What are the best foreign 'imported' dishes?
When people migrate to Britain, they bring with them a wealth of culinary knowledge. What’s the best dish to ever have arrived here?
A new Nigel Slater series for the BBC titled Eating Together began this week. The first episode focussed around the multitude of dumplings now eaten in Britain, from the thick, doughy traditional British dumplings served with stew through to filled Polish pierogi, Indian kachori and Italian ravioli. Very tasty stuff.
Variety in the British Isles
Cultures have adopted various foods and ‘indigenised’ them over time, as Michael Dietler points out in an essay on food and colonialism titled Culinary Encounters: Food, Identity and Colonialism.
Tomatoes were adopted by Italy and the potato by Ireland, he remarks, and these foods, though adopted, have become fundamental expressions of those countries’ cuisines.
Over the course of the existence of the British Empire, ingredients and spices were shipped back to Britain en masse. For instance, sage and rosemary (from the Mediterranean) and cloves (from Sri Lanka and Madagascar) joined the native likes of horseradish, ramsoms (wild garlic) and borage.
Now those three imports are very much naturalised here, as they have been used in cooking for hundreds of years; even if they are not actually native, they are now very much part of our culinary repertoire.
Foods coming across
During and following the years of empire, immigrants and those returning from the colonies to the British Isles brought with them hundreds of recipes. Meanwhile, movement and trade within Europe brought hundreds more.
We adore pasta and omelettes from our European neighbours, curries from India and further east out towards Malaysia and Thailand, mezze from the Middle East and wraps from the Central and Southern Americas.
Britain has been a melting pot of cultures, bringing their own bubbling pots of all kinds of food for centuries.
What do you think is the best food that has arrived along with the immigrants who have moved to Britain throughout its history?
Do you love the spicy Indian dishes that have found an ‘adoptively native’ status in Britain? Did you hail the arrival of sushi on these shores as a godsend? And which British food do you hope other countries are enjoying? Let us know your thoughts in the Comments below.
You might also like:
Foods in season this month and how to use them
Comments
Be the first to comment
Do you want to comment on this article? You need to be signed in for this feature