Takeaways

We eat too many takeaways, partly because it is so easy. We have a pizza place around twenty yards from us that is not only extremely busy but delivers for miles. The food from there is great. We have an award winning chip shop just a bit further along. The local Chinese takeaway isn't very good but there is one relatively local that delivers, is reasonably priced and extremely tasty. There is also a very tasty curry takeaway that delivers, and it does some really nice deals.

A few years ago a survey said that the national dish of Great Britain was Chicken Tikka Masala. This did not surprise me, not did it upset me. Eliza Action in her book 'Modern Cookery for Private Families' published 1845 (no, not a typo, published when Queen Victoria had been on the throne for only eight years) had a recipe for curry powder and how to make fake mango chutney. I am trying to remember if it was her who had the recipe for fake bamboo shoots using pickled elder shoots, or it may have been Hannah Glasse. For centuries English cookery has been either basic or French/International. After the Norman conquest the ruling conquerors brought over their cooking preferences but the peasants maintained their basic and often subsistence diet. In the Middle Ages crusaders brought in oranges, rice, sugar and all sorts of recipes that can be traced to Persian or Arabic influence. The peasants continued with their basic diet. Queen Victoria had a French cook, and it was a French cook, Alexis Soyer, who toured the British Army in the Crimean and made several really valuable contributions. (he was a remarkable man, worth looking at his stuff)

Let us be fair, the English and the British have happily taken over and adapted all sorts of foreign bits and pieces, like huge swathes of language, fashion and food, and never turned a hair. I can stand in Leeds Market and see two old men having a right ding dong argument in what sounds like Polish, next to a stall selling sugar cane and Caribbean food. I love the variety and interest that this brings to our tables and our lives.

Yesterday, however, I was a bit parochial. We were having a takeaway as OH had seen another takeaway that he fancied - a British Takeaway. No, not fish and chips. Fish and chips are very British, but this was stuff like Yorkshire Pudding (definitely British!) with gravy and roast beef and pigs in blankets, and roast potatoes. I had sausage with Yorkshire Pudding and Gravy and OH had roast beef, but they had other cuts of meat. You could get a carvery meal, with meat, potatoes, veggies and gravy for £5. It is called 'The Roast Tin' http://www.roast-tin.co.uk/ and the meal was not only extremely tasty (though the roasties side portion wasn't very crisp, just tasty) it was extremely inexpensive.

I think today's dinner of chicken is going to be a bit flat after that.