Why does British culinary culture not stand out in Europe?
Because we were the first to suffer the effects of the gastronomic regression caused by the industrial revolution.
Did you eat worse in the factories?
There was such a demand for labor in the city that we abandoned the garden and farm kitchen en masse... and within a few years, we ran out of local cuisine and good produce.
Wasn't an industrial gastronomy born?
When you lose contact with the earth, you lose it with its flavors: the cereals, the fruits, the cheeses... We abandoned them all to feed ourselves badly in the canteens of the factories.
Didn't the upper class defend flavors?
In that Victorian era, the sensual pleasures of meat, all meats, were considered ignoble and belonging to the lower classes, and they forsook fine dining.
And the lower classes weren't looking for one?
Read Dickens and you will see the disaster.
Why do you write about flavors?
I've become obsessed with it and know that the British have recovered a lot of gastronomy lost since the 70s, starting with reclaiming farm spices; vegetables, fruits and forgotten dishes. Our cheeses have the flavor of other times again.
I don't know if I see it in the English supers.
Because that's the other problem with flavors: there's no point in talking about them if only four privileged people can afford them.
In Spain, haute cuisine is expensive and, on the other hand, also very popular.
Most Brits can't, won't or don't think it's worth paying more for better quality food.
Are you against the dark kitchen and the couriers taking it on the streets?
It is the last part of the industrialization of flavors that we have suffered since the 19th century. But I am hopeful about the number of quality bakeries opening in London.
Are we left with mediocre sushi?
If you don't know the flavors that good sushi should have, you won't be able to tell the difference. This is the English problem. And, to begin with, buy a good knife.
The most disgusting yet delicious taste you can remember?
Disgusting and tasty...? For example...?
Andouillette sausages? When you eat them, they smell as if they have already been eaten.
Have you cooked the elderberry?
never These black balls?
Often, when boiled, they smell like urine. That is why it is not a popular dish today. Other flavors that have shocked me to the point of becoming unforgettable are the well-fermented kimchi...
It is strongly unfermented; but does not repel.
And there are all the seaweeds in such a variety of aromas, flavors and textures that I have dedicated a chapter to them. And this diversity is free: they are available to anyone who dares to catch them from the sea and cook them.
First you need to know them.
They require a previous culture that only Asian peoples, such as the Japanese, have because of the powerful taste of iodine that defines them.
You defend the fish
We Brits have some wonderful crustaceans and crabs on our shores.
What a delight!
But, due to unfortunate prejudices, most Brits don't find them tempting...
Well, worse for them...
Instead, they love fish
Isn't it fried fish with dubious fats?
I love fish
Also delicious?
Well, look, yes, even the aroma of oily newsprint whetted the appetite.
If you say so!
They were cod and haddock with a delicate flavor, which we enhance by frying them. That maybe they don't intensify it here by salting it?
It was a conservation strategy.
El fish
Try olive oil: for your health, I say.
If the fish
No offense intended: the fryer reduces all taste to that of the (sometimes badly) fried.
Open your mind! In Scotland they even fry Mars chocolate bars like fish
Renoi: There was also cannibalism.
On the other hand, tofu provides the flavors with exquisite gradation in lightness: there are 80 varieties that barely differ in slight nuances, some just shades of the previous one. So I make mine the same way I connect other flavors like coffee with yogurt.
What do you discover in this mix?
That the coffee is expressed as if it were a fruit in the yogurt, which, instead, takes on smoky nuances: sweet, sour and slightly bitter, like blackcurrant.
