October 2021: SPLENDID BRITISH FOOD, A DEBUT GLANCE
Pool out a survey on which ethnic cuisine people will find repulsive, and British cuisine will end up on a significant number of participant responses. Former French President Jacques Chirac, even once reportedly ridiculed British food for being so nasty to the point of labelling Britons as undeserving of trust because of it. Equating British cookery to a hellish experience and to the allegedly unbearable influence on the food of its Commonwealth territories even remains viral as an Internet meme and joke at present despite the humor has dated back to the days of the facsimile machine. Is British food really that atrocious and dreary?
Negative adjectives, perhaps, should never be used to grimly judge the gastronomic state of British cooking. To do otherwise would denote that the United Kingdom has reclusively stuck itself in a distant limbo of stagnancy and obsolescence, and this paradox is not universally true since Brits can easily cross the English Channel to learn from their French neighbors who have long abandoned the cuisine classique practice of overcooking meat and vegetables. Lest not forget that the country boasts more than a hundred Michelin-starred restaurants even at a controversial time of Brexit. Angus beef, the most popular marbled beef in the world, are originally Scottish natives. The biggest food media personalities in the Internet age, such as Gordon Ramsay, Nigella Lawson, and Jamie Oliver, to name a few, hail from Britain. To think, such empirical examples are just the tip of a myth-shattering iceberg! (I can write more refutations to the stereotype, but I am reserving those for future entries on this topic.)
Due to its untapped potential, British food will be the focal point of The Kitchen Scholar this month. The website will offer a first glance on delicacies that tie to English, Scottish, and Welsh traditions and cultures. I have carefully selected which recipes are worth trying for the sake of simplicity and taste in hope of finding the glory and love of British cuisine at first sight and taste.
