Letting off steam

Pioneer of modern British cooking Stephen Bull is ex-proprietor of Herefordshire's Lough Pool Inn and helps run Cambridgeshire's Hole in the Wall. Here he exposes crimes against pub food

Ploughman's

The archetypal simple pub meal, symbolic of hospitality, this ought to be an excellent dish: two or three contrasting farmhouse cheeses, soft butter, close-crumbed crusty bread and proper chutney or pickle. An apple, celery or maybe a bit of crunchy salad adds variety, but is not essential. The depressing reality is that all too often we get extrusions of rubbery Cheddar-type stuff with a cotton-wool baguette, fridge-cold butter, a dollop of factory-made chutney and a pile of naked, mostly-onion garnish. Which is better value for money? We have world-class cheeses in the UK, as easy to find as chutney is to produce by hand. How hard is that?

Salads

Although we can allow some interpretation, our pub salad-making expertise parallels our foreign language skills. A misbegotten assembly of undressed leaves from insipid round varieties, iceberg or coarse bits of oakleaf, pale tomatoes, rough-hewn cucumber, thickly-sliced raw peppers and onion, tinned sweetcorn and diced beetroot, the seeping juices of which unite the concoction in baleful disharmony. This wilful ignorance is perfect propaganda for the French. Its little brother the side salad can be seen cosying up to a number of other dishes, presumably as some kind of nutritional supplement - it can't be for reasons of flavour. If, by chance, any dressing exists, it's guaranteed to contain too much mustard. What would I prefer? A mix of mild leaves (Webb's or cos) and stronger (rocket, ruby chard or frisée), maybe some ripe tomato and a tart-sweet or herby dressing, tossed so that all the leaves shine.

Sauces

Once upon a time, sauces were intended to disguise the flavours of out-of-date meat or boost the edibility of some undernourished beast, not as sophisticated complements to today's high-end produce. Most pubs still seem to find it inconceivable that anyone would not need a sauce, thereby tacitly admitting they don't expect food to have any flavour. Well, I'm with them on Dijon mustard, tomato ketchup and Worcester (and maybe horseradish), because they're as good as home-made, but other, E-numbered tributes to food technology should be consigned to history. Foil packets on the table mean bottles and granules in the kitchen and signal that second-rate is acceptable. Anyone with a basic food processor can make mayonnaise quickly. Why can't we all?

Seasons

In some pubs it's perpetually summer on the menu. Besides being eco-unfriendly, using Californian asparagus, Chilean raspberries, South African strawberries, New Zealand Braeburns and Guatemalan sugar snaps all year is expensive, unnecessary and lazy. "Seasonal vegetables" are usually anything but, often a wretched offering of cauliflower, broccoli and carrots, month after month. We want roots and frost-touched sprouts in winter, cabbage and leeks in spring, spinach, runners, courgettes and tomatoes in summer, and purple-sprouting broccoli and Jerusalem artichokes in autumn. Plus, our terrific soft fruit whenever it's ready. We all know dinosaurs who would rather have a tooth extracted than eat spinach, but who will lead our customers to enlightenment if not us, Britain's caring publicans?

Ploughman's

The archetypal simple pub meal, symbolic of pub hospitality, this ought to be an excellent dish: two or three contrasting farmhouse cheeses, softish butter, close-crumbed crusty bread and proper chutney or pickle. An apple, celery or maybe a bit of crunchy salad adds variety, but is not essential. The depressing reality is that all too frequently we're offered extrusions of rubberoid cheddar-type with a cotton-wool baguette, fridge-cold butter, dollop of factory-made chutney and pile of naked mostly-onion garnish. Which is better value for money? We have world-class cheeses in the UK now, as easy to find as chutney is to produce by hand. How hard is that?

1 Salads

Although we can allow some free interpretation of the subject, pub salad-making expertise parallels our foreign language skills. A misbegotten assembly of undressed leaves from insipid round varieties, iceberg or coarse bits of oakleaf, pale tomatoes, rough-hewn cucumber, thickly-sliced raw peppers and onion, tinned sweetcorn and diced beetroot, whose seeping juices unite the concoction in baleful disharmony, this widespread exhibition of wilful ignorance is perfect propaganda for the French. Its little brother can be seen cosying up to any number of other dishes, presumably as some kind of nutritional supplement - it can't be for reasons of flavour. If by chance any dressing exists, it's guaranteed to contain too much mustard. What would I prefer? A mix of mild leaves (oakleaf, Webb's or cos) and stronger (rocket, ruby chard or frisee), maybe some ripe tomato and a tart-sweet or herby dressing, tossed so all the leaves shine a bit. How difficult is that?

Sauces

Once upon a time, sauces were intended to disguise the flavours of out-of-date meat or boost the edibility of some undernourished beast, not as sophisticated compliments to today's high-end produce. Most pubs still seem to find it inconceivable that anyone would not need a sauce, tacitly admitting they don't expect food to have any flavour. Well, I'm with them on Dijon mustard, tomato ketchup and Worcester (and maybe horseradish), because they're as good as home-made, but other e-numbered tributes to food technology should be consigned to history. Foil packets on the table mean bottles and granules in the kitchen and signal that second-rate is acceptable. Anyone with a basic food processor can make mayonnaise quickly. Why can't we all?

2 Seasons

In some pubs it's perpetually summer on the menu. Besides being eco-unfriendly, using Californian asparagus, Chilean raspberries, South African strawberries, New Zealand Braeburns, Kenyan green beans and Guatemalan sugar snaps all year is expensive, unnecessary and lazy. "Seasonal vegetables" are usually anything but - often a wretched offering of cauli, broccoli and carrots, month after month. We want roots and frost-touched sprouts in winter, cabbage and leeks in spring, spinach, runners, courgettes and tomatoes in summer, and purple-sprouting broccoli and Jerusalem artichokes in autumn. And our terrific soft fruit whenever it's ready. We all know dinosaurs who would rather have a tooth extracted than eat spinach, but who will lead our customers to enlightenment if not us, Britain's caring publicans?