How come it is so difficult to find English food? In Greece you Greek food, in France French food, in Italy Italian food, but in England, in any High Street in the land, it is easier to find Indian and Chinese restaurants than English ones.In London you can eat Thai, Portuguese, Turkish,Lebanese,Japanese, Russian, Polish, Swiss, Swedish, Spanish,and Italian-but where are the English restaurants?
It is not only in restaurants that foreign dishis are replacing traditional British food. In every super market, sales of pasta, pizza and poppadoms are booming. Why has this happend? What is wrong with the cooks of Britain that they prefer cooking pasta to potatoes? Why do the British choose to eat lasagne instead of shepherd's pie? Why do they now like cooking in wine and olive oil?But it is a good thing. After all, this is the end of the 20th century and we can get ingredients from all over the world in just a few hours. Anyway, wasn't English food always disgusting and tasteless? Wasn't it always boiled to death and swimming in fat? The answer to these questions is a resounding 'No', but to understand this, we have to go back to before the second World War.
The British have in fact always imported food from abroard. From the time of the Roman invasion foreign trade was a majorinfluence on British cooking.English kitchens, like the English language,absorbed ingredients from all over the world-chickens,rabbits, apples, and tea.All of these and more werw successfully incorporated into British dishes. Another important influence on British cooking was of course the weather.The good old British rain gives us rich soil and green grass, and means that we are able to produce some of the finest varieties of meat, fruit and vegetables, which dont need fancy sauces or complicated recipes to disguise their taste. However, the second World War changed everything.Wartime women had to forget 600 years of British cooking, learn to do without foreign imports, and ration their use of home-grown food.
The Ministry of Food published cheap, boring recipes. The joke of the war was a dish called Woolton Pie (named after the Minister for Food!). This consisted of a mixture of boiled vegetables covered in white sauce with mashed potato on the top. Britain never managed to recover from the wartime attitude to food. We were left with a loss of confidence in our cooking skills and after years of Ministry recipes we began to believe that British food was boring, and we searched the world for sophisticated, new dishes which gave hope of a better future. The British people became tourists at their own dining tables and in the restaurants of their land! This is a tragedy! Surely food is as much a part of our culture as our landscape, our language, and our literature. Nowadays, cooking British food is like speaking a dead language. It is almost a bizzare as having a conversation in Anglo- Saxon English!
However,there is still one small ray of hope. British pubs are often the best places to eat well and cheaply in britain, and they also increasinly try to serve tasty British food. Can we recommend to you our favorite places to eat in Britain? The Shepherd's Inn in Melberby, Cumbria, and the Dolphin Inn in Kingston, Davon. Their steak and mushroom pie,Lancashire hotpot, the bread and pudding are three of the gastronomic wonders of the world!
The usual meals in Russia are breakfast,dinner and supper. Russian people have their breakfast at 7 or 8 a.m., dinner at 2 or 3 p.m., and supper at 6 or 7 p.m. The Russian breakfast doesn't resemble the breakfast of an Englishman. It is a more substantial meal. Some people like to eat an omelette, some porridge or sausages. It depends on their tastes and habits, and their income. It is difficult to describe the Russian's dinner or supper. It depends on people's money, work, and opportunities. Russian Cuisine is varied and colourful. The most popular dishes are: pelmeni, vinaigrette, shchi, rassolnik,kasha, okroshka, blini, solyanka, Pozharskiye chicken rissoles. The most popular drinks in Russia - tea,kvas,kompot, milk, kissel. What do Russian people eat when they have a special dinner? First you see many appetizers, a variety of mushrooms, either pickled or salted; tangy flavour, salted cucumbers and tomatoes; sauerkraut herring, Russian vinaigrette salad, different kinds of pies. Pastry dishes play an important part in Russian cooking. When guests are expected, the hosts bake pies.
*A home is made by pies;
*A birthday is not a birthday without pies;
*Arrows complete a quiver, and pies a dinner;
*Appetitecomes with eating;
*A good housewife is one who makes good shchi, not one who makes nice conversation;
*Porridge and cabbage soup is but our native food.
*Do you agree that food is as much of a country's culture as its lanscape, language, and literature?
* Which are your favourite places to eat in your country? Why?