Foreign food

About 90% of our main meals are Asian based. Just how it has turned out because I find Asian dishes easier to make, tastier and healthy. Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese, Indian and Malaysian mostly. Sometimes I do European, especially Italian and Spanish. However, you can’t beat the British, Australians and French for desserts. Superb.

Sorry, was laughing at greydusters description.

Me too, I laughed out loud at *Greydusters) description of the Quatermass dumpling experience.

With a hat on... 🤠

I remember as a child being invited to lunch with ( i think they were Turkish family) in our village.
I felt so awkward because they ate with their hands and I had been brought up to use a knife and fork very correctly.
Food was delicious but I felt as if I was doing something wrong, what a shame.

henetha

The first time I ever attempted to cook curry my then husband liked it but said he would rather have potatoes than rice with it. So for years we had curry with mashed potatoes. It's quite nice actually.

Try him on a potato curry (aloo curry). Easy to make and very filling and tasty.

My uncle was posted to the Far East when I was a kid (1950s). We were working class Londoners and ate standard post-war British food, but when Uncle Charlie came home on leave he cooked us whichever delicacy he'd taken to abroad - curry (made with a whole tin of Rajah Hot Madras powder) was one, and I recall watching the family's horrified, disbelieving faces as they took the first bite, spat it out and rushed to the tap for cold water. But now the British have got over chillies, we've gone the other way and seem to love out-hotting each other. The latest ultra-spicy crisps are a good example. You're just a pathetic wimp if you can't cram them into your poor mouth and howl with glee! A nation of weirdos, or what?

I am not very adventurous with food at all, if I have a lasagne or spaghetti Bolognese, I think I’ve really been adventurous 😉
And believe it or not, I have never had a pizza or a kebab nor would I want either of those…..

It certainly wasn’t funny cleaning it up😩😁!

I like the sound of that and will look online for a recipe, Primrose. But my husband is no longer around. Don't feel bad , you weren't to know.
I didn't realise aloo is potatoes.
Thanks Primrose.

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Vesta beef risotto was considered a treat by my family back in the 60s. I loved it, but it is no longer available, not even on Amazon. In the early 70s a group of us used to go for a three course lunch at a local Chinese restaurant. It was great food and wonderful value. After I moved away I read an article in the local paper saying the restaurant owners had been caught serving cat instead of chicken.

Dad (Cintrano) was Italian and Mom was French. So the Italian paternal side was considered "foreign cuisine" ..

Nothing like a home made baked in the oven Pasta ..

Also Asian Cuisine, especially Japanese & Chinese & Thai. Quite an awesome triologie ( not at the same time ). Just our favourites ..

Spanish came when I did "The Santiago Camino" - last year of Secondary / High School ..

Flippinheck

Vesta beef risotto was considered a treat by my family back in the 60s. I loved it, but it is no longer available, not even on Amazon. In the early 70s a group of us used to go for a three course lunch at a local Chinese restaurant. It was great food and wonderful value. After I moved away I read an article in the local paper saying the restaurant owners had been caught serving cat instead of chicken.

Re that last part - I once covered a court case for the local paper in which a restaurant owner in one of our local coastal towns has been paying local teenagers to shoot seagulls, which he then passed off as chicken!

Oh yes - David Dimbleby.

1950s…my mother made curry. Cut up leftover Sunday roast. Good spoonful of curry powder. Onion, apple and sultanas ?
We though it wonderfully foreign !

Flippinheck

Vesta beef risotto was considered a treat by my family back in the 60s. I loved it, but it is no longer available, not even on Amazon. In the early 70s a group of us used to go for a three course lunch at a local Chinese restaurant. It was great food and wonderful value. After I moved away I read an article in the local paper saying the restaurant owners had been caught serving cat instead of chicken.

One of the Chinese take-away places where I lived was closed down for serving cat instead of chicken! We ate from there quite often and I'd heard rumours about stray cats but thought it was all fantasy

My mother would not have "foreign food" in the house. She did not like it but she had never tasted any!

Mine was the same! I once made some lovely spicy bread pudding and she wouldn't touch it - because it has spices in. I tried to explain that the spices weren't hot, just aromatic and warm but she wasn't having any of it.

We lived in the Far East for over 3 years and my DF loved curries and Chinese food. He would quite happily settle down for a nosh in the Chinese street market. My mother would happily starve rather than eat anything she couldn't immediately recognise. I often thought that he missed out on a lot of things he liked because my mother was so determined to never try anything new at all. She wouldn't even try any of the Vesta meals we all bought and ate as teenagers.

My parents had lived in France, so much of our food was as French as my mother could make it. The difficulty was that then (1940s and 50s) it was difficult to find the ingredients, at least where we lived. My mother grew her own garlic - we couldn’t buy it then. She also made Spaghetti Bolognaise

When I was at university in the late 50s/early 60s we had a very cheap Chinese lunch most days. Heaven knows what was in it, but it tasted good.

tanith

Vesta prawn curry was my first ‘foreign’ meal I loved it it was my treat. Don’t think my parents tried foreign food.

Me too, loved it.
My early experience of Italian (!) food was tinned spaghetti , in a very pale orange sauce. Sprinkled with some ready- grated parmesan (similar to sawdust) from a little cardboard tub.

I didn’t try rice as anything but a baked milk pudding until I was 19 and left home. My then boyfriend’s mother got a Vesta curry. My own mother’s idea of curry was either a shake of curry powder stirred into a casserole, served with mashed potato, or a tin of Heinz Mulligatawny soup with sliced white bread. My father wouldn’t have foreign food in the house, absolutely no pizza or pasta, we ate roasts, chops, liver and bacon, sausages, shepherd’s pie, or boiled fish, everything served with potatoes and peas. They got a fridge in about 1965, with an ice compartment just big enough for a bag of peas and a block of Neapolitan ice cream. Before then it was tinned processed peas. I didn’t eat any other cooked vegetables as a child, but plenty of fruit, oh and cheese and tomato sandwiches with salad cream.

We didn't have 'foreign' food as children, unless you count Irish as my parents were Irish. Now we love to try different dishes. My husband had this in Venice a few weeks ago. He said it was delicious.

One of my schoolfriends was Japanese and at her birthday party - 13 I would imagine - her Mum did a Japanese spread. It was delicious and she made the prawn crackers. To this day I've nver tasted a prawn cracker as delicious.

And I'll join you all on the Vesta cripsy noodles outing please. The excitement of them popping into life in the frying pan!

Deedaa

My grandmother used to dine at Veeraswamy's (sp?) Indian restaurant in London before the war, but my mother always treated that as a strange aberration. In the 60s my mother got quite daring and cooked spaghetti (in the long blue paper packets) with what she called a Bolognese sauce - actually minced beef and onion, with a squeeze of tomato puree because she didn't like tomatoes. We got a bit more adventurous with Vesta meals, but then I met my husband to be and his Italian family and found out about real food. Freshly made Ravioli bought from the deli, proper Italian Salami instead of the Danish stuff, and of course Panettone at Christmas when most people had never heard of it.

I was taken to Veerswamy’s in London by my in-laws as a newlywed in the 60s. It was eyewateringly expensive but my in-laws were friendly with the owners, otherwise I doubt we would have afforded it. It was my very first taste of anything exotic (my mother was a very basic cook) and I loved it! I have loved Indian food ever since.