WHY FOOD COLOURING IS ESSENTIAL

Many countries have foods of which the locals are absurdly fond, and which visitors often find strange, even disturbing. One only has to think of Americans and breakfast cereals, for instance. Bizarre overly sweet pellets with no actual flavour, made soggy and depressing by the addition of milk. Or vegan food -- very popular all over Berkeley -- boasted about by outposts of raving socialist food-puritans in many urban areas except Texas.

Why?

[Let's not talk about the Netherlandish obsession with frikandel, which is absolutely logical, and makes life in tropical hell holes like Thailand or Southern Spain much more civilized. You'll fester. But you will eat. There's little else edible there.]

A correspondent speaks highly of mushy peas.
Which is basically a Brit version of refried beans, without salt, lard, cumin, onion, garlic, or toasted chillies, and if the food colouring is left out, a repulsive grey muck.
But otherwise quite unobjectionable.

Could be improved by cilantro and a squeeze of lime juice.
It's kind of like hummus without oil or garlic.
A very Protestant compound.

Often served with fish and chips, so probably excellent with lutefisk and surströmming, and I'm baffled as to why Scandinavia and the British Isles haven't combined their culinary ideas into one "cuisine". May have something to do with the deep fried Mars bars of which English speakers are inexplicably fond, and the love of Danes for everything with mayonnaise.


Come to think of it, there are only three cuisines in Europe worth bothering with anyway: Netherlandish, French, and Italian. All of which are better with sambal.


Without food colouring, Europeans might starve.



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