COLUMN: The British and the cooked

From Daniel Fienberg's, "The Fien Print: London Cast," Fall '98 From Daniel Fienberg's, "The Fien Print: London Cast," Fall '98In The Raw and the Cooked, noted social thinker Claude Levi-Strauss (with an assist from not-noted thinkers The Fine Young Cannibals) deconstructed the lives of a "primitive" society based on their myths and rituals. That's what I hear, at least. Somehow, though, I suspect that England was that primitive society, and what I ate for dinner last night, well, I certainly hope that most of it was cooked. For me, at least, budget eating in London conjures up only one image: little children marching in matching tunics to the front of a line, being handed plates of slop and later having the unmitigated gall to ask for more. We haven't fallen that far. We're somewhere in between the orphanage and peas, pudding and saveloys. Even though Guinness is, apparently, good for you, people cannot live on beer alone. No matter how hard we've tried, there always seems to be something missing. Many of the traditional student refuges have been undermined by pride, because who wants to be going to McDonald's or Burger King in England? And so we've had to find other avenues toward sustenance. What, Claude Levi-Strauss would want to know, can we learn about the British people from their food? A folklore minor friend suggested to me once that the British are clearly less evolved than Americans, because everything that our culture holds dear has developed and advanced out of British culture. And while the NBC adaptation of the classic BBC sitcom Men Behaving Badly may not be a good example, there may be some logic to this. Which brings me back to last night's dinner. Beans, beans, everywhere, and various and sundry meat products floating in tomato sauce. The makers of HP's "All Day Breakfast" didn't feel like giving a nod to Coleridge, but they may as well have. Now I don't know what the "primordial soup" with its floating strands of future life looked like, but I half expected one of the pieces of bacon on my plate to crawl to the edge, begin breathing oxygen and a half hour later start writing my 18th Century Novel final paper. At least that's what I hoped that it would do. Certainly I am still waiting for British food to take solid form and recognizable shape. The devotion to beans is a major part of that. Baked (or "jacket") potatoes? Sure, let's throw some beans there. Toast? Beans go well with that as well. Breakfast? Lunch? Dinner? Any meal is an excuse for beans. And at any ethnic buffet in the city, beans are given a place of honor alongside the Tandoori or the Hunan. And anything can go into a can of beans as well. Further proof that the British haven't exactly developed dishes. They are still at the culinary level of the three-year-old who takes his dinner and pushes everything on his dish into a big messy pile, looks on contentedly and then throws the mess onto the wall, with a splat. And much as that child looks on at his handiwork with a contented gurgle, the British don't seem to notice that a can which contains beans, streaky bacon, pallid sausage, little meatballs with chopped egg at the centre, mushrooms and tomato sauce is not a meal. It's the missing link between inhaling plankton through gills and sitting down for finely prepared French, Italian, Spanish or otherwise civilized meal. Not that the rest of the British Isles have figured out how to provide more suitable cheap food. The Scottish, for example, eat haggis. And blood pudding. And while neither dish is quiet so bad as Saturday Night Live skits would like you to believe, they are stuffed stomach and, well, blood pudding. And yet somehow this kind of primal carnivorous delicacy is a fine match with the fact that every Scot can be seen on the weekends running around the highlands, bagpipes in hand, wearing a kilt and who knows what underneath. Or so I've been led to believe. And the Irish, well, there's something very devious about a people who try so hard to be nice to everybody. You realize the catch when you sit down to a breakfast which consists of everything from my HP can, only fresh, wonderfully tasty and fried. Very fried. Including the bread. And a tomato. Your recommended monthly allowance of fat in one meal. Oh yes, the Irish kill with their kindness. But not to forget Bangers and Mash. Uh-huh. That's food, not the title of AC/DC's comeback album. In an effort to avoid anything that might give you Mad Cow Disease (which cannot be contracted through casual contact or kissing, unless you happen to be kissing, well, a mad cow), Bangers and Mash is often the quickest way to a filling, cheap meal. Further proof that the British cook like Jackson Pollack painted, this dish consists of long sausages (the Bangers, which tend to recall props from Boogie Nights) basically hidden in a pile of mashed potatoes (presumably the Mash), onions, peas and whatever else happens to be lying around the pub. Naturally, Bangers and Mash comes in a can as well to give your meal that pleasing "Splut" sound as it hits your bowl. I'll leave Levi-Strauss to explain that away. I'm sure, however, that it's Freudian. Off to lunch. Since fish and chips is too mundane, I think I hear some kidney pie calling my name. In a can.