Author Topic: the food rant thread  (Read 228573 times)

ian

Re: the food rant thread
« Reply #50 on: 27 April, 2015, 12:05:17 pm »
Unctuous is a great word, marvellously onomatopoeic, it rolls over your tongue like a wave of glistening fat. Trust me, it's the perfect word for my father's attempts at gravy (it is all he cooks, apparently gravy is also a man thing; woman may concoct a gentle jus, but it takes a real man to conduct the alchemy of grease, burnt bits and excessive quantities of bisto into a glistening, potentially seabird-killing pool of molten gravy). I should also make clear that it was served in industrial quantities. It's a terrible thing to see your own roast potatoes drown.

The problem with unctuous is that restaurants have started to use it like it's a good thing. Broths have become unctuous, sauces have become unctuous. The people crave unctuousness. This one doesn't. It's just poshese for greasy. It seems to be essential to refer to ramen broths are unctuous milky white, porcine. Lardy, in other words. It probably works better in Chinese (nǎitāng) which according to Google is literally translated as 'breast soup'. Go on, eat it, it's good for you. It's the kind of thing my Chinese colleagues thrust in front of me when I visit. A game, which roughly translated from Mandarin means 'western devil food torture'.

Kimchi mash? Alas no, there was cabbage and bacon. Actually, this was the US, so probably every variety included bacon, it is, after all, the universal American seasoning. It was quite bizarre though, there we were on a balmy Florida evening, mojito in hand, facing a table laden with mashed potatoes, a veritable meaty thighed chorus line of stodge.

menthel

  • Jim is my real, actual name
Re: the food rant thread
« Reply #51 on: 27 April, 2015, 12:11:04 pm »
Unctuous is a great word, marvellously onomatopoeic, it rolls over your tongue like a wave of glistening fat. Trust me, it's the perfect word for my father's attempts at gravy (it is all he cooks, apparently gravy is also a man thing; woman may concoct a gentle jus, but it takes a real man to conduct the alchemy of grease, burnt bits and excessive quantities of bisto into a glistening, potentially seabird-killing pool of molten gravy). I should also make clear that it was served in industrial quantities. It's a terrible thing to see your own roast potatoes drown.

The problem with unctuous is that restaurants have started to use it like it's a good thing. Broths have become unctuous, sauces have become unctuous. The people crave unctuousness. This one doesn't. It's just poshese for greasy. It seems to be essential to refer to raman broths are unctuous milky white, porcine. Lardy, in other words. It probably works better in Chinese (nǎitāng) which according to Google is literally translated as 'breast soup'. Go on, eat it, it's good for you. It's the kind of thing my Chinese colleagues thrust in front of me when I visit. A game, which roughly translated from Mandarin means 'western devil food torture'.

Kimchi mash? Alas no, there was cabbage and bacon. Actually, this was the US, so probably every variety included bacon, it is, after all, the universal American seasoning. It was quite bizarre though, there we were on a balmy Florida evening, mojito in hand, facing a table mashed potatoes, a veritable meaty thighed chorus line of stodge.

You just made me throw up on my own lap and punch a passing innocent kitten. It's all your fault.

Re: the food rant thread
« Reply #52 on: 27 April, 2015, 12:31:44 pm »
Gravy.

Such an innocent word for the various atrocities carried out in it's name.

I don't really remember much gravy - except for one..

Middlesborough. A somewhat down-at-heel 3* "hotel".  I ordered a pork salad. It came. Cold pork, as one would expect. Saladings, various. Oh, and "gravy" on the pork.

It was brown. It was tepid. It was approximately 3mm thick, and could, quite literally, be cut with a knife. It didn't flow to fill the void. It didn't move at all.   :sick:
We are making a New World (Paul Nash, 1918)

Re: the food rant thread
« Reply #53 on: 27 April, 2015, 12:38:50 pm »
Came across this when I was searching info on allium allergies


Garlic allergy rant
“There is no point in using the word 'impossible' to describe something that has clearly happened.”
― Douglas Adams

ian

Re: the food rant thread
« Reply #54 on: 27 April, 2015, 07:07:38 pm »
Chances are that if you encountered a strange congealed gravy-like substance, it’s really carvery ectoplasm. Those strange piles of dead flesh lying there all day under a heat lamp like a desperate tourist on a Skegness beach sucking up every photon of stray warmth. It’s the lukewarm sadness of the entire thing, half carved meat hanging around just hoping that someone will take the final slice before the restaurant admits defeat to the massing legions of salmonella. In a bucket next to it, is the gravy slowly congealing into a thick sludge of mortal despair. Carol Anne, don’t eat the gravy Carol Anne…

ian

Re: the food rant thread
« Reply #55 on: 28 April, 2015, 09:37:02 am »
There was a woman in Whole Foods (oh do shut up) the other day bludgeoning the minion with a request for an ingredient they didn't have. I had to stop and listen (a good excuse to overfill my basket with beer) because I swore she was asking for Velveeta. Turns out she was, that was on the cut-own square of recipe she was so fervently clutching and periodically thrusting in the minion's face. He was trying to explain that he 'thought it was some kind of cheese' which she insisted it wasn't and that they 'sell it in Planet Organic'. I've never been to Planet Organic but I'm thinking they don't sell Velveeta, which as any fool knows is a Pasteurized Prepared Cheese Product, one that's only a second cousin twice removed to actual cheese. There are people in West Virginia who more closely related to cheese.  It's organic in the same way as benzene is organic. Anyway, he had to Google it in the end, and she sent her to the cheese department to see if they stocked processed disappointment.

(OK, I like Velveeta. It's the same magic yellow stuff as cheese slices which are one of my favourite things – if you want to make a meal special, try adding a cheese slice to your ready salted crisp sandwich.)

Edit: I forgot – they have a section dedicated to 'bone broth' (potentially unctuous) which is, according to the subheading's allusion to that marvellously authentic paleolithic diet, 'the caveman's coffee'. No it fucking isn't.

fuzzy

Re: the food rant thread
« Reply #56 on: 28 April, 2015, 11:23:47 pm »
I am going to stand up and fight the gravy corner here.

Gravy is like any other food stuff in that it can be either a damn good part of a meal or a complete and utter fucking failure, depending on the cook.

Thick, stodgey gravy that looks like it has escaped from the back of the roads maintenance truck doin a bit of tar and dressing ruination of a road is tuly reprehensible.

On the other hand, a gravy prepared lovingly, with just the right amount of substance to flow without being watery, the perfect amount of seasoning to give it a bit of bite and a skilled use of the meat juices is a joyous addition to a plate.

Jaded

  • The Codfather
  • Formerly known as Jaded
Re: the food rant thread
« Reply #57 on: 28 April, 2015, 11:47:21 pm »
My uncle came to stay soon after I was married. We had a visitors book back then, when we got visitors. In the book he wrote "At last. Gravy without grovelling."
It is simpler than it looks.

Eccentrica Gallumbits

  • Rock 'n' roll and brew, rock 'n' roll and brew...
Re: the food rant thread
« Reply #58 on: 29 April, 2015, 12:31:16 pm »
Are you sure it wasn't "gravy without gravel in"?
My feminist marxist dialectic brings all the boys to the yard.


menthel

  • Jim is my real, actual name
Re: the food rant thread
« Reply #59 on: 29 April, 2015, 12:47:01 pm »
Plums where the stone hasn't formed properly. They can fuck right off.

Eccentrica Gallumbits

  • Rock 'n' roll and brew, rock 'n' roll and brew...
Re: the food rant thread
« Reply #60 on: 29 April, 2015, 12:53:05 pm »
Satsumas which look nice from the outside but once you've peeled and pithed them, are all withery and leathery and watery and shrivelled. They can fuck right off too.
My feminist marxist dialectic brings all the boys to the yard.


Re: the food rant thread
« Reply #61 on: 29 April, 2015, 12:56:25 pm »
Satsumas which look nice from the outside but once you've peeled and pithed them, are all withery and leathery and watery and shrivelled. They can fuck right off too.

+1
"He who fights monsters should see to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." ~ Freidrich Neitzsche

menthel

  • Jim is my real, actual name
Re: the food rant thread
« Reply #62 on: 29 April, 2015, 04:20:39 pm »
Satsumas which look nice from the outside but once you've peeled and pithed them, are all withery and leathery and watery and shrivelled. They can fuck right off too.

As can those apples that look nice from the outside but turn out to be all brown in the middle. Wanker apples.

Mr Larrington

  • A bit ov a lyv wyr by slof standirds
  • Custard Wallah
    • Mr Larrington's Automatic Diary
Re: the food rant thread
« Reply #63 on: 29 April, 2015, 05:59:26 pm »
“Pears can just fuck off too. 'Cause they're gorgeous little beasts, but they're ripe for half an hour, and you're never there. They're like a rock or they're mush. In the supermarket, people banging in nails. "I'll just put these shelves up, mate, then you can have the pear." … So you think, "I'll take them home and they'll ripen up." But you put them in the bowl at home, and they sit there, going, "No! No! Don't ripen yet, don't ripen yet. Wait 'til he goes out the room! Ripen! Now now now!
External Transparent Wall Inspection Operative & Mayor of Mortagne-au-Perche
Satisfying the Bloodlust of the Masses in Peacetime

Re: the food rant thread
« Reply #64 on: 29 April, 2015, 08:07:06 pm »
Just a statement of fact.

At a VERY small town diner in Tootsville which is the far end of the subway on Staten Island we ordered cold beer and a burger. The beer was so cold it had frost on the mug and the burger...

Was thick, on half a bun and had the gerkin on the side of the plate and the gerkin alone needed cutting to fit my mouth let alone the burger.

So... "it ain't necessarily so" that it works like a sandwich.

PH
Bees do nothing invariably.

Re: the food rant thread
« Reply #65 on: 30 April, 2015, 12:53:14 am »
Plums where the stone hasn't formed properly. They can fuck right off.

Any Spanish plums -hard as rock. No thank you.
 Only British plums please  , only in season and mostly under crumble or pastry.

Having had a gutfull of stewed pears in my teenage years, (we had an effing big pear tree in the garden) they can GTF as well.

Tigerrr

  • That England that was wont to conquer others Hath made a shameful conquest of itself.
  • Not really a Tiger.
    • Humanist Celebrant.
Re: the food rant thread
« Reply #66 on: 30 April, 2015, 07:40:24 am »
The French, who like to go one better on food things, are very keen on things that are ''Onctuerrs'.
Not content with Anglo pronounciation they extend the 'errs' ending so they can roll it round the mouth and gargle on it.
It does mean greasy.
Humanists UK Funeral and Wedding Celebrant. Trying for godless goodness.
http://humanist.org.uk/michaellaird

Jaded

  • The Codfather
  • Formerly known as Jaded
Re: the food rant thread
« Reply #67 on: 30 April, 2015, 09:12:12 am »
On the subject of fruit and veg things, any of it that doesn't have a flavour or texture - i.e. loads of supermarket stuff. Bred for looks, like a vacuous showdog.
It is simpler than it looks.

menthel

  • Jim is my real, actual name
Re: the food rant thread
« Reply #68 on: 30 April, 2015, 09:17:39 am »
Plums where the stone hasn't formed properly. They can fuck right off.

Any Spanish plums -hard as rock. No thank you.
 Only British plums please  , only in season and mostly under crumble or pastry.

Having had a gutfull of stewed pears in my teenage years, (we had an effing big pear tree in the garden) they can GTF as well.

I would agree but my recent need for fruit and the fact that most apples are now secretly brown in the middle and that the orange season has gone and left us with the dross meant I needed a change.

British plums, oh yes- we go to a PYO in Esher that has plum trees. I came out of there last time we went with a belly full of plums and another bag full. They were so good.


Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
Re: the food rant thread
« Reply #69 on: 30 April, 2015, 09:53:54 am »
On the subject of fruit and veg things, any of it that doesn't have a flavour or texture - i.e. loads of supermarket stuff. Bred for looks, like a vacuous showdog.
This. Some of the worst are those huge, glossy red apples - I think they're called discovery - which look so gorgeous but have the taste and feel of cotton wool.
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

menthel

  • Jim is my real, actual name
Re: the food rant thread
« Reply #70 on: 30 April, 2015, 10:10:30 am »
On the subject of fruit and veg things, any of it that doesn't have a flavour or texture - i.e. loads of supermarket stuff. Bred for looks, like a vacuous showdog.
This. Some of the worst are those huge, glossy red apples - I think they're called discovery - which look so gorgeous but have the taste and feel of cotton wool.

That would probably be a red delicious. The discovery is the typical early apple of the UK apple season, red and green with pink tinged flesh and a sweet, perfumed flavour. Mmmm.

Rant- I now want a discovery or two and some ripe, juicy english plums.

ian

Re: the food rant thread
« Reply #71 on: 30 April, 2015, 10:42:38 am »
Ah, those little oranges. They go two ways, such is their tricksy nature. Those you piddle away the peel to reveal a shrunken, dry, mummy-like cadaverous inside, all desiccated, old shoe leather and disappointment. Or there’s the more resistant ones, the ones where you piddle and piddle to get through to a promising glimmer of juicy flesh and then, ARGH, it defends itself with a laser beam of juice right through your eye. You end the process, one-eyed, speckled with orange blobs, juice sprayed up the wall and across the floor like you're in the middle of a fruit-murder scene, clutching the remains of a orange that looks like someone has driven a truck over it. And then reversed back over it.

I've always been a bit scared of fruit. Growing up in the East Midlands, there wasn’t a lot of it. Fruit was more of a myth than an actual thing. Perhaps in your gardens of England you were gorging on apples, pears, plums and berries. We had to make do with coal. My grandparents never ate vegetables or fruit with the exceptions of potatoes, peas, and rhubarb. Rhubarb had to be entombed in sugar, to a depth were you needed heavy machinery to unearth it, and then it was so sour your skull would shrink and pucker. Peas and potatoes were tossed liberally in bacon fat or beef dripping. Liberally, as in they were praying for rescue. Shell have spilled less oil. It wasn't a meal without lard, which was a bona fide food group when they were younger. You had to have five types of rendered animal product each day. There was a government chart somewhere.

Peas, unless I was lucky and my grandad had grown some, were the marrowfat variety. Those little green-grey musket balls that were unconvincing as vegetables. Even the name was denies they’re veg. My gran would soak them for about a week with some concoction of soda and then cook them for another week. At which point they were still vaguely bullet-like but had taken on the grey hue of the recently deceased. My gran would raise them like Lazarus with a few magic drops of luminous green food colouring. There’s nothing in nature that is or ever was that colour. A 1940s chemistry lab maybe. I suspect it had killed a lot of lab rats before my gran started testing it on children. To this day, I call it Agent Green.

Apples, though, they had apples. They never ate an apple. Apples were a decorative feature intended to sit in the bowl on the coffee table in the room that all grandparents in that time had but never used. A room stuck waiting for special occasions that never came. Those apples never went mouldy, they’d sit there and gradually and almost imperceptibly wrinkle and mummify. I can only assume the drifting fug of cigarette smoke had a preservative effect. Once as a child, I snuck in there, and as I admired the collection of royalty paraphernalia and coronation china, my eyes were tugged to the natural and refreshing green of those apples. I'd heard about people in other parts of the world eating fruit and had vague sense that apples might be edible. Tasty even. It was admittedly a strange concept but I was a curious child. So I reached out and touched one. Brought it my mouth and bit into it. And don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t that. Oh my god, it was like mush inside, a foul powdery, brown substance that I couldn't even spit out. I'd bitten into the Tutankhamen of apples. Good god, that apple might have dated back to the Garden of Eden.

I can't bite into an apple to this day, I have to cut a sliver off with a knife and then poke it few times just in case.

Re: the food rant thread
« Reply #72 on: 30 April, 2015, 10:50:06 am »
I'm angry with my brain. I find food delicious through taste and/or simply volume. With condiments most things can be salvaged. On holiday I accidentally ordered one of those freaky pizzas that are just parma ham, rocket and few bits of ripped up burata, I'd always laughed at people who ordered that, I mean who wants a pizza with a salad on it. I really liked it. 

Re: the food rant thread
« Reply #73 on: 30 April, 2015, 04:33:08 pm »
Ian, your food posts brighten my day.

Back to gravy-Does anyone recall this place ? 
  http://www.kitchennightmaresblog.com/2011/05/uk-season-4-episode-2-fenwick-arms.html  ,       
 
Gordon Ramsay persuaded to the owner to  market the pub restaurant as the home of good gravy.
Obviously there was no market for hardcore gravy as the last time that I was down that way , the pub was shut-for good.

Worse still the landlord was reported to have debunked to this side of the Pennines , and only a few miles away from our house.

ian

Re: the food rant thread
« Reply #74 on: 30 April, 2015, 05:12:26 pm »
I'm angry with my brain. I find food delicious through taste and/or simply volume. With condiments most things can be salvaged. On holiday I accidentally ordered one of those freaky pizzas that are just parma ham, rocket and few bits of ripped up burata, I'd always laughed at people who ordered that, I mean who wants a pizza with a salad on it. I really liked it.

Indeed. I remember many years ago there was a place we went for pizza and beer after a hard day harvesting seaweed from the beach in Narragansett Bay (there was a reason for needing a bootful of red algae). The first time they rolled out this piece of flat bread sprinkled with random dots of torn up cheese and speckles of pesto sauce amongst a rather spartan forest of rocket, I set myself up for disappointment. This definitely wasn't deep dish. But oh my, best pizza ever. I make it at home, admittedly not as well, but burata, rocket, and pesto, and chopped tomatoes is all you need. Optional ham. Base should be very thin and crisp.