Rule Britannia!

Watch any food/travel show that is set in a non English country and inevitably it will begin with the words "food is extremely important to ______ culture".  Watch one of these shows in North America or Britain and they probably will not start that way.  But, food is just as important to English cultures as any other.  Food is important to human culture, regardless of where it resides.  Culture, in fact, owes its very beginnings to food and cooking.  And the long held myth that an English kitchen is devoid of taste, culture and tradition is an ignorant misconception.  Much has changed in England and North America and many of the world's top chefs are of English, Canadian and American origins.  These chefs will, to a man/woman, point to the likes of Marco Pierre White as an inspiration for their success.  And Chef White deserves much praise; his food has been amongst the world's best for a long time and he has been at the forefront of the English revival in cooking.  Watch this video from No Reservations (the relevant part starts at 4:15 and runs to 11:50)

Chef White is a very talented chef, I would never disparage his abilities or approach to food.  Of course there is a BUT coming.  And here it is:  Chef White and Anthony Bourdain tend to think that no one was sticking up for the lowly cuisine of the peasantry of Britain until Chef White arrived.  The talent is unassailable but the image?  White passes himself off as some brooding culinary version of J.D. Salinger in self imposed exile from the cooking elite.  The whole time continuing to cook food only accessible to the very wealthy.  Go ahead, try and get a seat at his restaurant in England.  I find the opening scene of Bourdain in a recording studio with allusions to the punk movement, ironic.  He finds in White a kindred spirit who believes he is catering to the masses while all the time rubbing shoulders with the most inaccessible chefs in the industry and attending invitation only dinner parties in exotic locations with ingredients found on the endangered species list. 

Bourdain's infatuation with White revolves around a picture of the man at a young age with a cigarette dangling from his mouth and a face framed by a mass of disheveled hair instead of a crisp white chef's hat.  How avant garde!  I fail to see the importance to food of smoking and listening to punk rock.  Before you begin to believe that White's demeanor is a recent phenomenon take a look at this video from the height of his success as a young kitchen star.

Both White and Chef Raymond Blanc (his mentor) discuss cooking with an attitude that they are doing something vitally important to civilization.  One would begin to wonder if, in fact, there is a Nobel Prize for culinary arts (there's not). The food looks beautiful and probably tastes great but, the "one must suffer for their art " demeanor is enough to kill an appetite.  Not to mention the smoking at the table and in the kitchen.

What may come as a shock to the likes of Bourdain and White, and maybe many of you, is there have been two people who held the British Banner for culinary arts much higher long before the likes of Chef White.  These two are amongst my favourite all time cooking superstars and were as hard core as it gets.  I am talking about The Two Fat Ladies, Clarissa Dickson-Wright and Jennifer Paterson.  Their show taught me more about food and cooking than anyone other than Graham Kerr and Jacque Pepin.  Here is a clip:

Tell me that food doesn't look fucking good (there, I used the f word, that makes me hard core, right?).  And if you think the Two Fat Ladies aren't "hard core" check out their Wikipedia pages here and here.  For Christ's sake Paterson died of lung cancer from smoking, surely that beats a dangling cigarette?  And they traveled by motorcycle, Anthony.  For me Dickson-Wright and Paterson embody the ideals of British culinary culture.  Go to YouTube and spend an afternoon watching their videos, they will entertain and inform you with a sense of humour about themselves and their food. 

Now, it is true that the Two Fat Ladies series didn't start until the mid-nineties, about the time that White was receiving his third Michelin star, but, both Dickson-Wright and Paterson had been cooking for a long time and cooking the kinds of meals seen in their shows.  Paterson had been writing about food even before White opened his first restaurant.  And, the food White was cooking in his earliest days was the food of French chefs he trained under, it was not until he "retired" that White transformed his cuisine to the English country style his restaurants cook today.  As far as preparing and eating "snout to hoof" for a television audience, again Dickson-Wright and Paterson were amongst the earliest. 

Does this mean I have lost my bromantic feelings for Anthony Bourdain?  Of course not.  Bourdain has done a lot to remove the mystique from the profession of Chef and let us all in to the world of professional kitchens in a way that we did not have before.  His style of writing and style of his No Reservations show are brilliantly easy to follow and entertaining to boot.  But, keep in mind, this is only one man's experience.  There have always been kitchens that were run without the "punk" attitude and the vulgar language.  And, while a professional kitchen is a stressful place to work it is no less true for many work places like an emergency room, the trading floor of a stock market, a riot, a fire and many others where the consequences are more severe than an offended dinner guest.

What a chef does is provide a culinary experience that helps us escape the everyday hassles of jobs, bosses, family and bills.  There is only one other form of pleasure that provides as much satisfaction but, professionals in that realm tend to end up in jail.  And just like real love is something that we experience in the home, real food culture is also something that is best enjoyed in the home.  In fact, the home cooks, in my opinion, are the ones who are truly maintaining a nation's cultural heritage.  Look, the punk movement so worshiped by Bourdain was born out of the disenfranchised youth of Britain who failed to find relevance in the music of super groups like Pink Floyd and Queen.   Likewise, in matters of food, the mass appeal of street food, greasy spoons and dinner clubs is born from a culture that can't understand paying $300 to sit nervously at a dinner table scared they may be attacked by a megalomaniac chef who didn't like their take on his deconstructed Pot au Feu!

Culture - all the knowledge and values shared by a society - started at the side of a camp fire discussing the days events and the meaning of life while waiting for some slow footed wildebeest to transform into a succulent golden brown and delicious slab of goodness.  That is the very essence of cooking and is best when shared with loved ones in the home and not by professionals in the bawdy house of some Chez I'm Great.  I love the fact that British food is regaining its rightful place as a world cuisine and hope that a return to the food of the peasantry in all cultures will soon replace that of the gentry and I suspect Chef White will continue to draw inspiration from that cuisine.  There does seem to be a mellowing of Chef White, who now endorses Knorr products, and there are several videos where he is featured giving tips for home cooking encouraging home cooks to keep it simple.  Good on him.  And good on British food.