotic for my parents (remember, my parents won't eat pasta because it's foreign). The line was drawn with salt and white pepper (I don't think I knew black pepper existed until I went to university, though as I came from a mining town in the East Midlands, I could say the same about black people). The cutting edge of exotic condiments was HP, which in those terms was furiously spicy. I'm not sure how that got an exemption, it's full of dangerously esoteric ingredients like garlic and tamarind.

I am blessed with a nostalgia for 80s era British food – a time when most things came in orange breadcrumbs and could be cooked in the oven. Fish fingers, crispy pancakes, you name it. I sailed with the good Captain Birdseye aboard the HMS Findus. Potato waffles, they're wafflely versatile. Even mash came out of the package after all, for mash get Smash, and frankly what kind of right-thinking Martian would peel a potato.

It wasn't all bland though, we had packets of Knorr parsley sauce.

I have fond memories of crispy pancakes -semi deep fried, but I'm going to leave that nostalgia in the same closed box as most of the bands of that era I enjoyed.

T42

  • Apprentice geezer
Re: At least British food isn't as rubbish as it used to be
« Reply #23 on: 05 January, 2018, 09:50:44 am »
[Visions of playing a crispy pancake at 45 rpm]
I've dusted off all those old bottles and set them up straight

ian

Re: At least British food isn't as rubbish as it used to be
« Reply #24 on: 05 January, 2018, 10:26:13 am »
I believe the esteemed Crispy Pancake made a comeback a year or so back, riding the hoofless narwhal of nostalgia across the waves of time. Aye aye, Captain Birdseye (it's not the same when you learn his name was actually Clarence Birdseye). I always imagined him as a savoury pirate, a breadcrumbed brigand. Clarence makes him sound like a man who eats vegetables.

I confess I've no had one for years, you probably have to go poor people supermarkets or the blasted wastelands and lard mines of the north. I do have a hankering though. They're pretty good in a sandwich. I say that about most things, admittedly, I'm probably the world's leading proponent of sandwichification. But it's true. Minced beef and onion were the best.