the food rant thread

[spesh]

Raw herring? What are you people, mental or something? OK, I had to eat raw herring once and didn't precisely die, but I think I might have come close to having a facial convulsion. I was made to eat it by Chef Erik. I have no idea who Chef Erik is, but I'm told he's a celebrity in Sweden.

I didn't realise he did fish as well as chicken.

Fishie Chowder: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svxiWwF-fyk

Pöpcørn Shrimp: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7UmUX68KtE

[contango]

The Chinese seem to love odd coloured Fantas too. Odd coloured anything. I'm not sure about all those additives, kids seem a lot dumber these days, so I reckon excesses of E110 made me what I am. I quite fancy some Tarhun, which I've never tried. Mind you I made that mistake with Unicum which is definitely a case of spit rather than swallow.

Here in USAnia you can get all sorts of grape drinks that are a lurid shade of purple that looks like it should be in a biology lab somewhere and that don't taste anything like grape. At least that's what I thought until I ate some Real Grapes here, and found to my amazement that they taste remarkably like the lurid purple grape drinks.

Oh yes, back onto the solids: fish. I'm not big on piscine menu items. I can't eat sushi or sashimi, the sensation of raw fish in my mouth just makes me wriggle and gag. I don't get it. Raw meat in general. And fish is a bit smelly. Yes, yes, someone will say but if it's fresh it doesn't smell. But it's not unless you're bloody Rick Stein or have a great big bloody trawler parked outside, it's not fresh and it is fishy.

Fish is kind of supposed to smell like fish. If it didn't smell like fish I'd wonder what was wrong with it. Admittedly the sort of thing that "smells like fish" in the same way that cat farts "smell like fish" is probably best avoided. You'd love octopus sushi - you get the raw fish sensation while also knowing you're eating a slice of tentacle. My wife can't even stand the thought of eating octopus. One time in a Korean restaurant I ordered an octopus dish, and it showed up as basically a load of 2" lengths of tentacle. I loved it, but apparently the mere sight of it made her feel ill. Which was a shame, because it meant we never went back to that restaurant.

[ian]

No octopus here. I don't eat things with tentacles, antennae, or other sticky out bits that don't qualify as limbs. And preferably no more than four. As a regular traveller to China and Japan, I'm often assaulted by my dinner. I once ate a sea cucumber. That is not a cucumber. OK, I'll eat a carefully dismembered crustacean (never, never barnacles, that was a one time gig I've no wish to repeat).

Fish, in general, should come in a finger format.

Ah, the concord grape. It's basically a sweet.

[ian]

Raw herring? What are you people, mental or something? OK, I had to eat raw herring once and didn't precisely die, but I think I might have come close to having a facial convulsion. I was made to eat it by Chef Erik. I have no idea who Chef Erik is, but I'm told he's a celebrity in Sweden.

I didn't realise he did fish as well as chicken.

And there I am, at a formal business dinner, wearing my most sensible face, being introduced to the chef of one Stockholm's most famous dining establishment. And that's the very image that won't leave my brain.

[Mr Larrington]

Pickled isn't raw....
I'd rather have that than the smoked eel again.

Smoked eel is teh Aces though should ideally be served with a glass of schnapps "to clean one's fingers".

Pickled anything is deeply suspect.  If a foodstuff wants to go off, let it, and throw it away or feed it to the staff/poor children/pigs.

[ian]

And pickling isn't cooking. Leaving a dead thing in a vat of acid isn't cooking. It's a way of disposing of the evidence.

There is actually no upper limit on the number of pickled cucumbers and gherkins I can eat in one session.

[Mr Larrington]

And pickling isn't cooking. Leaving a dead thing in a vat of acid isn't cooking. It's a way of disposing of the evidence.

(Sings)

I should have listened to Pop Tart Mark
And had the head dissolved in acid by a Belgian clean up team

(Bows to audience, splits trousis)

[Eccentrica Gallumbits]

And pickling isn't cooking. Leaving a dead thing in a vat of acid isn't cooking. It's a way of disposing of the evidence.

There is actually no upper limit on the number of pickled cucumbers and gherkins I can eat in one session.

When I was a small, my mum once found me sitting on the kitchen floor with a spoon and a jar of pickled onions, steadily eating my way through them.

[CrinklyLion]

There was no apparent limit on the amount of Great Granny Isobel's homemade pickled beetroot (homegrown by Great Grandad Bill) that I would eat if left to my own devices as a small child.

[rafletcher]

Beetroot 

That is all.

[fuzzy]

Dear Wetherspoons (The Catherine Wheel, Henley). Your Philadelphia Cheesesteak inna bun was very nice BUT the menus said 'with Monterey Jack Cheese'.

Now, correct me if I am wrong but, Monterey Jack Cheese looks like this. If it looks like this, shirley it is sauce?

[ian]

Having given it some thought, I can probably eat all the pickled vegetables in the world. Beetroot are purple loveliness in the jar, red cabbage, pickled onions, you name it. Pickled animal or fish parts, no, that's back into evidence disposal. I also flagrantly disregard the 'use within 5 days' warnings. I believe in living on the edge and intestinal parkour.

Now Mr Fuzzy, to your your issue.

A proper Philly cheesesteak will typically have cheese sauce, often the aforementioned Cheez Whiz, so Wetherspoons are being surprisingly authentic. Generally you can also ask for provolone or american, but I'm pretty sure not Monterey Jack, as that's a west coast abomination. In cheesesteak ordering parlance, it's a 'one whiz with' (one cheesesteak with Cheez Whiz and fried onions). You could go for a 'one american with' which would net you American cheese (so bland it's utterly fantastic) with fried onions. 'One Monterey Jack with' would probably just get you thrown out.

[L CC]

There was no apparent limit on the amount of Great Granny Isobel's homemade pickled beetroot (homegrown by Great Grandad Bill) that I would eat if left to my own devices as a small child.

Eating beetroot as an adult makes your bloody pee look normal.

Yes really. I thought it was beetroot. Apparently no it was not. 

[contango]

Having given it some thought, I can probably eat all the pickled vegetables in the world. Beetroot are purple loveliness in the jar, red cabbage, pickled onions, you name it. Pickled animal or fish parts, no, that's back into evidence disposal. I also flagrantly disregard the 'use within 5 days' warnings. I believe in living on the edge and intestinal parkour.

Pickled onions are good. Pickled onions loaded with black peppercorns and hot peppers are really good. My wife usually declines to kiss me for a while after eating them, which seems like it's the only downside to an otherwise awesome product.

Can't argue with the abomination that is pickling animal or fish parts. Almost as disgusting as advocaat. Maybe advocaat is a blend of fish that decomposed in vinegar and the contents of the zits on a thousand teenagers' faces.

[hellymedic]

I beg to differ; I do enjoy Dutch/Swedish/Danish pickled herring.
They are part of my heritage/growing up.

[Andrij]

Pickled herring, gherkin, rye bread and vodka.  YUMMY!

[Jurek]

Pickled herring, gherkin, rye bread and vodka.  YUMMY!

Yes.
The only weird thing is that given none of it contains any MSG, once you start, it is hard to stop.

[ian]

I'm pretty sure my growing up process didn't involve any kind of fish that wasn't wearing some variety of hi-vis overcoat or didn't require deployment of a tin opener.

Actually, I tell a big lie, there was the boil-in-bag fish fillets with parsley sauce. Until I was about fifteen, Captain Birdseye was pretty much the only deity in my pantheon who pulled my eyes skyward.

To this day, I demand someone takes the skin off, I've never understood that. Are you supposed it eat it? If not, why it's still there? I hate having it piled up there in the corner of my plate like my dinner has untidily undressed. I think the next time it happens I just ball it up in a napkin and have the waiter take it back to the kitchen. If the chef likes it so much, he can have it back.

[ian]

After a long weekend in NYC, I'm disappointed to report that all my food was served on plates. Nothing came to me astride a piece of slate, a discarded licence plate, hub cap, or manhole cover.

I also disgusted my wife by eating pancakes with eggs, sausage, and Canadian 'bacon' in a sea of maple syrup and butter. I also ate fried chicken on a huge belgian waffle (with spicy aioli and maple syrup) while working my way through the bar's extensive list of craft beer. She believes the the combination of meat and sweet is fundamentally wrong and may result in the collapse of the universe. I say bring on the galactic crunch.

[Jurek]

After a long weekend in NYC, I'm disappointed to report that all my food was served on plates. Nothing came to me astride a piece of slate, a discarded licence plate, hub cap, or manhole cover.

I also disgusted my wife by eating pancakes with eggs, sausage, and Canadian 'bacon' in a sea of maple syrup and butter. I also ate fried chicken on a huge belgian waffle (with spicy aioli and maple syrup) while working my way through the bar's extensive list of craft beer. She believes the the combination of meat and sweet is fundamentally wrong and may result in the collapse of the universe. I say bring on the galactic crunch.

Ian, what are you on? 

[Mr Larrington]

Maple syrup would be my guess.

[barakta]

I am never trying to arrange thirdparty catering for 350 bisexuals 50+ of whom had complex food needs EVER EVER THE FUCK EVER AGAIN!

(The caterer subcontracted to our venue (who they have to use and we had to have to use venue) decided not to read page 2 of our dietary requirements specs which we'd spent HOURS OF WORK wrangling)...  We had about 50 minutes notice of this fail when their lovely contact checked our diet needs and we said "this is only 20% of it"... 

We managed to mostly fix it with "basic" food for veganish gluten freeish and anyone else with only a 15-20 minute delay on food but I really didn't appreciate the stress and the blame. Fucking university fucking caterers.  When we are less cross we will RANT at them in formal proper manner.

[Mr Larrington]

Maple syrup would be my guess.

ETA: I'm not actually that keen on maple syrup.  Will I still be allowed into Canada if they find out?

[Cudzoziemiec]

It's like a CV, Barakta. If it's not on the first page, and preferably in the first couple of paragraphs, no one's going to read it.

[ian]

Definitely still coming down from the maple syrup high. I have to do the pancakes thing. I grew up in a locked culinary closet where fish fingers were impossibly exotic and Captain Birdseye strode like a giant between the local hills of mine spoil. I didn't even try pasta until I got to university (I could have probably waited on that, university refectory pasta not being exactly al dente to anyone who has more in their mouths than limply applauding gums). So when I first washed up on American shores, in tow of my US girlfriend who had finally tired of the task of trying to tunnel into the accents of my Stirlingshire flatmates and extract any nuggets of comprehension (possibly not worth the effort, they were mostly creatures of 80/- and burping) and found her way back home to the comforts of mom, pop, and kosher apple pie. Anyway, I remember sitting in a diner in upstate NY when she ordered pancakes with eggs and bacon. Once I'd spent an hour or two explaining my thoughts on the nature of bacon and that's-not-bacon-as-we-know-it (bonus points for guessing the half-life of that relationship), I remember the spike of horror that was driven through my soul when she tipped a Niagara Falls of maple syrup over it. Nothing in my life had prepared me for such a thing. My stomach roiled and rolled like a supertanker churned ocean as she shoveled syrupy pancakes and sunny yolked bacon into her mouth. So, so wrong. More so because I don't have some weird-watching-women-chew fetish. Like Stirling accents were to her, the combination of maple syrup, pancake (more cake than pan) was far beyond the pale of my comprehension.

And then the glistening fork was proffered to me. Have a taste, she hissed, in what must be some kind of payback for the entire Garden of Eden thing. I was caught between making a break for the Canadian border or opening wide to receive the golden cargo. Given that she was a girl and I was a boy, and that the lowering of the drawbridge to sexual favours is mostly lubricated by the oils of male acquiescence, I chomped down.

And oh my, what culinary alchemy rolled over my tongue like a happy sumo of flavour. To this day, I have stuff my face with pancakes whenever I'm in the US. I once ate so many in LA that I genuinely thought I was on the teetering end of the final trimester of delivering an entire buttermilk pancake baby.