– witness the marketing pitch for chef James Martin’s 2005 book, Easy British Food:
‘Typically when asked about British food, thoughts turn immediately to a plate of good old fish and chips followed by the less inspiring meat and two veg. This is just not the case anymore – Britain is jam-packed with a diverse and delicious variety of food … James has packed the book full of classic dishes you thought only your mother had the secret to from homemade Cumberland sausages to Welsh rarebit, from jam roly poly to raspberry Pavlova, Easy British Food does not disappoint.’
That is the British bit of the sell, but everyone from the editor to the sales manager knows that a volume of straight, traditional British cooking is not commercial enough or sufficiently seductive to market to Britons sceptical about their own culinary heritage, so it needs a hint of foreign promise added:
‘Inherited British favourites from overseas have not been overlooked – Margarita pizza, lamb curry, salmon risotto and crème brulée are all now firm favourites in the heart of the British nation, all of these and more are made easy in this delicious collection …’
This voices the almost pathetic British need to make foreign dishes our own in order to compensate for what we consider to be the inadequacies of our own native cooking tradition. This is our new food identity, dipping into cuisines from all over the world and trying to unite them in a new composite product that can plausibly be regarded as British. While Queen Elizabeth II may still represent a more conservative British palate – she is said not to like garlic or long pasta – market research has shown that Britain is the country in Europe most fond of foreign tastes. Seven out of ten Britons say that they ‘like foreign food’ compared to 29 per cent of Spaniards. One survey of European eating habits remarked on how Germans were ‘conservative consumers’ favouring traditional German food. The same applied to Spaniards whose eating habits remain ‘still very much based on a Mediterranean-type diet’. While Britain likes to commend itself, quite legitimately, on its openness to foreign culinary ideas and influences, there is no escaping the fact that this taste is powered by lack of belief in our indigenous gastronomy.
The British lack of culinary confidence was demonstrated rather spectacularly (twice) during US President George Bush’s 2003 visit to the UK. At Buckingham Palace, the Queen served him a meal – billed as ‘Le Menu’ – consisting of potage Germiny, délice de flétan aux herbes, suprème de poulet fermier au basilica, and bombe glacée Copelia, which was French both in language and concept. Dining at Downing Street with Tony Blair, eating a menu created by Nigella Lawson, the American President was treated to roast pumpkin, radicchio and Welsh feta salad, braised ham with honey and mustard glaze, creamed potatoes and seasonal vegetables, followed by double-baked apple pie with cheddar crust and vanilla ice cream. The Guardian’s Matthew Fort, for one, was unimpressed:
‘You might have thought that the occasion of the state visit of an American president would herald a little tub-thumping of our own, for the culinary fireworks which we have been so busy claiming for ourselves … It sounds quite tasty and homely … but I can’t help feeling that Queen Nigella may have gone a bit far in the hand of friendship direction in an effort to make Citizen Bush feel at home. Pumpkin has a greater following in America than it does here … and what is more American than apple pie, with or without the cheddar crust? … Come to that, when has radicchio been a British vegetable of choice? And why feta cheese, Welsh or not? What’s wrong with Caerphilly?’
When ambassadors for Britain are so half-hearted about serving British food, it is no surprise that ordinary people feel the same way. By 2004, only 63 per cent of the food eaten in Britain was home-produced, down from 75 per cent in 1994. We seem to be eating less native produce, not more. This situation is in part a reflection of the preference of British supermarkets for global sourcing which leads to diminishing amounts of British food on British shelves. In 2005, a survey by Friends of the Earth found that two-thirds of the apples sold in the height of the UK apple season came from overseas. Some of the apple varieties being offered had travelled more than 12,000 miles. The reliance of supermarkets on cheap imported foods means that Britons who do want to buy British food find it difficult to do so.
For decades, British consumers have been exhorted by numerous food industry marketing bodies such as the Meat and Livestock Commission and the National Farmers Union to support British farmers, but this has fallen mainly on deaf ears. In countries with a thriving food culture, consumers feel connected to those who produce food, not least because many of them have a producer in their extended family or circle of friends. In Britain, on the other hand, few consumers have any connection with farming or primary food production, largely because it has now become so intensive, industrial and factory-based, that fewer and fewer people are engaged in it. The vast majority of Britons are divorced from the countryside and know little or nothing about what it can produce. Indeed, the urban masses tend to see farmers in an unsympathetic light as potential chisellers and fiddlers of European Union subsidies, people who are not to be trusted. Consequently, they do not get a sympathetic hearing.
In recent years, a slight but significant resurgence of interest in smaller-scale, less industrialized food amongst opinion formers has opened up a more positive dialogue between producers and consumers. In 2002, the chief executive of the Countryside Alliance, Richard Burge, launched an initiative called British Food Fort-night and took the opportunity to appeal to consumers, using the term ‘producers’ rather than ‘farmers’, and emphasizing pleasure rather than patriotic duty: ‘The time has come to stand up for British food and its producers! We have to remind consumers of the great pleasure which comes from eating locally-grown, high-quality foods, and just how important it is to the British countryside at this time that we eat its produce.’
Now an annual event each October, British Food Fortnight aims to make everyone in the UK more aware of the diversity and quality of home-grown, locally-sourced British produce. Consumers are urged to seek out seasonal produce, cook a British meal for friends and explore British regional cooking. This may be a surprisingly tall order: according to a survey carried out by the Institute of Grocery Distribution just before British Food Fortnight 2005, only one in five Britons will go out of their way to buy British food if it means paying more for it, while over half of all shoppers polled said that they didn’t care where their food came from. The Institute pointed out that while 87 per cent of respondents considered farming to be an important part of British heritage, the challenge was to translate this patriotism into purchasing British food because Britons did not generally ‘see the connection with food production and the countryside’.
By 2005, British Food Fortnight was still being run as a cottage industry. Despite pressure on the government from both Houses of Parliament, the media at large and the farming press, the government’s contribution was actually reduced in 2005 from some £46,000 to £45,000. The event went ahead on a paltry budget of £108,000, cobbled together from sponsorship from the Nationwide building society, retailers Booths and Budgens, and other supportive organizations. ‘The sad reality,’ commented organizer Alexia Robinson, ‘is that there is no overall body representing British food producers and, therefore, there is no consensus, no unified marketing and no easy mechanism for raising funding on behalf of the industry as a whole … Asking the public to buy British food because they feel sorry for farmers will not cut it.’
As always in Britain, any attempt to have small food businesses – or
