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GREAT BRITISH FOOD?

In a year when even the most ambitious restaurateurs in America have shied away from new ideas and dubious trends in favour of recession-proof comfort food, one of the most buzzed-about restaurants in New York City is a brave newcomer called the Breslin. Headed by April Bloomfield, a chef who built a cult following at the Spotted Pig, the Breslin is backed by Ken Friedman, a reliably successful restaurateur, and situated in the hipster-magnet Ace Hotel. But if the location and cast involved guaranteed some anticipation, the menu is hardly an obvious home-run: Bloomfield, born and raised in Birmingham, England, has loaded it up with dishes such as beef-and-Stilton pie; Guinea hen terrine with piccalilli sauce; scrumpets with mint vinegar; bubble-and-squeak; and for breakfast a full English-style fry-up.

In her commitment to putting British food on the American radar, Bloomfield may be going farther than most chefs. But in the past couple of years, the cuisine has clearly been making inroads stateside. Scotch eggs and British-style savoury pies have become mainstays at stylish bars and restaurants from Portland to Manhattan. Welsh rarebit is slowly emerging as the hangover meal du jour at some American gastropubs and bistros. And some of the cuisine's more obscure dishes have turned up at places like Feast, a nose-to-tail restaurant in Houston, Texas, opened by a couple of Englishmen in 2008. Here diners can order specialities such as Bath chaps (cured, boiled and breaded pig’s cheeks served cold) and roasted pig snouts (see picture). Perhaps British food, in all its robust and ignominious glory, has truly arrived.

Now the owners of Canteen, a growing chainlet of British-cuisine restaurants in London, are seizing on this moment with "Great British Food" (Ebury Press), a cookbook that celebrates the joys of a once somewhat reviled tradition.

Even just a few years ago, a phrase like "great British food" would have signified something far different from Yorkshire pudding and Eton mess. It might have referred to London's burgeoning restaurant scene and its freshly minted celebrity chefs (Jamie Oliver, Gordon Ramsay, Nigella Lawson, et al), who were busily displacing bland traditional fare with something more cosmopolitan.

British cuisine tends toward heavy meat and starchy dishes that are prone to tasting leaden or dry or underseasoned. Yet the tradition has a terrific variety of soul-warming classics that cry out for proper treatment—and for clear instructions that show a new generation how to produce delicious results. Thanks in part to pioneering chefs and new cookbooks like Canteen's,  the term "great British food" can be taken at face value. It refers to a repertoire of hearty, flavourful foods: rich duck-and-chestnut pie; juicy roast lamb; venison-and-ale stew; vibrant, dried-fruit-spiked Coronation chicken; and desserts of decadent rhubarb trifles, treacle tarts and warm crumbles laden with apples and berries and sweet custard.

At the four Canteen restaurants that have opened in London since 2005, Cass Titcombe, the head chef, and his partners have not just been resurrecting the classics; they've been polishing them up. Using the finest local produce, they have subjected each hearty dish to the 21st-century gourmet treatment, with fresh herbs and spices, homemade condiments, sustainably raised meats and seafood, and a seasonally conscientious approach. Still, their dishes remain unapologetically traditional.

"Great British Food" is a fine introduction to mastering the cuisine at home. It's a beautiful and stylishly austere volume with an appealing layout and easy to follow instructions. (One small quibble: the authors rarely specify whether to put a pan over low, medium or high heat.) This book promises to satisfy all kinds of cravings and needs, from a late-night snack (the lusciously melty, beer-spiked, grilled-cheese Welsh rarebit) to a 15-minute weeknight supper of chargrilled pork chops, to a dinner-party feast of leg of lamb with roasted potatoes and mint sauce.

The American comedian Jackie Mason once accused England of being "the only country in the world where the food is more dangerous than the sex." Now, for better or worse, sex has been restored to its rightful place

"Great British Food" (Ebury Press), out now

 ~ SALMA ABDELNOUR

Picture Credit: edsel (via Flickr)