Cathy Dobbs: Squeamish Brits prefer Easter our way
In Greece, they’ve spent the last couple of weeks slaughtering lambs and hanging them from trees, ready for their Easter feasting.
Over there, a dead lamb hanging outside your house is a sign that you are going to have a right knees-up for Easter – in the UK it would be a sign that you were off your rocker.
We all know that our neighbours would be ringing the RSPCA if we started hanging dead animals from our trees. We are a bit more squeamish and prefer to skip all the yucky stuff and get to the best part – where the lamb is on a plate covered in gravy and mint sauce.
I’ve got a theory that TV chefs in the UK are putting a lot of us off cooking. Their dishes are aspirational, but totally unrealistic.
Take a recipe from Matt Tebbutt on BBC’s Saturday Kitchen – Seafood and Sobrasada Paella. What the dickens is Sobrasada, I hear you ask. Oh, how uncultured you are! Of course, it’s a raw, cured sausage from the Balearic Islands.
The recipe also includes white fish bones, langoustines and cuttlefish which, I’m sure, most of us would struggle to find at our local supermarket. Also, once you’ve bought the other 21 ingredients, which include brandy, white wine, prawns and mussels you will be looking at a shopping bill that could bring on palpitations.
A friend has married into a Greek family and so is spending the Easter holidays soaking up the sunshine and feasting on lots of lamb.
They are building a home over in Greece and my friend has been shocked by the process there. You see, in Greece, you get planning permission to build a two-bedroom house, you instruct the builder accordingly and next thing you know there is a third bedroom attached to your property. What’s the problem? Everyone does it, says the builder. You just brick up the extra bedroom so the surveyor doesn’t see it – once he’s satisfied you knock down the temporary wall.
Anyway, why fund corruption in other countries, when we have plenty going on here in the UK?
The Government has presided over a dip in our standing on the Corruption Perceptions Index. If you want less corruption then it seems the place to head to is Denmark, the home of hygge where fancy, expensive cooking would be given the boot to be replaced with down-to-earth dishes such as lamb chops and mash.
