Woeful Wartime

On to our next period of time; the Second World War. This was actually a topic we looked at in the food of literature module so hopefully this will be of interest to you. 

It was not a great time for food as even though the Brits were winning the war against the evil nazis, they were being penalised at home in the form of food rationing. This even went on after the war, much  to the dismay of the hungry Brits. However due to the lack of food and how hard it was to come by certain ingredients many new foods, like spam, were made. It was often so hard to find the meat for sausages that they were often heavily bulked out by bread crumbs; upsetting butchers everywhere. What is also interesting is that our friends fruit and veg were not really rationed. Why you ask? Well I'm certain you'll have all seen the famous "you can do it!" posters, you may now associate it with Beyoncé  but it was initially there to encourage the land army. The government wanted to get as many women as possible growing their own fruit and veg so the the uk could be a sustainable country during the war years. 

Although these war foods often did not taste nice they did provide the sustenance a country at war needed. They also provided some great novelty recipes which may be hilarious now (did seriously eat that?) but at the time were everyday meals for hundreds of Brits. Below is the recipe for spam fritters, something that as a non pork eater has always intrigued me

Spam Fritters

Ingredients - 340g/12oz SPAM® Chopped Pork and Ham.

Oil for frying or deep frying.
Batter: 125g/4oz (1 cup) Plain flour Pinch of salt 1 Large egg 125ml/4 fl oz (half cup) Milk, or milk and water, or water, or beer. 

Method - Mix together all the batter ingredients in a bowl. The mixture should be thick, in the proportions given above, in order to coat the SPAM® well. Cut the SPAM® into 8 slices.
Meanwhile, heat 2-3 tablespoons oil in a frying pan or wok, or heat a depth of oil in a deep-fryer to 170oC/340oF or until a cube of day-old bread turns golden in 1 minute.

Coat the SPAM® slices once or twice with the batter then drop them into the hot oil. If shallow frying allow 2-3 minutes on each side; if deep frying allow a total cooking time of 3-4 minutes, turning over the fritters as required. 

As you will notice all the ingredients in this recipe are relatively cheap and would have been easily rationed during the war. This would be important for any wife or mother at the time as it was vital to be thrifty when your whole world could fall apart in just a few moments. If we then take this back to the overriding theme of the blog it easy to see just why and how the fashion of food changed during the war; it wasn't an option to eat cheap food it was a necessity.