The British National Dish is Not British

The favourite national dish of the British is Chicken Tikka Marsala which is a delicious medium hot Indian dish. The only problem is that it is not a recognised original dish back in India. The general colour of the dish ranges from bright orange to lurid red and when this dish was cooked in Britain and then flown over to India for perusal by indigenous Indian chefs they were perplexed by the garish concoction and worse yet, they had never heard of this dish. They consulted their recipes, grandmothers were referred to and it was agreed that this hybrid was essentially a recipe that whilst Indian in intent and in spice terms was something that had not originated on the Indian sub-continent.

One thing that all Brits would probably agree on though is that Curry answered the need to enliven our cuisine. 21st Century Britain is now a place where one can find all the haute cuisine that a gourmand might demand but for the John and Jane Brits there is no substitute to the weekend ritual of a curry washed down with lager down at the local curry house . The more thuggish, chavs would probably top off their weekend outing by picking a fight with someone in the taxi line. And end it with a technicolour yawn whilst driving the porcelain bus. [Translation puking it all up in the toilet]. Here's a link Safa in Camberwell where I used to live that serves decent Indian food including Salmon Tikka which is not strictly Indian either but it works: http://www.toptable.co.uk/details.cfm/qs/rid%7C2009/spos%7C7


Luckily for me I am now working in Curry Hill [Murray Hill 30's on Madison] which is a couple of blocks from the area of Lexington which is known for Indian restaurants and spice shops so I should be able to get my fix of super hot authentic food on a regular basis. Even more lucky for me is that I am only 20 blocks away in Queens from the Jackson Heights district which is the largest Indian/Pakistani community in NY and therefore another source of excellent curry.

So with all this talk of curry you are wondering what happened to our other national dish? Fish and chips? Well, ponder this; Fish and Chips were originally two entirely different dishes yep Fish [Battered and deep fried] and Chips [potatoes also deep fried]. The fish part was apparently originally a Jewish recipe brought to England by immigrants to London's East End and the Chips was originally a dish created by the French and then popularised in the North of Britain, [quite likely to be Lancashire]. No one knows who brought the two dishes together but it is reckoned that this did not occur until around 1860. So our national dish is actually French and Jewish and lets not forget that the humble potato is also an import from South America which was brought back to our shores by Sir Walter Raleigh. If you want more check out this link: http://www.niagara.co.uk/fish_and_chips.htm

Even our most popular beer, lager, was invented by either the Bavarians or the Bohemia Czechs. No you can't have a f#$king link, do your own research.