Play with your food

Especially if it ever should look like this:

Key quote:

“There is something uniquely challenging to the modern palate about savoury jellies. It’s difficult to imagine how a whole chicken ‘chaud-froid’ (covered with a layer of aspic with cream creating the effect of a thick white condom) would go down in a modern restaurant setting. Oeufs en gelée, the great French bistro classic of poached eggs in aspic, is currently experiencing a bit of a revival yet the experience of biting through pork pie jelly into a warm yolk can be, to say the least, polarising to the British palate. When AA Gill tried one recently at Aqua Nueva it caused him to write the most horribly memorable line in the last decade of British restaurant criticism ” … it was like a big wine gum of pus, only not that nice.”

Immediately after that charming image, the Guardian cheerfully asks if perhaps there isn’t room for more aspic in our lives. Has anyone, ever, said, ah yes! The scones with the precious strawberry jam and the thick layers of clotted cream clearly needed a fun dash of gelatin! Oh, I have yearned for my mash to wiggle and attempt to flee the table, and for Toast and Soldiers to be an entertaining quest of quivering egg yolks and palpitating slivers of tortured bread!

Oh wait, you wanted fun, did you?

“The unusual foodstuff involves creamed cod-flavoured ice cream coated in vanilla and pepper batter, accompanied by potato ice cream chips made with Maris Piper potatoes, all served with salt and vinegar and lemon wedges.”

It’s either terrifying or genius. Trompe-l’œil and other fancy french terms, am I right? But seriously: the words “cod-flavoured ice cream” are enough to make going vegan sound like a reasonable reactionary response. Though the potato chip ice cream? Basically a complete meal! Totally genius!

Battle of the Crisps

Because I am distracted by a) glossy things, b) wacky flavours and c) sodium, I could not resist the lure of the WORLD CUP SERIES: NEW MASSACRES OF DELICIOUSNESS.

Yes. I tried the English Roast Beef and Yorkshire Pudding. In one casual, sly move, they increased the chances of this sucker winning by an astronomical amount with one simple addition: poultry stock. Yes, it’s true that something labeled as “beef” should probably contain “cow” or at least “red meat juices”. It’s also true that something labeled “cheeseburger” should probably not be vegetarian. Clearly, this was pandering to the homefield crowd, et c. et c. et c. Rogues! Scalliwags!

Anyway, it was kind of licking the outside of a Brisket cooked with Lipton’s Onion Dip packets. So, weirdly alluring, although I kept having this urge to wave a Terrible Towel around and seek out the traditional sour cream dip. The alluring lasted, I’m going to say, five seconds, and then my mouth was all “this was not a wise move, Barr,” and my tongue was all “if you don’t stop eating these, you’ll never love green papaya salad the same way again,” and so I was all, Right, Strange Patriotic Crisps, into the bin you go. BONUS your room will then smell like a Jewish Grandmother’s kitchen, if it was used to cook nothing but brisket for fifteen years.

HINT NOT A BONUS.

Though, props for the Brazilian salsa ones, because I am a glutton for punishment, and those ended up being a legitimate food item I would happily consume, even if remuneration to a store was involved. I had no idea rosemary was Brazilian but hey, since it didn’t involve “offal” or “the parts of the animals we didn’t use up in the German Bratwurst Insanity,” delicious! Totally delicious.

Dear Volcano: Let me out of here.

Alternatively, we could just load these suckers onto ships and build a glorious, heaving wall of biscuits and sausage gravy- it could loam over the mouth of the volcano, and cause even the magma to subside in shame!

Or, you know. Damn the biscuits and full speed ahead.

Not wanted: this job

Yummy Yummy Italia in Burnley, northern England, launched the controversial pizza after owner Arash Fard, 33, visited London and saw frogs’ legs pizzas on the menu, local newspaper the Lancashire Telegraph reported.

The unusual meat toppings are bought from “alternative meats” supplier Kezie, which says the ingredients are ethically sourced from responsible farms.

Fard’s zebra creation is not his first time experimenting with ingredients. He told the Lancashire Telegraph that his range of buffalo, venison, kangaroo and crocodile pizzas were a big hit with customers since they went on sale earlier this year.

In this article, there isn’t a single word devoted to what zebra pizza actually tastes like.

Wanted: this job

The bad romance of the Prince Charming Nicolas Hermen Piesporter Goldtropfchen Spatlese and the blonde American lass, Twinkie:

What surprised us most was that this seemingly light-bodied wine coated our mouths, almost like whole milk. We expected it to be light and crisp, leaving a clean feeling in the mouth. Instead, the sweet wine had a rich, velvety mouth feel. In the glass, the wine smelled floral but tasted more like sweet pineapple. The super-sweet Twinkie actually mellowed some of the wine’s sweetness, reaching a nice balance.

It…it almost makes me crave the tender crumb of the notorious Twinkie, that loose wench, that cougar of the snack shelves. Almost. Talisker and, say, one of these laddish treats? Why, the future, it seems bright!

Riddle me this

How you can so close, o England, to Spain, and yet have limp, flaccid, bland patatas bravas? How you can be so achingly close to Italy (or, hell, France) and yet have box ice cream that is so sad, it melts when it hits the air? You’ve had boats since before there was writing! You have writing, and the internet, and photographs of actual tomatoes- surely you could assemble these magical concepts, in a single tapas visit? Just once?

In all fairness, the mussels looked smashing and the espinacas was lush in oil, and fried garlic. The walls were bright, and roughly orange, and if it hadn’t been solidly daylight I would have had sangria and been merry. But still. When one pines for the chip van outside, with its vats of fresh, crunchy potatoes, something has gone terribly wrong. You make me sad, England, sometimes.

Cup of science

Sometimes, I wonder about things. Often, in fact, I ponder things. Things I have never actually considered, beyond a consideration of the availability of decent ketchup and crunch factor: whether the simple french fry can invoke a sensation of happiness. But, ah, I am here, in the land of the potato and “chips”, where one can get funding to produce such exciting projects as this one:

The research, commissioned by the Potato Council and carried out by Aston University in Birmingham, asked 60 men and women to watch a five-minute film which graphically depicted the fall-out of the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima at the end of the Second World War.

…..

Right.

Half were then given a magazine to take their mind off the film, while the other half were given a plate of chips.

Case of the blues after observing one of the most painful events in recent human history? Head over to Mickey D’s and we’ll gorge those blues away! I’m trying to imagine how the advert for this research study went: Do bombs make you sad? Can you eat french fries and/or read? If you’re a human between the ages of 18-54, do we have a study for you!

If there’s somethin’ strange in your neighborhood, who ya gonna blame? JETLAG.

So, true story, I ended up across the globe again. I meant to tidy this up in the intervening months- maybe throw in some more homemade jetlag, bandy about words from that ol’ country called America.

But then I hit my thesis, or, more approximately, I was a frozen creampuff shivering in the tracks of an oncoming freight train laden with C-4 material.

You know. The usual difficulties of graduation and all that.

Anyway, a year later, I’m officially an M St. student at Oxford University, St Cross College, should it matter. There is a great deal of tea. Also brownies (?!). And marshmallows because the world has gone mad. Totally mad.

Educational:

A spot of education.

Forsooth.

En garde

Oh, world of wellies and flapjacks and tea and biscuits, by default. Everything seems normal. You know.

Because aliens invented the internet?

Just like this.

Best seat in town.

Oh, England. I don’t even have to lie back and think about you. You’re just so…British.

…or, whatever that is. Culture: because Ramen Noodles are a universal Bad Idea!

Economic woes have not yet hit bacon expert market; bangers holding steady and fish and chips connoisseurs worry

AA sniffs out Blighty’s best bacon sarnie

“  The Leeds experts, who toiled for 1,000 hours on 700 bacon sarnie variations, were finally able to offer this formula for hot sliced pork action: N = C + {fb (cm) . fb (tc)} + fb (Ts) + fc . ta, where N=force in Newtons required to break the cooked bacon, fb=function of the bacon type, fc=function of the condiment/filling effect, Ts=serving temperature, tc=cooking time, ta=time or duration of application of condiment/filling, cm=cooking method, C=Newtons required to break uncooked bacon.  “

(courtesy of The Register)

Baconophilia returns favor of the British Invasion; men in Scotland already drooling in preparation for the marriage of rashers and deep fried Mars Bars.

Pork futures?

How about no

Seriously. What, the regular, salty stuff isn’t good enough any more? Cookie dough isn’t good enough? You disturb me, America.

(Via gizmodo)

Yes, that’s Play-doh: Edible version!