“I don’t know if anything on my menu could sum up British food culture,” says Mr Akwasi Brenya-Mensa, chef at London’s Tatale. “My dishes come from my lived experience as someone who considers themselves Ghanaian, but was raised in British society.”

The chef trained under Mr James Cochran at London’s 12:51 before opening contemporary pan-African restaurant Tatale – named after a Ghanaian plantain pancake – in the Africa Centre in Southwark earlier this year.

“Growing up in south London, which had a large Ghanaian community, my memories are of spending weekends at hall parties with my relatives, eating foods from ‘back home’,” he says. Those dishes include this rich Ghanaian garden egg stew Brenya-Mensa learnt from his grandma.

“But my first entry into food professionally was not based on my heritage – it was burgers, brunch, casual dining,” he says. “I’ve used that as a base, and incorporated my heritage, to evolve to where we are today with Tatale.”

Britain’s diverse food landscape, “appears to be more willing to share stories and voices from other places, and I think that’s a really good thing, as long as it’s done genuinely,” he says. “I’m wary of things being a trend or being ‘hot’.”

Serves 4

Ingredients

10 garden eggs (a type of aubergine) or 2 large aubergines (about 700g)

½ tsp baking powder

150ml red palm oil (I use Carotino brand)

2 tsp dawadawa (locust bean, available from Caribbean grocers)

3 medium onions, 1 sliced and 2 roughly chopped

½ tsp ground aniseed

½ tsp ground nutmeg

½ tsp ground black pepper

6 garlic cloves

20g fresh ginger

½ scotch bonnet chilli, deseeded (wear gloves)

400g tin chopped tomatoes, blitzed in a food processor

4 green (unripe) plantains

50g smooth peanut butter

1 tbsp all-purpose seasoning (I use Grace Foods brand)

1 avocado, sliced, to serve

4 free-range eggs, boiled to your liking, to serve

Method

Slice the stems off the garden eggs/aubergines (peel the aubergines, if using), then add to a large pan of water, ensuring they’re submerged, and set over a medium heat. Cover and cook for around 12 minutes or until softened. Remove from the heat, add the baking powder to the water, then set aside to cool in the water.

Put a medium pan over a medium heat and add the red palm oil and dawadawa. Heat for 3-4 minutes, stirring occasionally. Once fragrant, add the sliced onion and the spices with a punch of salt then continue to cook.

Meanwhile, whizz the remaining chopped onions with the garlic, ginger and scotch bonnet to a paste in a blender. Add this to the red palm oil mixture and continue to simmer. Add the chopped tomatoes and cook for a further 12 minutes.

Bring a separate pan of well salted water to the boil. Top and tail the plantains, then score the skin of each one lengthways (try not to cut through to the flesh). Boil for 20 minutes.

Lift the garden eggs/aubergines out of the water and mash with the back of a wooden spoon or fork to a creamy paste. Add to the pan simmer for another 3 minutes. Add the peanut butter and all-purpose seasoning and cook for about 10 minutes. Add salt to taste.

To serve, drain the plantains, then gently prise open and remove their skins. Slice each into pieces, then serve with the stew along with slices of avocado and halved boiled eggs.

“Our kitchen is a moveable feast of constantly evolving ingredients, flavours and ideas,” says Ms Ravinder Bhogal, chef, food writer and founder of Jikoni, the London restaurant which she describes as a “no borders kitchen”. “We’re inspired by the diverse people in the UK. Our recipes are stories – open to adaptations and improvisations.”

This approach is shaped by Bhogal’s own identity, having been born in Kenya and moved to London as a child. “As an immigrant myself, I grew up around mini economies of immigrant restaurants and suppliers specialising in food from a cross-section of ethnic communities,” she says. “This naturally influenced the kind of food I cook.”

Bhogal’s “scrag-end pie” is the dish which best represents, “the combination of my culinary heritage with the food we found in Britain,” she says. “It’s a very special shepherd’s pie, inspired by my mother’s take on ‘English food’ where everything from fish and chips to a roast was spiced up,” she says. “Perhaps the addition of spices was a feeble way of trying to comfort a family who could not adjust to the frigid English weather.”

Serves 4-6

Ingredients

Olive oil

1 onion, very finely chopped

1 carrot, chopped

3 garlic cloves, chopped

1 tsp cumin

½ tsp ground cinnamon

500g minced lamb

200ml chopped tomatoes

1 tbsp tomato purée

2.5cm fresh root ginger

2 green chillies (deseeded if you don't want it too spicy), chopped

1 tbsp red wine vinegar

Salt and pepper

100g frozen peas

Ketchup, to serve

For the mash

750g floury potatoes, such as King Edwards, peeled

Salt

75g unsalted butter

2 egg yolks

40ml full-fat milk

40ml double cream

A light sprinkling of hot paprika

Method

Preheat the oven to 200°C fan (400°F, gas mark 6). Chop the potatoes for the mash into small cubes and simmer in a pan of salted water until tender (10-15 mins), then drain.

Meanwhile, heat the olive oil in a large pan and sauté the onion, carrot and garlic until they are soft and golden brown. Add the cumin and cinnamon and fry for a few minutes until fragrant. Add the mince and brown it off, breaking up any lumps with a wooden spoon. Pour in the tomatoes and tomato purée along with the ginger, chillies and vinegar. Season and cook for 8 minutes.

Once the tomatoes have broken down, tumble in the peas, stir well, and then pour in 250ml boiling water. Bring to the boil, then cover and simmer for 25 mins.

Mash the potatoes, then beat in the butter and egg yolks. Slowly pour in the milk and cream and mash again, ensuring you have a smooth, lump-free mash. Transfer the meat to a pie dish and smooth the mash on top.

Cook in the oven for 20-30 mins until brown and crispy, then serve with ketchup.

Recipe from Jikoni: Proudly Inauthentic Recipes From An Immigrant Kitchen (Bloomsbury) by Ms Ravinder Bhogal

For more than quarter of a century, London’s St John restaurant has been a bastion of traditional British cooking. Founders Messrs Fergus Henderson and Trevor Gulliver are known for having reclaimed “nose-to-tail”’ cooking using time-honoured British recipes. But executive chef Mr Jonathan Woolway has, he says, “never adhered to an ideal of British food”. Instead, he believes, “quality, honest food the world over should be informed by nature, seasonality and a sense of place”.

It’s not about being a slave to tradition, says Woolway. “British food is as nostalgic and evocative as it is current and relevant. It doesn’t need to ‘go’ anywhere, but will quietly evolve and find its place in the world. Tradition is vital and offers limitless potential, but being bound by tradition is mindless and enslaves.”

Woolway’s approach is writ large in his recipe for devilled kidneys, a dish deeply rooted in his own past. “At home in Swansea, while observing sheep grazing on the salt marshes of the Gower Peninsular, I yearn to eat their kidneys on hot buttered toast,” he says. “The sea is in view and in my nostrils, so I’m thinking of cockles, bacon and laverbread for lunch.”

Serves 2

Ingredients

6 lamb’s kidneys, suet and membrane removed, and slit in half lengthwise, retaining the kidney shape

3 tbsp plain flour

1 tsp cayenne pepper

1 tsp dry English mustard

Sea salt and pepper

A big knob of butter

Worcester sauce

A healthy stash of chicken stock

2 pieces of toast (white or brown, up to you, though – just an observation – white seems to sup up the juices better)

Method

Nip out the white fatty gristle of the kidneys with a knife or scissors. Mix together the flour, cayenne pepper, mustard, salt and pepper in a bowl.

Get a frying pan very hot, throw in the butter, and as it melts roll your kidneys in your spiced flour, then shake them in a sieve to remove excess. Place them in the sizzling pan, cook for 2 minutes each side, add a hearty splash of Worcester sauce and the chicken stock, and let all the ingredients get to know each other.

Remove the kidneys to reduce your two waiting bits of toast, let the sauce reduce and emulsify in the pan (do not let it disappear) and pour over the kidneys and toast. And eat. Perfect for breakfast, lunch or dinner.

A successful restaurateur in his hometown of Damascus, Mr Alarnab left Syria in 2015 and cooked for fellow refugees in Calais. “Once in London, I started hosting supper clubs through the charity Choose Love – we raised over £200,000,” he says. Five years and a successful crowdfunding campaign later, he opened Imad’s Syrian Kitchen in London’s Soho.

For Mr Alarnab, British food is, he says, “international. It’s a country filled with people of different heritages and that’s reflected in the food. What I enjoy most about London is the multiculturalism.” Mr Alarnab combines Syrian recipes with British ingredients, as in his Syrian take on fish and chips.

“British products are really interesting to work with,” he says. “I use halibut or haddock for this recipe, which isn’t easily accessible back in Syria. In Britain, fish and chips are affordable, whereas back home, they’re quite a luxury, so we serve lightly battered fish in three slices to be shared. Tahini is widely used in Syria, so we have it with that as opposed to the tartare sauce. For me, this dish is the perfect combination of British culture and my own Syrian heritage.”

Serves 4

Ingredients

For the fish

4 fillets of haddock (500g)

2 tsp cumin powder

1 tsp salt

1 tsp white pepper

50ml olive oil

5 cloves garlic, crushed

1 free-range egg, beaten

500g plain flour

1 tbsp cornflour

For the chips

4 medium potatoes (approx. 500g), peeled, chopped into chips and soaked in ice water for 30 minutes.

1 tsp paprika

½ tsp salt

For the tahini sauce

50g tahini

1 lemon

2 cloves of garlic, crushed

½ tsp salt

A handful of chopped parsley

Method

Season the fish with the cumin, salt, white pepper, olive oil and crushed garlic. Leave it in the fridge for a minimum of four hours or ideally overnight.

Dip the fish in the beaten egg. In a separate bowl, mix the flour, cumin salt, white pepper and cornflour then use to coat the fish. Set aside.

To make the tahini sauce, mix together all the ingredients except the parsley – add a splash of water if it’s too thick. Top with the parsley and set aside.

To make the chips, heat a generous amount of vegetable oil in a pan or fryer to 190°C. Fry for 2-3 minutes then allow to cool completely before frying again until golden.

Fry the fish in the leftover chip oil for 5-6 minutes, until golden. Slice each fillet into three and serve with the chips and tahini sauce.

For Mr Ben Mervis, delving into the history of British food brings us a better understanding of our present-day food culture. “Today’s British kitchen draws lots of inspiration from around the world, but that’s nothing new,” says the writer and food historian, who publishes The British Cookbook (Phaidon) this autumn.

His book is an ambitious and comprehensive collection of recipes spanning all four regions. “I dove deep into cookbooks of the last 100 years,” he says. In exploring this history, Mervis discovered, he says, “that, in many ways, we’re getting closer to the way we cooked in the past. We’re more in tune with what’s in season, knowledgeable about a wider range of wild and foraged ingredients, and excited about preserving flavours throughout the year”.

No dish sums up British food to Mervis like the steamed pudding. “Puddings are among Britain’s richest culinary traditions,” he says. “In the early 20th century, cookery writers dedicated entire volumes to the thousands of types that could grace your table. I like to keep it simple – the humble steamed syrup sponge. Nothing can compare.”

Serves 6

Ingredients

175 g unsalted butter, at room temperature, plus extra for greasing

6 tbsp golden syrup

125 g soft brown sugar 3 eggs

175 g/self-raising flour, sifted

30 ml whole milk

Custard or chocolate sauce, to serve

Method

Heavily grease a 1.2 litre pudding basin with butter. Pour 3tbsp golden syrup into the base of the tin.

Beat the butter, sugar and remaining syrup in a stand mixer with the paddle attachment on medium speed until pale. Reduce the speed to low and beat in the eggs, one at a time, adding a third of the flour with each egg to prevent curdling. Add a pinch of salt and increase the speed to medium. Beat for 2-3 minutes until smooth. Fold in the milk.

Spoon the batter into the prepared basin, cover with a lid and put the bowl into a steamer. Cook for 1 ½-2 hours until a skewer inserted comes out clean.

To serve, gently loosen the sponge from the sides of the bowl using a knife, then turn out onto a warmed plate and serve with custard, chocolate sauce or equivalent.