Cuisine

Cuisine is French for kitchen, but means cooking, just as toilette is French for 'toilet', but means public convenience, and je ne sais quoi is French for 'I don't know, what is it?', but actually means kangaroo.

British cooking has changed a great deal over the last few decades. These days it is no longer considered acceptable to serve your dinner party guests a potato and some charred roadkill. As people become more interested in quality food, good nourishment and Nigella Lawson, everyone wants to develop their skills as a chief (which is French for chef). As a result, the recipe book industry is now worth literally hundreds of pounds, and not a Christmas goes by without someone buying such a book as a gift for a distant relative who they don't really know, or as an office colleague's 'Secret Santa'.

There is also a huge retail sector devoted to providing the budding chef with a variety of useful kitchen implements, at which the chef will marvel how he or she previously managed without. There are few modern kitchens that are not equipped with implements like the cheese timer, the beanometer, or the garlic laser, nor indeed specialised dining equipment like the carrot spoon, the gravy flute and the new 'Theatre of Grapes' (TM).