Food in a basket

IT reminded me of the first time I came across chicken in the basket. Now there’s a weird concept that somehow caught the imagination of the British public: indifferent fried chicken somehow thought to be better served in non-hygienic wicker, complete with the last few customers’ choices of ketchup or brown sauce, rather than on a dishwasher-sterilised ceramic plate. We were easily pleased in those days.

Anyway, it was sitting in a pub in Ireland with my mum recently that I experienced the flashback. She announced that she was going to order scampi. “Scampi?” I asked. “Does anybody offer that anymore?”. Obviously they do, and obviously I’d upset her, because she held a menu out at me and, rather aloofly, pointed at one item. “Scampi. See?”.

I felt troubled but wasn’t sure why. Surely I hadn’t become a food snob. Or, it began to dawn on me, was it because I, a person who makes food his hobby and makes a living from knowing about food, didn’t actually know what scampi really was? This is the same scampi that was almost as commonly-found in a basket as chicken in the Seventies (while considered slightly posher) but despite its ubiquity, I suspect most people didn’t actually know what they were eating.

I needed to get to the bottom of things and so pulled out of my pocket the trusty encyclopaedia that I carried there. Yes, even in rural Southern Ireland, you can still get Google on your phone. And, as I researched, things became... less clear.

It seems that scampi is made from Nephrops norvegicus, a crustacean more commonly know as a Norwegian lobster. But that’s rather a misnomer because the Norwegian lobster isn’t a lobster - and scampi are not generally caught in Norway. Others call it a Dublin Bay prawn which began to make things a little more comfortable, until you read that Dublin Bay prawns aren’t actually prawns. Some describe them as a type of crayfish but that can’t be right because crayfish are crayfish. Then, when eating them, the Americans say they’re eating shrimp - when actually they’re eating langoustine. But that’s a French word. So we use an Italian word that’s the plural of the singular “scampo” to describe something like a prawn or a crayfish that isn’t a lobster that doesn’t come from Norway, that the Americans describe as shrimp - when it’s not. So that’s sorted then.

No wonder you’re less likely to find it on our menus these days. After all, over the years it’s become increasingly fashionable to know what you’re eating and where its come from and it’s difficult, after just a little research, for the average restaurateur or pub owner to be certain what they might be serving.

But, there again, as my mum and I found out on our trip to rural Ireland, food fashion isn’t top of the agenda over there. That isn’t meant to insult. I love Southern Ireland and its people and could actually imagine myself living there. It’s just that one of the area’s more endearing features is that time somehow seems to pass the people by. Make no mistake: this isn’t Dublin where there’s a vibrant food economy. But there’s no doubt that many of the rural town restaurants hark back to a less sophisticated time known as the seventies. In fact our trip reminded me of when an American tourist, leaving our restaurant in Durham to make a trip to Cork, asked if there was any time difference between the UK mainland and Ireland. Yes, I replied, about 40 years.