h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

"So you don't reckon there are any upper or lower class suburbs?"
Lower class? Not really. Upper Class? Well, wannabe upper class maybe.

Suburbia seems synonymous with middle class. And obviously divisions within that.

Examples, Oh I dunno, some of the large residential areas round Nuneaton spring to mind. The 'new village' areas of places like Tollerton in Nottinghamshire.

Basically, all those housing estates with 2.4 kids (or whatever it is now). Probably have their own local school, a couple of pubs and so forth. In many ways I think that suburbia is as much a place of mind as a physical place. Soulless, uniform, materialistic but pretending otherwise. Most families will manage church on at least three if not more occaisons a year but aren't really into it. There'll be a local rugby or cricket club or something. Tend to be dead during the day cos the parents are at work and the kids are in school. No real 'life' to the place, it's just somewhere to live.
Hard to explain (cos I'm not good at that sort of thing). Surely you recognise the description, maybe i just have the name wrong.

English surnames include Bowyer, Fletcher, skinner, Tanner, Weaver and also 'Roper'. What think you?
By the way,'money for old rope' is real. When sailing ships were re-rigged the old ropes were purchased for pennies to be wheeled away and picked into 'oakum'. Mixed with tar , this was used for sealing gaps (caulking) the ships timbers. Picking oakum was the work for convicts because it broke their nails and blistered hands, but some desparately poor undertook this work.

>> ..playing keepy-uppy.. <<


I will barely be able to keepy uppy with the backlog for the next while. My 'free' internet connexion has disappeared at home and I am not scheduled for a re-connect until mid October. But I have some access - depending on weather, crowds, assistant librarians - at a public lie-berry which frowns on users chatting, e-mailing, etc. and the system hates cookies, especially English cookies. I'll only have an hour at a time about twice a week, when I can read without signing on. I mean, it really hates cookies!

So until I get online at home again I am seriously muffled if not entirely silenced. Happily, I can at least keepy uppy with the Brit-Eng backlog.

peace
~jwf~

It really isn't the same not having the unmentionable's unmentionables on post 20 anymore you know....

Ah, that explains it. S_Simon was replying to Duncan's posting of 13 March 2001.

I live in Greater London and it is interesting that, having lived here for 20 years, it is seen by most people as being a suburb while local people who have been here for generations see London as a totally different place.

In the past it was a completely separate entity from London, for instance, a local school is called Bishopshalt and it was originally a stopping off point for Bishops who were travelling into London and had one last pleasant night before the last day's journey into the city.

Suburbs to me are classless. In this neck of the woods we have bits of the stockbroker belt as well as homelessness and poverty.

We have old names like Bowyer, Fletcher, Skinner, etc. then there is Roper.... any help?
In sailing ship times when old cordage was replaced, old ropes were dumped on the quay and sold for a few pence (bosun's perks). Picked into 'oakum', usually by convicts because it broke the nails and blistered hands, was mixed with tar and used for 'caulking' between boards on the ship's hull. Despite the terrible effects on the hands. desperately poor people would earn money picking oakum from old rope.

The 'French Chef' Julia Child has passed over at 91 leaving me with at least one unanswered culinary question that is really a semantics question and probably best answered by BritEngers.

Is there any real difference between roasted and baked?

Generally I always understood that pastries, pies and cakes were baked.They are cooked in an oven in open-topped tins, plates and other (cupcakes, tarts, etc) forms. Meats are placed in covered pans and roasted. All are placed in an oven at the same approximate temperature range of 300 to 500 degrees F.

I would have been content to think it was that simple; that meat is roasted and pastries and breads are baked. But I recently was faced with a menu that allowed a choice of potato: 'fried, mashed, boiled, baked or roasted'.

Baked potato is usually a whole potato cooked in its skin sometimes wrapped in foil but not necessarily so. It is then slit open and smothered in sour crem and/or butter and a sprinkle of chives; while roasted potato seems to come in pre-cut chucks covered in oil and chives.

Your thoughts and experiences will be appreciated.

~jwf~

"Is there any real difference between roasted and baked?"


It's perhaps one of those distinctions without a difference.


"Generally I always understood that pastries, pies and cakes were baked.They are cooked in an oven in open-topped tins, plates and other (cupcakes, tarts, etc) forms. Meats are placed in covered pans and roasted. All are placed in an oven at the same approximate temperature range of 300 to 500 degrees F. "


As one whose culinary skills reach the dizzy heights of boiling an egg, I accept your conclusion with the addition that roasting should involve a good measure of healthy lard, or some other fat, or in emergency only - cooking oil. Potatoes being prepared by peeling and quartering etc. (depending on the size).
For baking, potatoes may be prepared by oiling and salting the skin before putting the entire spud in the oven. This is abhorrent to real afficionados because it prevents the skin from becoming tough, leathery, tastless and indigestible.


"I would have been content to think it was that simple; that meat is roasted and pastries and breads are baked. But I recently was faced with a menu that allowed a choice of potato: 'fried, mashed, boiled, baked or roasted'. "


So you had a portion of each, then?
Just for research purposes.

"The funeral baked meats"? or are we assuming that in Shakespeare's time 'meat' still meant food in general.
I think it's a usage question rather than strictly semantic. Consider'Baked Alaska" for example.
Roast meat started off on a spit over an open fire. When transferred to a closed oven it was still not covered itself, except possibly in pastry if you're making a Beef Wellington. Some people cover with tin foil, but I like the outside properly browned.
Cheaper meat might be done in a covered dish, with a few veg, but I would then call it a 'pot roast'
Roast potatoes taste better if you parboil them first. Putting them under a grid that the meat is standing on obviates the need for any other fat, although if you've got any of last week's dripping left that can't be beat.Baked potatoes just need slightly salted butter - I only use foil if I'm putting them in a bonfire.
A much more tricky question for you: what's the difference between 'roast' and 'roasted"? HK restaurants use them interchangeably.

I would say roast potatoes, myself - not roasted

Baked Potato v Roast Potato
To roast something needs fat to be put on it (basting) or for it to produce it's own fat as with many meats. In these health conscious days roast would perhaps be seen as less healthy than the fat free baked version.

One nice thing to do with spuds, as alluded to above is to parboil them and then pour off the water. Before transferring them to the oven, to be basted, give the potato pan a good shake to fluff up the outer surface of the potatoes.

The resulting roasters are delicious.

Delicious indeed. Add some herbs during the shaking process or when basting and the factor is increased.

I'm trying to think of a linguistic point to make, but

And I don't know why we (Brits and presumably others) say roast potatoes and roast beef rather than roasted.

David

My initial thought was roast=with fat, baked=no fat, then I looked in my dictionary. Roast coffee beans

Ah, but coffee beans contain much oil in them. They are all shiny when they come out of the roaster. So, they self baste like meat does.

Barbecuing coffee beans is a real feat. They either fall between the steel rods or you have to turn them into kebabs on tiny little skewers.

Also if you called them baked beans surely people would get the wrong idea.

Baked beans, are, in fact another anomaly. They're not dry-cooked and on the rare occasions I've made my own have been cooked in a closed dish. I believe that in the factories, they're actually boiled.
btw are your coffee beans roast or roasted? I think mine are 'continental roast' or 'dry roasted'. Are nuts roast or roasted?

I think it depends simply on where the in the sentence word appears. Thus I would say "I had roast potatoes for dinner" but "the potatoes were roasted in the oven".

The meat was well roasted. The coffee was freshly roasted. etc.

The word "Rost" in German, apart from meaning "rust" as in oxidised iron, also means a grid. On a barbecue, in the oven, or even on the bed, as a support for the mattress.

I expect that's the same word as our "roast" and would imply that the meat was either barbecued on a grid over an open fire, or, in more modern times, is placed on the grid in the oven, over a baking tray full of soon-to-be golden and delicious roast potatoes. Roasted to a "T"!

Would someone help poor Simon, please. I'm not quite sure what his question actually is?

My mother (and I, when there aren't too many of us) plonk the meat in a tray with the parboiled potatoes. This gives the potatoes extra flavour, as they are not only roasting in the fat, but also soaking up the dripping the meat gives off as it cooks.

Apparently, basting is not necessary. I usually forget it anyway. Turning over the joint 10 -15 minutes before it's done is just as good.

Thanks for the tip about shaking the potatoes. However, German potatoes are so different from English ones, it's almost impossible to find a fluffable kind.

jwf - you have my sympathy. Hold on in there, and don't abandon ship!

TC, I think Simon is relying to post 20 without realising that there have been nearly 9000 posts since then. Kind of like in Brit Eng 1 when someone would pop up out of nowhere and mention the unmentionable canine bits.

I thought so, too, but he seems to want an answer to a question. Perhaps I ought to look at his space, see how new he is.

Anyhow, thanks everyone for giving me an idea for a dinner I shall be having to cook for some guests - it'll be roast beef, roast potatoes and apple pie. Or better still, apple crumble with custard. I shall then dare them to move!