The changing world of food

I’m cooking fresh tuna today for dinner. I can’t help being struck by the change in the culinary scene since I’ve been cooking.

For us,  real tuna still comes out of tins. It wasn’t until this century that you could even buy tuna in any other way. But today we're having the other sort for a change.

The north of England tends to be a bit of a backwater when it comes to new food items reaching us. I remember my stepbrother had some friends move from Manchester into a nearby Cumbrian village. They couldn’t believe how difficult it was to locate peppers & aubergines. I remember having such difficulty in Manchester in the late 1960s/early 1970s but this was the 1980s. They obviously hadn’t located the right shops because I hadn’t any difficulty in those days when we lived in Cumbria.

I was reminded of this as I roasted & skinned some red & yellow peppers to make a sort of side salad/salsa to accompany the tuna we’re having later today.

Even now it is very difficult to find some things. Recipes blithely advise you to get fresh figs – I think I’ve only seen them once here – or passion fruit – a similar number of times.

But all this exotica wouldn’t have been found anywhere in this country in my youth. Even now I await to see the arrival of plantains for example.

The discovery of an Asian foodshop in Lancaster has revolutionised our cooking. At last we can add item things like Shaoxing wine (rather than dry sherry), chilli bean sauce, dried shrimp paste, mirin etc. to our stir-fries.

Other less exotic items have become so much more available as new production methods have appeared. So fish farming has made salmon an affordable delight whereas in my youth you had to be very rich or be an angler. Game was the same. Seasons have gone out. Now strawberries, asparagus & new potatoes are for sale all year round, although British in season do tend to have the best flavour.

I revel in the range & variety on offer. I love to try new tastes, new experiences.