Jellied eels, shepherd’s pie, cornish pasties, Yorkshire pudding, rhubarb crumble and gooseberry fool are all dishes the British are familiar with.  Unfortunately they have not gone down as well metaphorically or physically with visitors to our Isles.  That’s why it is great to hear of a new book ‘Language on a Plate’.  Written by Renata Beltrami and Silvia Mazzola, two Italian cooks who have set out to challenge the common perception of English food.

Having lived in Britain for years and endured jokes aplenty from relatives and friends about the state of English food they have served up a book that is part recipe book and part guide to the national culture and language.  Perhaps this book will do what other culinary literary classics like ‘Like water for Chocolate’ did for Mexican food. 

As the Milanese authors put themselves in the preface “Perhaps it’s about time we stopped complaining about bland vegetables, strange mixes of flavours and unknown ingredients, by learning to eat in English, we will better understand the language and the people and we’ll handle restaurants and supermarkets more easily”.

Bravo las italianas!  I’ll be interested to see how the book is devoured.  I can’t help being remined of the comment by Paul West in ‘A Year in the Merde’ about how the French considered all English food to be boiled.  ‘They’ve got it all wrong.  We microwave everything now.’

Language on a Plate is published by Mursia.