UK! What pops into your head?

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Provost Harrison
Yeah, I've never understood how the Americans have the audacity to criticise our cuisine when their only contribution to that field is f**king fast food such as McDonalds et al

wait a minute, what about Pizza, Chicken Chow Mein, and Tacos? To put it differently, we were decades ahead of you at adopting the really interesting foods from furriners.

[MikeH]

Originally posted by bfg9000


Wrong. We would not be where we are without French assistance in the Revolutionary War..

That as well, and as you mentioned it, it was rebelling against the British government that directly led to the foundation of the US as a nation. So your argument is actually supporting mine not contradicting it.

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by lord of the mark


wait a minute, what about Pizza, Chicken Chow Mein, and Tacos? To put it differently, we were decades ahead of you at adopting the really interesting foods from furriners.

Britain was importing interesting foreign foods before the US was even a country.

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by Spiffor

Same here, but as a Frenchman, It is my birth-bestowed role to badmouth the Rosbifs

Funny - Its Krauts, Frogs and Rosbifs. All references to national foods of the big 3 Euro countries. Which is the best, which is the worst, be honest? Frogs legs, pickled cabbage or Roast Beef?

[Provost Harrison]

Originally posted by lord of the mark


wait a minute, what about Pizza, Chicken Chow Mein, and Tacos? To put it differently, we were decades ahead of you at adopting the really interesting foods from furriners.

Well, our culinary embarrassment is that we have so many damn McDonalds in this country

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Dauphin


Britain was importing interesting foreign foods before the US was even a country.

and mass marketing them?

[lord of the mark]

'The beau monde brand of cooking that is gracing restaurant menus across the country is called "new American cuisine." Its roots reach back to the earliest days of colonial settlement. It has come of age only recently, starting in the finest restaurants in our biggest cities, then spreading out geographically and socially to take root not just in restaurant kitchens but also in home kitchens around the country.

Like our forefathers’ and mothers’ cookery, new American cuisine is driven by seasonal ingredients purchased from local growers and small distributors. Its purveyors profess a commitment to presenting nature in its purest finery — peppery greens freshly pulled from the soil, fragrant fruits just plucked from the tree, and succulent fish netted in nearby sea or stream. The recipes they create are culled from a vast reservoir of regional and immigrant traditions made possible by the rich American experience. Each dish is meant to please the eye and delight the palate; each also connects us to the past. New American cuisine is our most mature blending of "indigenous ingredients, regional preferences, ethnic influences, and historical currents and traditions" to date, as David Belman wrote in the trade publication Restaurants USA.

With the ripening of new American cuisine has come a stunning profusion of restaurants and cookbooks devoted to the exquisite, authentic rendition of cooking from around the world. We do not just have Chinese food. We have Hunan, Szechuan, Cantonese, and more, and before we leave Asia, we can add Japanese, Korean, Thai, and Vietnamese cuisine, and Pan-Asian noodle houses offering up Indonesian and Malaysian variations. Where "Italian" once meant tomato sauce, we now choose from specialists in the cooking of Piedmont, Tuscany, Liguria, or Sicily. "Pacific Rim" cooks and Mediterranean restaurants span continents to offer samples of the beguiling similarities and intriguing differences on the stovetops where a body of water meets the land.

Meanwhile, any local supermarket bursts today with exotica unheard of 20 or 30 years ago. Consider the produce department. The ubiquitous white button mushroom is now just the humblest offering in a mushroom section, which also typically includes portabella, cremini, and shiitake, for starters. Iceberg lettuce must make room for green leaf, red leaf, escarole, endive, radicchio, Boston, and more. Most of those lettuces are now also available prewashed, impeccably fresh, and absurdly convenient, packaged in high-tech plastic bags. Through hybridization, we have discovered entirely new fruits and vegetables: Grocers have recently introduced us to broccoflower, the plumcot, and broccolini.

There is no avoiding a simple conclusion: Whatever else may be true of our cultural condition, future gourmands, "foodies," and social historians alike will conclude that by the end of the twentieth century, the golden age of cooking and eating was upon us.'

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

In fairness, the US didn't do much mass marketing of foods in the 18ty century either.

[Provost Harrison]

What a load of old cobblers...

[Immortal Wombat]

Originally posted by lord of the mark
There is no avoiding a simple conclusion: Whatever else may be true of our cultural condition, future gourmands, "foodies," and social historians alike will conclude that by the end of the twentieth century, the golden age of cooking and eating was upon us.'

Is this supposed to be a good thing? I seem to recall Rome had pretty good food as it imploded into lead-poisoned barbarised ruin.

[Ben Kenobi]

Well done Molly Bloom on picking up the typo but I think I see an even larger flaw...Ulysses is by James Joyce, who is Irish

Not this poem cited by LotM...

You're thinking of the novel Ulysses.

[TheStinger]

Has anyone seen Churchill the Hollywood years, I haven't had chance to see it yet but apparently it does a good job of taking the piss out of many US stereotypes of the UK

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Provost Harrison
Yeah, I've never understood how the Americans have the audacity to criticise our cuisine when their only contribution to that field is f**king fast food such as McDonalds et al

Every heard of California Fusion Cuisine? What about a New York Stripe or Texas BBQ or pot roast or corn bread or roast turkey or apple pie or southern fried chicken or New England Clam Chowder or Boston baked fish or zynfindel wine or fried catfish or bourbon whiskey or dozens of other uniquely American foods?

Few countries can offer a steak any where near as good as those you can find in just about any city or town in America.

[Urban Ranger]

Fusion cuisine makes me ill.

Mixing Chinese food with Italian sauce? :vomit:

[Dinner]

On a different note the BBC is reporting the ChevronTexico has announced the discovery of a new half billion barrel of oil deposit off the Shetland Islands. There should also be a great deal of natural gas associated with these deposits as well.

Alex Salmond, a former oil economist with the Royal Bank of Scotland, say this discovery exceeds the total amount of oil so far extracited from Scottish waters. Does that mean the UK just doubled it's amount of oil reserves?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/4080525.stm