DIR Return Create A Forum - Home
---------------------------------------------------------
Bad Manners and Brimstone
HTML https://badmanners.createaforum.com
---------------------------------------------------------
*****************************************************
DIR Return to: Food
*****************************************************
#Post#: 79608--------------------------------------------------
Sweet corn
By: EmmaJ Date: July 3, 2023, 2:29 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
I fell down one of those internet rabbit holes and was watching
a young fellow from England taste and rate school lunches from
different countries. It was fascinating and eye opening!
At one point he was tasting an American lunch (hamburger, French
fries, corn cut off the cob). He tasted the corn, made a face,
and said “what is that flavor?!?” Another bite and then he said
“Oh, it’s butter. Americans put butter on their corn? How
strange.”
I’ve tried googling what our friends across the pond put on
their corn but came up with nothing. I am so curious, can
anyone tell me what is the norm there?
#Post#: 79611--------------------------------------------------
Re: Sweet corn
By: jpcher Date: July 3, 2023, 6:17 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
I'm in the US. Corn on the cob (or any fresh/frozen corn for
that matter) needs butter. And (before I was watching my diet)
salt.
Canned corn is a major no-no in my book. It tastes tinny. Tastes
absolutely nothing like fresh corn. Yuk.
Frozen corn is a good substitute if fresh is not available.
I'm also curious as to how others serve corn. Good topic, EmmaJ!
;D
#Post#: 79617--------------------------------------------------
Re: Sweet corn
By: Aleko Date: July 4, 2023, 3:38 am
---------------------------------------------------------
[quote]fell down one of those internet rabbit holes and was
watching a young fellow from England taste and rate school
lunches from different countries.[/quote]
Can you provide a link? I’d be curious to hear him speak, which
might well make clear where in England this lad was from, what
ethnic background, and even what social stratum. All these play
into what British people eat and how/when they eat it.
From where I’m sitting (SE England, old-style middle class), I
can say that I’ve never known anyone serve fresh corn boiled on
the cob without providing butter for people to dunk it into or
spread on it. Some might not choose to use it, just as some
people choose not to put salt and vinegar on their chips (that
would be ‘fries’ to Leftpondians), but it’s totally understood
that it should be available.
Butter on cooked vegetables is a somewhat different case. From
at least the 18th century ‘butter, or butter sauce, with
everything’ was a rule of British cookery for anyone who could
afford it; and my mother, whose family was some of those who
could, took it for granted that plainly-cooked vegetables of all
kinds - green beans, carrots, potatoes, tinned or frozen
sweetcorn, whatever - positively need a dab of butter to taste
their best. She would either toss them in a bit of butter or
simply put butter on the table during the main course for people
to administer as much as they wanted. But historically you
needed to be well off to do that - and of course between 1940
and 1954 butter was rationed, so almost a generation of British
people of every class and financial status grew up on 2 oz of
butter a week, which meant you ate your veg without any. So my
mother’s habit was unusually luxurious: she did it because she
grew beautiful fresh vegetables and felt they deserved the best
treatment.
But a large proportion of the British public (not as many as in
my childhood, but still many) don’t really love their vegetables
and stick to the old Edwardian custom of boiling all the taste
and texture out of them and serving them up grimly plain, to be
eaten as a penance for the good of one’s soul. I don’t expect to
find butter in the vegetables served with catered meals such as
school dinners or pub Sunday roasts, and always look around the
table hopefully for some I can add. But if I did taste some
butter in the boiled sweetcorn I would be pleasantly surprised,
rather than thinking it strange.
Once again, do provide a link: you’ve made me very curious to
see this!
#Post#: 79618--------------------------------------------------
Re: Sweet corn
By: EmmaJ Date: July 4, 2023, 6:00 am
---------------------------------------------------------
Thank you Aleko, I finally found it. It’s a Youtube clip. I
obviously blended a couple clips together - I didn’t correctly
remember the exact menu (chicken nuggets instead of a
hamburger).
Just a warning though, he actually spits the corn back onto his
plate. 😳
Ugh, i can’t post the link. Maybe because I am on a tablet?
Can you search Youtube yourself? The title is American vs.
British School Lunch Food and the poster’s name is Raphael
Gomes.
#Post#: 79620--------------------------------------------------
Re: Sweet corn
By: Aleko Date: July 4, 2023, 8:10 am
---------------------------------------------------------
[quote]The title is American vs. British School Lunch Food and
the poster’s name is Raphael Gomes. [/quote]
Found it, thanks!
One thing I'll tell you for free: that kid is NOT 'from
England'. His accent is clearly Leftpondian, with a faint hint
of England surfacing occasionally. I suspect he's some class of
military or diplomatic brat, who has grown up and gone to school
all over the place. He may live in the UK as he claims to do,
but - unless he was feigning total ignorance for the video -
clearly he doesn't eat actual British food at home or at school,
as he expresses blank ignorance of some of the most basic
English foods there are. For example:
- He expresses amazement that anyone would serve sweetcorn as a
vegetable in itself (he says that's 'not common in Europe')
rather than putting it in salads or pizza. Well, it may not be
common in continental Europe, but serving it as a vegetable has
been what the Great British Public has mainly used it for ever
since Green Giant began to export it to the UK in the 1960s.
- He says 'jello', a word which is not used by anyone in
Rightpondia.
- He claims to be startled and grossed out by what he calls a
'thick' sausage, which is actually a perfectly standard
thickness for a British sausage. (We do have a much thinner
kind, but we call them 'chipolatas' and we don't normally use
them for bangers and mash.)
- Peas: again, he askes 'who eats peas like that? - just boiled
peas?' The entire population of the UK, that's who!
- He claims not to recognise apple crumble, and he asks 'what is
this thing on top?' That 'thing' on top is the crumble (like
German streusel), which when strewn on poached apple, or
blackberry and apple, or apricots, and baked, is one of the
best-known and best-loved desserts in Britain.
#Post#: 79621--------------------------------------------------
Re: Sweet corn
By: jpcher Date: July 4, 2023, 9:41 am
---------------------------------------------------------
LOL! I watched the video which confirms the statement "Don't
believe everything you see on the internet."
The meals were prepared by a friend. How authentic could that
possibly be? Especially the US mashed potatoes. Even the worst
diners in the US serve better mashed potatoes than that. Maybe,
possibly, cold leftover potatoes straight from the fridge could
have that sort of consistency, but what he showed for US mashed
potatoes? Definitely a no. Not authentic.
Okay, for the corn, he did mention possibly canned. See my
previous post. Yuk. No matter how you 'dress' it.
Aleko -- great posts! Thank you for the rightpondia viewpoint! I
have a couple of questions:
Do people actually put corn on pizza? I've never heard of that
before. It sounds rather off to me. Corn with a tomato sauce and
cheese? Not something that I'd like to try.
"- He says 'jello', a word which is not used by anyone in
Rightpondia." What do rightpondia's call Jello?
"- He claims to be startled and grossed out by what he calls a
'thick' sausage" I agree with this, those sausages were
equivalent to the US breakfast sausage size. I don't think I've
ever seen a sausage smaller than than that. Larger? Yes, like
Polish sausage or German bratwurst.
For what it's worth, when I was going to school my mother always
made me a sack lunch to bring to school (sandwich and a fresh
fruit, maybe a cookie if I was lucky.) On the rare occasion I
had to buy the school-offered lunch I found it to be delicious.
Probably because it was a treat, something out of the norm.
#Post#: 79623--------------------------------------------------
Re: Sweet corn
By: EmmaJ Date: July 4, 2023, 12:01 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
Thank you for the clarification and insight. After reading your
explanation, I watched the clip again and suspect he was acting
throughout. His behavior was certainly unpleasant. As you said,
most of the lunches were basic common foods. Plus have you ever
seen a grown adult spit out food???
Apologies for making you watch it! 😂
#Post#: 79625--------------------------------------------------
Re: Sweet corn
By: Aleko Date: July 4, 2023, 12:48 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
[quote]What do rightpondia's call Jello?[/quote]
If we mix gelatine, sugar and fruit juice, optionally with
chunks of fruit, and chill it in a mould to make a wobbly
dessert, in Rightpondia that is jelly.
If we boil up fruit and put it through a strainer to get rid of
all the solids, then boil the juice again with sugar and
possibly some pectin until it has a semi-solid (i.e. wobbly)
consistency when cooled, then preserve it in jars, that is also
jelly. Occasionally this kind of jelly is eaten spread on bread,
but more often it is used as a relish with cheese or roast meat
or cold cuts.
If we boil up whole or chopped fruit with sugar until it has a
spreadable consistency when cooled, then preserve it in jars,
that is jam. (Unless the fruit in question is citrus - oranges
or lemons or limes - and includes shreds of the peel, in which
case it is marmalade.)
#Post#: 79627--------------------------------------------------
Re: Sweet corn
By: Rose Red Date: July 4, 2023, 5:15 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
[quote author=jpcher link=topic=2520.msg79621#msg79621
date=1688481692]
Do people actually put corn on pizza? I've never heard of that
before. It sounds rather off to me. Corn with a tomato sauce and
cheese? Not something that I'd like to try.
[/quote]
I had pizza with corn when visiting relatives in England. I
never heard of it before either but it was really good. The
pizza I had wasn't overloaded with tomato sauce and cheese which
may be why it taste better than it sounds.
As for the food in general, I like corn on the cob with butter
but sometimes I just want to taste the fresh corn without the
saltiness of the butter. Boiling corn with a few dashes of milk
makes it sweeter so I don't need butter that way.
One of my neighbors grow corn in their backyard. It's actually
fun seeing how tall they get by the week.
#Post#: 79634--------------------------------------------------
Re: Sweet corn
By: Aleko Date: July 6, 2023, 1:38 am
---------------------------------------------------------
Sweetcorn on pizza is a new one on me, too. I can’t recall ever
seeing that, and I’ve certainly never eaten or been offered a
pizza with sweetcorn on it; but there are all kinds of weird
pizzas sold in Britain these days - hoisin pork, ham and
pineapple, you name it - so nothing would surprise me.
Going back to the video: yes of course the whole thing was
absurd from the outset. Apart from anything else, neither was,
or could be, a meal made for an actual school. It’s all very
well to list a typical menu, but what counts is the quality of
the ingredients and the skill and care with which they are
cooked and handled. Good butcher’s sausages done just right, on
a bed of well-made mash, topped with home-made onion gravy, make
a noble dish; but the cheapest commercial sausages in Britain
are frankly awful, even before they have been oven-baked too
long and kept hot in their own fat. Add them to a wodge of
reconstituted mashed potato and pour over a commercial bottled
gravy consisting mainly of potato starch, colouring and
emulsifiers, and you can’t expect to get any joy (or any healthy
nutrition) out of that.
Same with apple crumble and custard, which can be yummy in a
simple undemanding way but can also be grim. At my school (n.b.
this was nearly 60 years ago so at least the dinners were cooked
daily on the premises, which isn’t always so today - many
British schools have no real kitchens, only somewhere to heat up
bought-in food) the cooks poached the apples in too much water
(without any cloves - boo!) so the fruit base made all except
the top of the crumble watery. And they made up the custard
mid-morning, so that by dinnertime it had developed a leathery
skin on top. Not nice. At all.
*****************************************************
DIR Next Page