Anyone else irritated by this trend to describing food in poncy terms ?
We had a pub lunch in the Lakes over the weekend, simple sausages and mash for me, but it came with red onion marmalade......what's all that about ? I thought marmalade was just citrus fruit jam wot you 'ad on yer toast ! Wifey's came with a 'drizzle ' of Jus ( gravy ) I ask you !
Last night, four of us dined in an Italian restaurant in a posh area of Stockport. I noticed, on the menu, something served with ' tomato rubbed bread ' HaHaHa...some poor guy with a loaf of Kingsmill rubbing a cut tomato over each slice like a madman !
Just caught the end of a cookery prog.......SWMBO likes them. That cook with the spikey hair was showing a pan of something bubbling away and told us ' That's doing nicely now, and there's just a touch of Coriander happening in it '....What a snip !
All very amusing though....keep 'em coming, you chefs out there !
Ted
Last edited by: VxFan on Fri 30 Jul 10 at 00:49
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I had a meal at the Old House at Home on Sunday. I was very impressed with it, I had a chicken burger and it was exactly that. Usualy in pubs these days they come on square plates, some chips which have not been peeled.
A lot of the pubs in Cheshire (I mean the proper Cheshire - not Stockport) used to annoy me about that. They would put on their memus that all the meals are made out of local produce made locally, why then is it 300% more expensive than the same meal made from Produce in Poland?
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>> I had a meal at the Old House at Home on Sunday. I was very
>> impressed with it, I had a chicken burger and it was exactly that.
How can you be impressed by something you get in a KFC?
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>> Just caught the end of a cookery prog.......SWMBO likes them. That cook with the spikey
>> hair was showing a pan of something bubbling away and told us ' That's doing
>> nicely now, and there's just a touch of Coriander happening in it '....What a snip
Gary Rhodes. We've had a few meals out of one of his cookbooks and very nice they are too. But yeah, he can be a bit precious :-)
Last edited by: VxFan on Fri 30 Jul 10 at 00:50
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No problem with Stockport being in Cheshire, Rats. It still is and always will be.
Cheshire extends all the way to include Stalybridge.
I have no gripe with any of the grub, tastewise. I can't see some swamp-donkey from a high rise in Miles Platting asking for marmalade on his pie and chips !
I recall a meal earlier this year in a hotel in Ilkley. We were seranaded by the resident harpist...very nice. I had a very nice steak but the chips consisted of 8 identical square strips of potato arranged 2 upon 2 at right angles in a little pile. 4 cherry tomatoes completed the ensemble.....Where was me bowl of chips ?.... and I didn't dare ask for salad cream to put on them. I think the chef would have had a major seizure !
Ted
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Anyone else read Jan Moir's critique of Heather Mill's vegan caff in that queer place?
Brilliant piece of comic writing.
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I'm now curious where you ate in a posh bit of Stockport Ted. Maybe near me. Although I tend to drop the Stockport bit from the address ;-)
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>> I'm now curious where you ate in a posh bit of Stockport Ted.
Bramhall, Rob....opposite the church on the Station Rd. Very noisy though. I like a bit of conversation but it was all wood floors and no soft furnishings to soak up the noise !
Don't know the name of the place...We was took there ! Good food and 2 litres pf Peroni went down well. Erin Dors drove !
Ted
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"Anyone else read Jan Moir's critique of Heather Mill's vegan caff in that queer place?
Brilliant piece of comic writing."
Yes!
Last edited by: landsker on Sat 31 Jul 10 at 10:08
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>> and I didn't dare ask for salad cream to put on them. I think the
>> chef would have had a major seizure !
It is perfectly acceptable to ask for some home made mayonaise to go with your chips/french fries.
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Didn't Fawlty Towers do this once?
Aaaah, salad cream. Our chef makes the most marvellous mayonaisse...
Trying to find a link/script...
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So that's two egg mayonnaise, a prawn Goebbels, a Herman Goering and four Colditz salads
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Naaah - was the brattish kid demanding bread and salad cream... and saying to Fawtly "God, but you're dumb..."
Eventually Basil looked at his watch, smacking the kid on the back of his head with the elbow, and said "is that the time?"
I've got the dvd at home - hilarious!
BUT back to topic, our local boozer is packed out every sunday -and for weeks ahead - for the traditional roast beef and yorkshire puddings and 3 veg, with apple crumble for desert.
Voted best pub in africa by the expat readers of a certain paper...
I don't eat there, as I prefer to do my own sunday roast, but they certainly draw a crowd, and have done so for many years, as opposed to the pretentious tosspots who open the 'must-be-in-with-the-in-crowd' places in the immediate vicinty... whcih last about 6 months on average.
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oi be with ee, even if that makes me a peasant. Oo-arrr.
Pub lunch in Lakes - Queens Head at Troutbeck - ace. I will go in the Mortal Man one day but it'd better be good because I know what I'm missing up the road.
'scuse me now, got to cut a new piecce of baling twine to hold up me trousers.
JH
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>>Anyone else irritated by this trend to describing food in poncy terms<<
The cook probably had a foundation degree in culinary arts, just tell em to bring on the daddies sauce.
:)
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What gets to me is the average TV chef's fondness for unnecessary phrasal verbs. Onions are 'fried off', chops 'browned up', sauces 'reduced down'. But at least it's English - of a sort.
Ted's right that nothing tastes better -or is worth paying more for - just because it has some foreign words attached to it. Some - rosti, roux, gratin - are necessary because they have no direct English equivalents, but calling a pie a tarte, or a gravy a jus is absurd and pretentious and merely invites ridicule - which plenty here seem happy to provide.
Last edited by: WillDeBeest on Fri 30 Jul 10 at 10:31
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A pie is NOT a tarte, and Jus is NOT gravy.
You'll be calling a Tarte flambée a pizza next.
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I've ordered tarte aux pommes (in England) and received what would have been better described as apple pie. Similarly purée de pommes de terre for mashed potato. A true tarte is a fine thing, but if you're serving food in England that could be accurately and concisely described in English, why not do so?
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A jus is not a gravy; gravy is thickened with flour, jus is not.
A tarte is not a pie; a pie always has a pastry lid, a tarte generally doesn't.
Using French culinary terms is not pretentious, it's traditional. French is the language of the kitchen.
That TV presenters mangle the English language, well you can hardly blame the food for that.
Edited to add: Zero managed to post this before me, but I'm leaving it anyway (not least because I cannot delete a post).
Last edited by: Mapmaker on Fri 30 Jul 10 at 10:49
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Gravy is a sauce made from meat juices. Thicken it with flour if you must - I don't but I still call mine gravy.
The lidless pastry and fruit dessert can be a tart, can't it?
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So on your basis if I get gravy, I've no idea what I'm getting. However if I get jus, I know exactly what to expect.
How is your world better than mine?
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I don't think you do know what to expect. I've had stuff described as jus that appeared to have been made from granules out of a jar. (Won't be going there again.) My beef (geddit?) isn't with the foreign terms per se; it's with using them in a way that comes between the customer and a clear understanding of what's on offer.
But there's another thing. I think this country produces some of the finest foods in the world. Properly cooked and presented, they can stand entirely on their own merits. Using foreign terms when English ones would do perpetuates the old inferiority complex about British food and cooking, and that's bad.
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We do have some of the finest food in the world. British beef, pork, vennison and lamb is probably some of the best anywhere in the world. Nothing is finer than a freshly cooked wild trout hoiked up from a clear british stream. Nothing, anywhere in the world, has the gorgeous flavour of a british strawberry, nowhere produces the quality of a british garden pea.
We are reknown experts in roasting joints of meat and making pies since medieaval times. Farm produced hard cheeses are every bit as good as anything produced in the old world.
However, to insist a jus is gravy, is a bit of a blanket comment. Clearly making crap gravy and calling it jus happens, but its clearly easy to distinguish a jus from gravy.
And as for bread rubbed with tomatoes, try it in a catalan cafe. Gorgeous.
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>> I don't think you do know what to expect. I've had stuff described as jus
>> that appeared to have been made from granules out of a jar. (Won't be going
>> there again.)
I've been served overboiled cabbage, stewed tea and tough steak. I wasn't expecting any of those either.
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>> I've been served overboiled cabbage, stewed tea and tough steak. I wasn't expecting any of
>> those either.
Ahh, the smell of overboiled cabbage drifting out of old peoples homes on a Sunday lunchtime. Bon appetite!
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>>However if I get jus, I know exactly what to expect.
You suppose that the person who wrote the menu has a clue what a jus is.
"Unthickened gravy" or "meat juices" would be a does-what-it-says-on-the-tin description with a better chance of being accurate, if not having cornflour in it is important.
Twice recently I have been served fish and chips with, respectively, "puree de petit pois" and "pea puree". I thought the first time, in Skipton, it was a one off from a self-mocking chef, but in happened again today, in Solihull - a new trend I've missed?
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Mushy peas with fish and chips is a disgusting northern habit anyway. Whats french for pickled onion?
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>> Mushy peas with fish and chips is a disgusting northern habit anyway.
You just took the huff when you discovered it wasn't guacamole.
>>Whats french for pickled onion?
oignon conservé au vinaigre? A fine adornment to any meal.
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>> Mushy peas with fish and chips is a disgusting northern habit anyway.
Far preferable to jellied eels and likker sauce thank you. And considerably cheaper.
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>> >> Mushy peas with fish and chips is a disgusting northern habit anyway.
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>> Far preferable to jellied eels and likker sauce thank you. And considerably cheaper.
You dont have green likker with jellied eels. The green likker goes over your (double) pie n mash, and after you break a hole in the top of the pie and put pickel vinnegar in it.
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>>The green likker goes over your (double) pie n mash<<
I had 3 lots of that once, as in 6 pies! I did feel a tad sick afterwards tho,
luvly grub :)
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>> You dont have green likker with jellied eels. The green likker goes over your (double)
>> pie n mash, and after you break a hole in the top of the pie
>> and put pickel vinnegar in it.
>>
I know that. One man's meat, though..... ;-)
Must admit that I am rather partial to the "Lunnun" version of the full English brekky, with fried liver and bubble.
Last edited by: Harleyman on Sat 31 Jul 10 at 09:33
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>> Must admit that I am rather partial to the "Lunnun" version of the full English
>> brekky, with fried liver and bubble.
Now aint that funny, as a lunnuner I am partial to black pudding with my full set.
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Faggots, chips, mushy peas and gravy - all from a chippy - fabulous!
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Reduce is down. It can't be UP surely! :0)
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Red onion marmalade, one of the greatest delights known to man.
www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1404/red-onion-marmalade
If you don't like tomato rubbed bread, then stick to going to KFC with Rattle. The idea of being impressed by a chicken burger.
Proper chips come unpeeled, sorry to say.
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Entertaining thread!
For as long as I can remember, food at restaurants, inns, teashops and cafés has often been described in flowery language. Sometimes the description (even when intelligible) is rather misleading, and, on the whole, I'd prefer it if they simply supplied the ingredients list.
The trend that has amused me is the way that if one gets a box of choccies, they now tend to be described in rather up-market prose. Centres always seem to be "enrobed". I have no recollection of the word "enrobed" being used used to describe confectionery prior to the advent of the 21st century.
Last edited by: tyro on Fri 30 Jul 10 at 12:43
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www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1404/red-onion-marmalade
Chutney !
I like all the food and SWMBO makes a lot of stuff like this, she was a secondary school cookery teacher. It's just the poncy names that get me !
Ted
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"I have no recollection of the word "enrobed" being used used to describe confectionery prior to the advent of the 21st century."
My mother's first job in the 1920's was at an enrobing machine in a chocolate factory.
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>> Entertaining thread!
>> to be "enrobed". I have no recollection of the word "enrobed" being used used to
>> describe confectionery prior to the advent of the 21st century.
>> "
Now it's used to describe two bellies "Lard Prescott!
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No, I like restuarants, I like nice country pubs, I also like simple food.
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I like the KFC chicken, but our local is an experience to be missed.
You walk in, there's a glass screen with a gap under it at the counter. The irrelevant piped music is too loud and then some be-spotted youth barks something at you in an East European accent ( overcome by the music and through the glass ). As well, you haven't had a chance to look at the menu on the wall yet......not that I can read it anyway through the glass and about 8ft up in the air.
Then, they always seem to have run out of the free bottles of Coke which are promised !
Ours is built on the site of a bombed out cinema.........the bombs came 60 yrs too early IMO.
Unlucky Fried Kitten......an avenue of pleasure closed off to me !
Ted
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Ted, are you sure you are not standing at the drive thru ???? :)
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I tried the drive thru but those rotating brushes and all that cold water made me ill........and no-one took my order.
Going for me tea now...Turkey stuffed with a goose, then a duck, a chicken, a pullet, 4 blackbirds on a bed of lark's tongues in a blue onion jus.....................again !
Ted
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If the Zeroman cares to make the trip up t'Noorth he can have his fish and chips garnished with the finest jus known to man...........peawet !
Ted
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Heaven is a sandwich made from proper fresh bread, loads of salted butter, marmite, cold mashed potato and cheddar cheese. Peanut butter and or orange marmalade is optional!
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On the other hand the best dish in the world, bar none, is cottage pie liberally sploshed with HP brown sauce.
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There, you have done it, no one else would, but you have.
HP sauce - There is a reason it shares the same colour as something else.
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Two rounds of Warburton's white, medium sliced....do you culinary philistines down Sowf get that ? Buttered, filled with fish fingers and drizzled ( there we go again ) with Heinz salad cream from a squeezy bottle !
We used to dream of food like that when we were kids.
Christmas treat was the top off me Mam's boiled egg.
Luxury !
Ted
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Try that with a few oven chips laid between the fishfingers. Has to be hot so the butter melts.
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"a few oven chips laid between the fishfingers"
Would that be accompanied with pub salad i.e some limp iceberg lettuce, half an orange tomato and a curling slice of cucumber - definitely no dressing?
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Dont be silly - its a starter.
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....and that brings up another gripe, why all these ruddy purple, tasteless leaves in a salad together with green versions of the same. I yearn for SWMBO to buy a nice crisp Iceberg and surprise me one day.
At least, you can cut Iceberg and get it on yer fork. The other stuff's like feeding in the hedgerow !
Re my serving suggestion above...substitue the fish fingers and salad cream for Iceberg and salt. keep the bread and butter the same...........Yumsville City, Wyoming !
Prawn and pea risotto tonight....with a bottle or two of Jennings.
Ted
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Pretentious.....Moi ? - Zero
