Things I Miss about England

Posted on 2005/05/21 05:01:30 (May 2005) by john.

More of an imaginary shopping list than an article.

Every now and again whilst in Japan I get the odd twinge for something or other I miss about England - particularly things I want to eat. I thought therefore it might be prudent to construct a list of them, in no particular order, and for no particular reason.

Dairy products. Perhaps because it is (in parts) a hot country, or perhaps because milk is not such a traditional foodstuff here in Japan, they seem to apply some kind of UHT process to it which makes it, on the whole, rather unpleasant. This somehow manages to taint butter and cheese as well - I have tried several different types of butter since being here, and they've all been, on the whole, not particularly nice. Had I bought this kind of butter in England I would have taken it back to the shop and complained it was off. It is nigh-on impossible to get hold of decent cheese here in Japan - again you can't blame them, it isn't really an important part of their traditional diet or culture. Supermarkets carry a very limited range in general, and a lot of it is sort of plasticky imitations of international cheese. Most Japanese cheeses tend to be of the "processed" variety, and are, consequently, rather yucky.

Just some proper standard English cheddar would be fantastic at this point... Or perhaps a spot of emmental, or some nice mozarella or halloumi (mmmmm...), or some of that Twineham Grange Parmesan - just eaten rather guility "as is". Or Yarg perhaps? Or Y Fenni...? I had developed something of a fondness for Somerset Brie of late. Or what about Wigmore - that little goldmine of great cheeses located, surprisingly, not too far from Reading, of all places.

Toast. Japanese sliced bread, as used for toast, is very thick and I'm still struggling to get used to it. It isn't just the thickness - the taste is different too, maybe different flour, a different baking process and so on. Even toasters seem to be different here in Japan. I crave standard English thin sliced bread, with some proper butter (or any other English spread that doesn't have that suspicious odour of Japanese butter). Oh and some Marmite. Yes, definitely Marmite - why did I not bring this with me? I think I gave away an almost full jar when I moved out of my flat in England. Marmite would help tremendously - it could well help to mask that nasty Japanese butter.

Bread. Not just English toast, but bread in general - a nice crusty English split tin loaf, even a bit of french stick, or some of that delicious Italian bread Chie used to get from the Italian delicatessen near where she used to work. I

Crumpets. Oh yes, crumpets for breakfast, or aftternoon tea (mmmmm proper English tea!) - or perhaps English muffins, or bagels... with Marmite on. Mmmmmm.... Marmite.

A full English breakfast. In my life I need clear divisions. Breakfast should resemble breakfast, not lunch or dinner. As much as I like miso soup and rice, I don't really want these things for breakfast - at least not every day. Sausages - there isn't much chance of getting English sausages here, and not a cat in hell's chance of getting vegetarian sausages. Hashed browns - maybe, I have had them in izakayas here so they might be worth looking out for in the supermarket (although I bet the Japanese ones are made with lard, fish, fish and lard). Baked beans - how I would love some baked beans now. Mushrooms - they're all generally Japanese style here, it is hard to get the bog standard field or chesnut mushrooms here, and if you did they'd be in the "exotic food" section and probably cost a stupid amount. Although I'm a big fan of Shiitake, Shimeji, Enoki etc, for a full english breakfast you can't go messing about with all that fancy crap - you need straightforward, boring, tasteless English mushrooms. Of course, in the big cities I could probably find an English pub or something doing a full English breakfast, but there'd be sod all chance of finding a vegetarian version.

Sherbert lemons. There is probably something psychological in this - some kind of comfort food, reminds me of my childhood, etc, etc.

Pasta. The Japanese are into their Italian food, so there are a fair amount of Italian restaurants around (generally Japanese style Italian, but still recognisable). The trouble is, as always, they seem to want to put "stealth meat" in just about everything. Just the other day at an Italian restaurant I ordered pasta in a "tomato and garlic" sauce, as it was described on the menu. This sounded pretty safe, but just to make absolutely sure we enquired with the waitress, who came back five minutes later and announced it had bacon in it. Sorry love, but what you've got there is "tomato, bacon and garlic" sauce. Not "tomato and garlic". Can you see the subtle difference? It seems odd to advertise the garlic - such a background ingredient in Italian cooking - and yet totally skip over the bacon - surely a major selling point to meat eaters...? It's a bit like calling bolognese "tomato and salt" sauce or something.

Japanese supermarkets are relatively well stocked in terms of pasta itself (although I'm sure Lorenzo would have something wonderfully derogatory to say about some of the brands on offer), which isn't bad... I guess it is the sauces which are the problem though. Pretty much no chance of finding any worthwhile pasta sauces in a jar. Fair enough, this ought to be a good opportunity to eschew this lazy approach to cooking, and make all the sauces myself.... but the trouble is everything is different, so any recipe I had used before in England I have to re-invent from scratch. A particularly trying example of this is a basic white sauce. When I make this in England it is like clockwork now - melt some butter, stir in a little cornflour, and then gradually add milk. In Japan though even these three most basic of ingredients are all different - butter and milk, as already noted, are a bit pongy and unpleasant, and the fat content in butter seems quite different so when you use it in cooking it reacts very differently to how you would expect. The cornflour stuff I used - apparently not strictly cornflour but some sort of yam extract (?) used for thickening behaved very differently. So evidently I ended up with a white sauce which was really lumpy and quite embarassing... Then of course to make it into a cheese sauce requires, obviously, cheese. At great lengths (OK we went to two supermarkets but still this took a while) I managed to find some "Australian Cheddar" - this was just about edible, but naturally it didn't melt in quite the same way as cheese back home etc etc etc.... I could go on, but I'm sure you're already finding it quite dreary. In short, cooking in Japan is like learning to cook again from scratch - you can't take for granted how any of the ingredients will behave. In a way this is quite interesting and exciting I suppose.... but when cooking is a means to an end - I just want some stodgy comfort food to cure my home sickness - this kind of scientific voyage of discovery is not as fun as it should be.

Potatoes. Particularly roast potatoes. This has been one minor success story actually. The odds were really stacked against me - basically in Japan people don't really have ovens - the best you can usually hope for is a combined microwave/oven. Again, the raw ingredients are different - I like to par-boil potatoes before roasting them, as this makes the process as a whole quicker, and it helps to get them crispy on the outside. However, the amount of time you par-boil for is quite critical - overdo it and you'll be roasting little piles of mush. In England I would adjust the amount of time I par-boil for slightly depending on the variety of potato. In Japan of course I don't really have a clue what potato I was using. So it just required constant prodding with a fork, but I think I got it more or less right. As for the actual roasting, well, I decided to give the microwave/oven thing ago. The next obstacle was finding a roasting tin - Japanese kitchens don't really have any need for these generally. What I found made a very good substitute was a sukiyaki pan (skuiyaki being some sort of meat and soy sauce dish or something). Given the awakwardness of preheating this in the microwave/oven, I came up with something of an insight, and chose instead to heat it up on the gas hob first instead. When the potatoes were ready I put them into the sukiyaki whilst it was still on the hob, ensuring therefore the oil was nice and hot as the potatoes made contact. From there I bunged the whole lot into the oven (surprisingly difficult without proper oven gloves / handles / etc) and cooked for about 45 minutes. They came out pretty well, if I do say so myself.

I guess in summary this partly a case of "You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone", but also this is probably a knee jerk reaction to the trials and tribulations of adjusting to another culture. I guess it is natural to crave the foods from your homeland as a sort of comfort blanket, when in this kind of situation.

Two things...

1. You're only missing food. You can get used to that. I still miss my diet of sausages in bread.

2. The list isn't actually all that long. You have managed to note all the core foodstuffs of northern europe, though. Look through the list again: bread, butter, cheese, milk and potatoes. It's the sorts of things Kate and I pop around the local shops for.

If you started missing the larger louts or the fact that you were a violence magnet in Reading, then there's cause for worry! ;-)

*Italian Note: Why are you missing anything in Britain, it's all crappa anyway! '-)*

Posted by Rob Lang at 2005/05/23 09:46:09.

Maybe you need a food parcel from the homeland!

Posted by Mad Mumsie at 2005/05/23 11:46:07.

I'll pop to Greens at lunchtime for you John and pick up some stuff P) You'll like that !

Posted by Kev at 2005/05/23 24:15:49.

I'm now totally depressed over John's article! John, I would send you a cow..theres alot around here...btw im going to scotland for a few weeks during summer college break so i'll probably miss yellow hot dog mustard and Dr.Pepper colas stuff that I simply take for granted most of the time...

Posted by Jeff at 2005/05/23 18:50:12.

Jeff, I assume you mean for milking and the creation of butter, cheese and such.... do you think FedEx would deliver next day before 10am?

Posted by Kev at 2005/05/23 19:00:09.

When in Rome, do as the Romans do...

I presume the 'Scot's gift to the world' is OK in your neck of the woods as you didn't mention missing it.... and wot about the beer?

BTW - Make sure you let them know how much better the things you mentiond are in the UK!

...but in a nutshell, wots better, UK or Japan?

Posted by Karl at 2005/05/24 01:24:48.

Karl - you've got a point. Beer (of the lagery variety) is great, and whisky is plentiful. So I think I'll just about cope.

Posted by John at 2005/05/24 02:54:12.

Two large jars of marmite have just this minute arrived in the post from Tomoko-san - a friend of Chie's back in England. I think I am going to includer her in my will, god bless her.

Posted by John at 2005/05/24 03:47:40.

AHA!!! Food... As Mr. Lang said, it's all crappa anyways how can you miss anything english, apart from the spice girls and medina's?!?! (before I get flamed to death, I am joking!! I know that spice girls and not entirely english...)
Oh well I think Karl got it right anyways, do as the Romans, it helped me a lot, and in the end you want to dip yourself into the culture of the place, eating is the first part. You cannot even begin understanding the culture if you don't eat like them, trust me on this... It has to be said that a veggie in Japan is like a fish out of the water, but I am sure that you'll survive... :)
As for pasta, apart from some Barilla every now and then the general quality of what you can find in the supermarkets is rather crap (too much amid), but it does the job I guess... Anyways guys if you send a food pack to Mr.Hawkis remember to add WINE GUMMIES, he used to like them a lot!

Posted by Lox at 2005/05/31 06:50:14.

So "Japanese sage derby" would be a bit of a turn-off, then?

Posted by Jimmy at 2005/05/31 14:04:16.

I think that particular article of fermented curd is in fact fictitious... Although if it does in fact exist and I ever do find a bit, the comedy value will no doubt be tremendous.

Posted by John at 2005/06/01 04:43:19.

Well, you could make it, and export it to Europe !

Posted by Jimmy at 2005/06/01 08:47:28.

Yea - how hard can it be? Just Derby (Darby?) cheese, which is probably some sort of cheddar variant, plus some sage, and made in Japan... that ought to do it.

Posted by John at 2005/06/01 14:20:19.

Righty-ho. I've found a link to it, but can't post the URL here. Go to www.cheese.com, and type "sage" into the "Cheese Search" box. Interesting stuff ...

Posted by Jimmy at 2005/06/02 08:44:48.

Excellent Jimmy - cheese.com is a veritable goldmine! I particularly enjoyed the "strapline" (is this an appropriate use of this word?) for Cheddar - "The most widely purchased and eaten cheese in the world.". That's absolutely Monty Python through and through:

"Not much call for it? It's the single most popular cheese in the world!"

This claim has since been called into question on other websites, but I'm glad to see something as authoratitive as cheese.com sticking its neck out and proudly supporting this statement.

Posted by John at 2005/06/02 09:07:41.

Of course, if you had a load of wise men from the orient, and put them all in a big horse-race, *that* could be the "Japanese Sage Derby" too. Or someting.

Posted by Jimmy at 2005/06/06 10:22:35.

I empathise fully- I missed all this stuff when I first came to Japan last year. But it's all (nearly) available!!! (At least in Tokyo...) Heinz Baked Beans can be bought in National and Nissin supermarkets in Azabu Juban. Marmite is available in the numerous Tokyou Precce Supermarkets (along with Amy Vegeburgers...) Peacock supermarkets sell Waitrose products!!! Lots of places sell imported 'real' cheese. If you look at the more up-market bakeries you can find 'English' bread... a crusty tin (costs and arm and a leg though... no 80p Sainsbury's bloomers here...) For an authentic English hand-pumped ale, try Yona Yona (it's Japanese but taste and texture is like the best English ales) or Hobgoblin (various pubs in Tokyo.) I'm a vegetarian, so that's still a big problem in Japan. However, whenever I go back to Blighty I always bring back a shed-load of dried veggiebanger mix, nut-roast mix etc. And when supplies run low I just ask a UK mate to stick some in the post. As for mushrooms... I haven't solved that one yet. For a fried breakfast, tinned (imported)mushrooms would be the most authentic.

Posted by Damien at 2005/06/17 06:53:03.

... and on the subject of ovens- you can pick up an excellent toaster-oven for about 6000yen. But make sure you choose one with a temperature (NOT wattage!) control. They roast, bake (and toast) things very nicely.

Posted by Damien at 2005/06/17 07:00:37.

i hate the food in england

Posted by drew williamson at 2006/03/03 11:03:33.

You miss your good old porridge, you homeboy? Wait till you go back home to start missing real food, and this time round with a reason!
(the guy temporarily transferred to Heaven started missing the the cozy warmth of hell...)

Posted by shit_eating_gourmet at 2007/12/01 22:34:38.

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