Back to the chopping board

Published 18 July 2005

Processed food and BSE have ruined our image. But daring chefs are fighting back

"Blessed be he that invented the pudding," wrote the French writer Francois-Maximilien Misson when he came to Britain in the late 17th century. "To come in pudding time is to come to the most lucky moment in the world."

Yet, though an English establishment - Heston Blumenthal's The Fat Duck, in Bray, Berkshire - has recently been voted the best restaurant in the world, it is unlikely that we would hear similar words of praise today (especially not from a Frenchman). For the most part, Britain's delightful culinary heritage - which included such delectable treats as the Salmagundi salad (of French origin), Hindle Wakes (chicken and prunes in lemon sauce, brought to Lancashire by Flemish weavers in the 17th century) and Throdkins from Fylde - remains firmly in the past.

The cheap food policy, promoted by British governments for decades, has played a large part in this demise, as has Britain's love of the appliance of science in the kitchen. Food processors have refined the science of reconstituting meat, creating household favourites from chicken nuggets to the now infamous Turkey Twizzler. The Twizzler, a truly Frankenstinian creation, was recently singled out as being fatty, tasteless and of no culinary value in Jamie's School Dinners. But despite such negative publicity, sales of the Twizzler have recently increased.

It is the ultimate irony that the cheap food policy, which such unhealthy products help to implement, forced us to feed herbivorous cattle with minced sheep brains, which in turn produced our most famous export: Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE). Since 1986, when the first cow was diagnosed with BSE in the UK, buying food has become fraught with worry and danger. The easiest way to avoid the problem is to buy organic and local. Hence the rocketing interest in farmer's markets. But the sense of threat is further increased by products on the supermarket shelves such as bacteria-killing chopping boards and detergents. On a culinary level, without bacteria we would have neither yoghurt nor cheese. Nor would we be able to digest any food at all.

One of the main problems today is the lack of education about nutrition. Gone are the days when domestic science was taught in schools. In its place, food technology tells eager students little about food and cooking, but much about designing pizza boxes. Supermarkets, especially, seem to be reticent about trumpeting the benefits of fresh vegetables. Nicely trimmed and packed vegetables, flown in from the other side of the world, yes. But truly fresh, local produce, whose high levels of photochemicals can mop up the cancer-forming free radicals that course through our veins, no. Where is that lesson in the curriculum?

Heston Blumenthal, the creator of snail porridge, is a pioneer in educating people about food. Following in the footsteps of the ubermeister of "molecular gastronomy", Ferran Adria _ chef at the renowned El Bulli Spanish restaurant _ Blumenthal consistently tests and teases culinary boundaries. Plates of egg-and-bacon ice cream, sardine-on-toast sorbet, and salmon cooked in liquorice wow those lucky enough to get a table at his restaurant.

He encourages his diners to enjoy themselves, to have fun. This is a marked change from the days when gastronomy was profoundly class-bound, and the refuge of the humourless and the obsessed. "It's a complete package of enjoyment I'm after," Blumenthal said. "It's like when you see an incredible view, or drink a great bottle of wine - the experience is heightened if you share it with someone else."

British food has always been open to influences from all over the world. Today, our national dish is chicken tikka masala, and even our sacred fish and chips have a part Jewish-Italian, part Irish connection. But the most influential of our culinary relationships is with France. Since our slavish adoption of haute cuisine, when Michelin stars ruled, the past decade has witnessed the rise of a group of passionate, essentially self-taught and intelligent chefs. Marco Pierre White, Fergus Henderson, Sally Clarke, Rowley Leigh, Simon Hopkinson, Phil Howard and Blumenthal among others, have brought a marvellous element of inventive British amateurism to bear delicious fruit.

In the same way, change is now being forced on the government's pathetic skimping on school food - there is something very Dickensian about feeding a child on 37p - by the passion of a few individuals, Jamie Oliver, and the original pioneering dinner lady, Jeanette Orrey, to name but two.

Critics may decry any attempt at British revivalism as being misplaced and nostalgic. But, tucked among the infamous list of great restaurants of the world you will find St John in Clerkenwell, London, a truly blessed place, where Fergus Henderson has been cooking good, honest and essentially British food for years. The proof of the pudding is, as ever, in the eating. British food has a past, present and future.

William Black's most recent book is The Land that Thyme Forgot (Bantam Press)

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