The Guardian today has a small editorial piece 'in praise of... vegetarianism', it was short and succinct. Over the next few years, I expect that amount of column inches to expand, exponentially.
Over the years, we've seen veggies treated like 2nd class citizens in a number of eating places: restaurants have laughably pathetic vegetarian options, gastro pubs, while having moved away from the inconclusive slop of 'vegetable lasagne' seem to think that all vegetarians eat goats cheese or pasta. And don't get me started on cafes and diners; I just get the impression that these people are failing to take advantage of nearly 10% of the population and feel that a cheese sandwich or a bacon bag of crisps is a suitable alternative. While takeaways are an anathema - with the exception of 'Indian' takeaways, the range of options is pathetic: Pizza parlours offer three, maybe four veggie options; you can have a pitta bread stuffed with salad at a Kebab House, or maybe you'd like stir-fried vegetables at the local Chinese.
In fact, Chinese takeaways are possibly the worst for many reasons. Considering many Chinese are Buddhists and that alternatives to meat was something the Chinese were at the forefront with - tofu, you would think that Chinese living and working in the UK would actually have some grasp of vegetarianism, but to most it is a complete enigma. Like with many other eateries, the vegetarian is almost treated like an afterthought or even a slightly eccentric freak - at my local takeaway you can get included on the vegetarian menu the following: prawn crackers, spring rolls (no explanation as to what is in them), mixed vegetables in oyster sauce, and a couple of other dubious entries with fishy overtones. Recently, I was disgusted to have bought a 'Vegetarian Singapore Chow Mein' and found shrimp in it. I took it back and the Chinese serving assistant said, "shrimp isn't meat" and, without wishing to sound xenophobic, you try explaining to someone whose English is basic that shrimp is meat.
I have found a couple of Chinese restaurants, as opposed to takeaways, that have excellent Cantonese menus, an area of China where there are a lot of vegetarians, and it is heartwarming to see that some areas of catering is beginning to recognise vegetarians.
Earlier, I referred to Indian as 'Indian'. I wasn't being clever, I was stating something of a fact. Have any of you actually eaten real Indian food? I don't mean the generic crap they dish up in your local 'Indian' restaurant, I'm talking about food that is both exotic and vibrantly exciting and, more importantly, is cooked in a traditional way and is predominantly aimed at your actual Asian and Indian populations. Back in 1999, there was an article in The Guardian about Indian restaurants and the amazing fact that came out of it was that 92% of Indian restaurants are run by either Bengalis, Bangladeshis or Pakistanis and only 8% of Indian restaurants were owned and run by Indian nationals or the children of. According to my friend, Mr Patel - a Gujarati - even that 8% was misleading, because a lot of Indian owners employed Bangladeshis to run their businesses.
Over the last ten years we have seen a slew of new restaurants opening - Indian by name, but offering very little that would be dished up in an Indian town or city. These new restaurants are offering Nepalese, Bangladeshi, Punjabi and even Mongolian cuisine, but with the exception of the last two, the food is almost as bland as anything cooked by a Bengali. The problem is, according to my mate Mr Patel, that when Indian restaurants first opened in the UK in the 1960s, they actually did offer the British public something a little different and while the Brits embraced the food, they found some of it a little too spicy or hot and eventually most Indian restaurants modified their menus and their recipes. Over the years, with profit margins immensely important and turnover also vital, Indian restaurants developed 'the sauce' - a generic gravy that added to meat or vegetables and a few extra spices basically covered every curry on the menu. The 'sauce' was a bland combination that could be added to either with hot spices or could be even more adulterated by the addition of cream to make it even more palatable for Brits. Don't get me wrong, while Mr Patel sneers at this 'fast food' method employed in almost every single Indian restaurant or derivative in the UK, it can't be that bad because Indian restaurants are busy most nights and that specific cuisine has become the most popular in the UK. I personally can't understand why, but perhaps I'm just the food snob I've always accused myself of being.
What I've been trying to illustrate with the generic sauce story is that if you're a vegetarian in an Indian restaurant, you might expect to get preferential treatment, as over 50% of the population of India is vegetarian. But that isn't the case; yes, we get a far wider variety and choice on an Indian menu, but it all tastes the same. If you're lucky you might get some fresh vegetables included in a curry, occasionally, I've found potato, green pepper, onion and mushrooms in the food, but usually it is uniformly chopped frozen vegetables - pea, corn, green beans and carrots - the kind you buy in Iceland.
Just occasionally, you'll find a Punjabi restaurant with something a little different, a little closer to actual Indian cooking, but in general just about every vegetarian section on an Indian menu is either restricted to side dishes or you get the offer of the meat curry without the meat... It makes my blood boil!
In recent years, there has been a number of real Indian restaurants opening, and when I say 'real' I mean as real as physically possible. Yes, I can travel to Leicester or West London and sample real authentic cuisine, cooked by nationals for fellow nationals, but these are there because they have a local market - no one in smaller towns are going to take the risk of alienating 90% of the population because they don't offer a Chicken Bhuna or Jalfrezi. The brilliance of these real Indian restaurants is that it becomes a real adventure in food discovery, because most people would walk into one of these establishments and be completely confused by the array of interesting and unusual sounding dishes. It is promising, and there is even a takeaway run by Indians that has opened nearby. I love it, but I half expect it to either close or change because the food they offer actually tastes of things. plus, they have a takeaway menu that is dominated by vegetarian options.
[Sidebar: Chicken Tikka Massalla didn't exist in India and the sub-continent. It was invented in Bradford in 1969 by an intrepid Pakistani cook at, what was, one of the few Indian restaurants in the UK at the time. A regular customer came in to have a curry and ordered a Chicken Tikka and was dismayed when it arrived at his table as a lump of red-coloured chicken on a bed of salad. He sent it back saying he expected a curry like the others he had there. The chef took a tin of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup and mixed it with a selection of Tikka spices and invented what is now the UK's national dish - however apocryphal this story might be, I'm inclined to believe it.]
The bottom line is that it takes an enormous amount of space to produce meat to sustain the country, yet it takes a miniscule amount of space to feed the same amount of people the meat would feed with vegetables. Who cares? Well, we should, because in the next 100 years most carbon based fuels will have been exhausted or will be so expensive that only the elite will travel; this means that your fine beans from Kenya and your Peruvian asparagus, as well as your New Zealand lamb and Argentinian beef will find it increasingly difficult to ship their foods to other countries quickly. Ultimately as fuel becomes more and more expensive, these foods will be priced out of being competitive to bring over any more - alternatives will have to be found, or we'll have to either become more seasonal again or we'll have to develop ways of efficiently growing crops out of season. Eventually, more and more space will have to be turned over to agriculture, keeping sheep, pigs and cows will become too expensive and if people want to eat meat, they may well find they're eating manufactured or grown meat by 2107. Imagine it, huge vats of cloned rump steak, chemically altered so that all the bad things in meat are elimated. No fat, no gristle, just a nice steak grown in a petrie dish - yum yum!
Vegetarianism might be classed as a lot of things by the ignorant, but at least I feel as though I've made a contribution. Yes, I'm as guilty as others of leaving a carbon footprint; I love green beans, but they don't grow all year round and the African option is bought. I'll buy other vegetables that have travelled a distance, but I'll also look for locally grown produce and while it is more expensive, I think it tastes better and surely that is why it is being down, to make the consumer think that local is also more healthy as well as better for the planet.
The biggest problem I see at the moment is the growing number of kids who eat nothing but junk food based around the beef that is causing the most environmental damage. Personally, I'd like to see these people all die of nasty heart diseases and obesity, so that it sends a message out that eating healthy is the key to a healthy future, but I also know that a huge amount of people in this country and all over the world can only ever see as far as the end of their collective noses and if you work hard or are stressed out, it is far easier to go to MacDs or Burger King and blow £20 on some processed shit than it is to spend £5 cooking a healthy vegetable chili or curry for the whole family and it will take a lot of major global events to start changing the majority's opinions.
There are more and more vegetarians arriving every day and yet the rest of the world refuses to accept that this growing army of lentil and vegetable fanatics is actually the future of mankind.
1 comment:
Good words.
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