Snoek Piquante
This wartime recipe calls for Snoek, but one can substitute using canned mackerel.
Ingredients:
Directions: Cook onions in snoek liquor and vinegar for 5 minutes. Add all other ingredients and mix well. Serve cold with a salad.
Snoek
As rationing continued to get more strict as the war loomed on, sources of protein became more rare. Meats, such as beef and pork, were rationed and allowable amounts were about 4 to 6 ounces per week, per person, but chicken and fish were not although difficult to get. Fishing in Britain had become dangerous since there was the threat of bombing, even close to shore. The availability of cheap fish called snoek, or snook (a relative of the tuna and mackerel), in South Africa allowed for eleven million cans of fish to be shipped to England; the government believed it to be the “savior of the fish problem” (Shephard, 329*). It did not catch on! Many people did not like the fish with the unusual and funny name and many remember it as being inedible, smelly, and foul-tasting. Most of the tinned Snoek remained firmly on the shop shelves. The Ministry of Defense issued recipes to make the fish palatable, but even that effort of turning the salty fish into snoek paste, snoek sandwiches, and snoek piquant, did not prove popular.
The British government bought millions of tins of Snoek and with much of it left near the end of the war, the unsold tins were given new labels and sold as food for cats and kittens! (Thomas, 35**)
Click the link for a recipe with tinned snoek: Snoek Piquant
*Pickled, Potted, and Canned by Sue Shephard, Simon and Schuster, 2006
**Villains’ Paradise by Donald Thomas, Pegasus Books, 2006
This recipe was developed by the Ministry of Food, as they stated to the public: “As sugar, fats, jams and preserves are rationed, energy-giving foods available are limited. Therefore if we are to keep up our weight and health then non-rationed foods, potatoes and bread, must be eaten in larger quantities. Potatoes come first because they are home grown.”
Potato Chocolate Spread (sweet)
2 tablespoonfuls mashed potato
1 tablespoonful cocoa
1 tablespoonful sugar
Almond or vanilla flavouring
Method: Mash the potato thoroughly, mix in the cocoa, sugar and flavouring. Use as a spread in place of jam.
As strict as rationing came to be during the war, people still wanted to eat in a restaurant. Initially, restaurants were exempt from rationing, but this was greatly resented by the populous, as wealthier people could supplement their meager food rations by eating out more frequently. By 1942, The Ministry of Food initiated new restrictions for restaurants:
1. Meals were limited to 3 courses
2. Only one dish could contain fish, beef, pork, game or chicken (or other poultry)
3. No meals could be served between 11 p.m. (midnight in London proper) and 5 a.m., unless one applied for a special license from the Ministry of Food
4. The maximum price of a meal in a private restaurant was 5 shillings (about $10 in 2014 US dollars), and there was an up-charge if entertainment was offered or one was staying in a luxury hotel, such as the Ritz
With the war in full swing, about 2100 establishments called “British Restaurants” were run by local groups or “authorities” in town buildings, schools, and church halls as these buildings tended to have kitchens and cafeterias. A plain three-course meal could be purchased for a minor cost (about $2 in 2014 US dollars), and the good thing was that no ration coupons were required! The British Restaurant grew out of “Community Feeding Centers,” and mobile kitchen units that were created to feed people after an air raid, when people’s homes had been bombed and they were open to all. It was necessary to provide a good meal to office and industrial workers for the support of the war effort.
