I fear I may have been the cause of the inevitable food derail, for which sorry not sorry.
Also, obligatory:
I recently found a book which echoes many of my thoughts on British cuisine, namely that the ingredients are great, the knowledge is there, but there is a convenience first and short work break culture and an acceptance of mediocrity, which might be a perversion of the stiff upper lip mentality.
There’s also a lot of social and physical, geographical mobility, meaning not much setting down of roots, plus family groupings are small (nuclear as opposed to extended, like in other European countries, .e.g. Spain)
The simplified results is a rootless population (meaning no chance to assimilate cultural artifacts such as cooking./ Rootless here meaning disconnected from the rural community and the land. The book goes into great detail of places in England that produce superb stuff, but you never hear about it) with little time on its hands.
An example therefore is a harried and rush mother and father who settle for something quick for the kids, e.g. cornflakes. In Spain, an aunt or grandmother is not far away, and things are much less rushed.
Then add in half an hr for lunch, as opposed to 1 or 2 hours, meaning the natural tendency is to something quick, easy and portable, preferably cheap as you need to repeat this operation 5 times a week —> sandwiches etc, as opposed to home cooking you take to work because, when you get home from work you are tired, and so cannot be bothered to cook something from scratch.
Under such conditions, it almost doesn’t matter how good the base quality of ingredients is.
Layer onto that the sheer variety of stuff on offer (so many people trying to extract your £££,) and services such as deliveroo (in 20 odd minutes I can have pretty much any cuisine I want delivered to my door → it would take me about the same time to cook up a meal, AND I know what I am doing AND I manage to salvage alot of stuff from the restaurant I work in, so my ingredient costs are LOW. I have a kilo of cooked chicken and about half a kilo of prawns, gotten for free :)
Layer onto that the cumulative lack of knowledge because all of the above makes it easier to NOT learn how to cook properly, and NOT learn how to shop effectively.
Then ontop of that layer on a perceived snobbishness regarding people who do like and care about their food, and the idea that knowing about food is something for foodies, pretentious gits and Gordon Ramsays.
There is also a certain perception that cooking is hard.
As a child I knew how to make omelettes, boiled eggs, fried eggs and pancakes by about age 6.
That is somehow amazing for a 6 year old to do here, because they are just not taught.
And this is not something to teach in school either.
So, long rant ending.
That book?
