Need some insight into British cuisine

The main problem with this thread is it presupposes that national dishes would be considered fine dining. They are generally the food of poverty, delicious dishes created under desperate conditions with whatever cheap ingredients were available to the kind of people who could never afford to eat in an expensive restaurant. When a traditional dish comes anywhere near a posh plate, it has generally been pimped beyond recognition. TV chefs with posh restaurant chains occasionally feature conventional traditional dishes, but I suspect it is only to signal that they are unconventional rebels, forces to be reckoned with.

Your best bet, and maybe the easiest option, might be to pick a particular traditional dish and make it the dish your captain always has served at special meals because it is a particular favourite from their childhood. Or perhaps in order to torture their guests.
 
I once thought of a meal for torturing guests, especially if they are wearing pale colours.
Corn on the cob
Spaghetti bolognaise
Stewed whole damsons with custard
If you walk clean out of that meal, you must be teflon coated. And I haven't yet found an elegant way to spit out the damson stones.
 
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If you read the Mote in God's eye it details how The Admiral has a typical Russian banquet aboard his flagship, however it's clear that they're winging it and not really sure what their ancestors ate.

He even has his space marines doing their version of Cossack dancing, again they're guesstimating how this was done.

Can you not do the same? Have them eating roast beef that's been braised in tea etc?
With them fondly imagining it's traditional - and wondering at their ancestors strange taste buds
 
Ray Zdybrow said:
Pizza or supermarket sandwiches.
Seriously though, the best "typical and traditional" British meals - ie, a roast dinner or a fry-up breakfast - couldn't be served in that situation because they're only good made in the home, they don't avail themselves to catering (caff aficionadoes, feel free to disagree). I reckon.
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You have never been to Simpsons in the Strand - best roast beef in the world.
 
If you want /really/ swanky cooking in Britain, it'll be, well, French. Haute cuisine is the standard for moneyed foodies, and French chefs have un certain cachet here even if they're just frying chips in the Rose and Crown.

(Ironically, my parents live in France and they say most of their neighbours are awful cooks.)
 
Is that still true? It was true in the 1960's and 1970's. It was possibly true in the '80's and '90's. Then there was a kind of revolution in British restaurants and hotels. I'm no expert on this and could be wrong, but I've heard that is no longer true anymore. If you could back your statement up with some evidence then I'll accede. Anyway, you be hard pressed to find any French chefs in the UK at the moment, or any chefs at all really.
 
hitmouse said:
Welsh cuisine is not particularly different from the rest of the uk. Trad Welsh cuisine is mainly quite humble:
Cawl - a type of lamb/ veg soup
Laverbread - a kind of seaweed snot fried up with oats and cockles for breakfast
Welsh rarebit aka cheese on toast
Welshcakes

There is some really special Welsh meat: Gower saltmarsh lamb, for example.

might be easier to co-opt the menus from some high-end Welsh restaurants:

Y Polyn
The Beach House
The Walnut Tree
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How about a butty jam?
 
"battered cod and chips - I think it’s a universal favourite up and down the island"
Not in Grimsby, where haddock reigns supreme and cod is only fit for "cats and Yorkies".
I left Gy many years ago so things MAY have changed...
 
Bramandin said:
I'm not sure. I might have made a mistake.
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Don't worry about it, @Bramandin - he's having you on. There's no limit (time-wise or in number) to the resurrection of old threads.
We (the Mods) may decide that the thread is incompatible with the site as it is today, or that the changes in society over the 20 years the site has been running make the content of the thread to be unacceptable - in this sort of case, we may permanently close the thread, but generally speaking people are free to indulge in 'thread necromancy' as they so desire. ;)
 
Had written a long answer from the perspective of a Chef working in South Wales for over 20 years then realised this is an old thread and now I and just hungry for some Cawl.
 
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