[HPFGU-OTChatter] Re: Need British Menu Suggestions

[Neil Ward]

Various people suggested menus to Penny

David said:

<<You definitely want to finish off with cheese and biscuits.>>

Joywitch said:

<< I don't get this.  Isn't dessert, or what you people call pudding,
supposed to be sweet?  How can you end a meal with cheese and
crackers/biscuits?  When do you eat your sweets (like the
disgusting-sounding Spotted Dick, which Amanda says sounds like something
you  should take antibiotics for)?  If you have cheese at the end of the
meal, do you start your meal with sweets? >>

British cuisine is confusing; that's it's appeal!  A dessert course is
usually something sweet, either a pudding, something lighter, or some fruit.
Cheese and biscuits is a savoury course in its own right.  In some cases,
you have both at the end of a meal, usually - as David says - rounding off
with the cheese and biscuits.  If you're being really posh and having wine
with each course, you'd have a sweet dessert wine with your pudding and
mature port with the cheese. With cheese and biscuits you might also serve
celery and fruit (grapes primarily).

I attended an upmarket dinner a while back at which they served another
savoury dish between the pudding and cheese courses. I found this bizarre,
but a fellow guest assured me that this was a tradition of lavish Victorian
dining.   They had also served a fruit sorbet after the starter, "to clean
the palate" - something I had come across before.  So, it was a seven course
meal including the chocolates and coffee *after* the cheese.

Okay, back on the case: Shepherd's pie is quite a British standard - more a
'weekday family meal' standard than a restaurant classic, but recognisable
as British.  John's suggestion of baked beans or cauliflower cheese with
this dish causes me to think he spends far too much time out of the country.
Boiled waxy potatoes with butter (or roast potatoes) and some nice garden
peas would be appropriate (the pie is topped with mashed potato, but don't
forget we Brits eat potato with potato all the time).  For a third
vegetable, perhaps carrots?  It depends how dull you want to be.
Personally, I'd go for grilled mushrooms and broccoli.  Don't forget to
brown the top of the pie under the grill.  Also, don't forget the gravy -
thick, brown stock made with meat juices or onions (sorry, that's my
vegetarian diet speaking) and served in a gravy boat.

For an appetiser, soup is a good choice: something hearty like oxtail, cream
of tomato or cream of mushroom.

Penny also mentioned salads.  Salad as a side dish with a hot meal is not
very British, IMO, but you could have something cold as a starter.  A
standard (read 'dull') British salad would be a mix of lettuce, tomato and
cucumber, usually on the plate with something else, such as a prawn
cocktail, pork pie or pat.  In that context, the salad is really a garnish,
not intended for eating .   If you want a salad to eat on its own, you might
be more inventive - it's a 'chuck anything in there' concept, really.

In modern times, people have perceptions of British cooking as either the
cardboard collations Al described, so beloved of tourist traps, or the
boiled-to-death meat n' two veg meals I recall from my childhood.  Modern
British cooking is varied, though, and draws upon the cuisines of other
countries.  That doesn't just mean falling asleep on a Naan bread at the
local Indian restaurant after 12 pints of lager, it also means nicking
things from other countries calling them something else and pretending we
invented them.

Neil (glad to see this list returning to its roots)