Tag: Gluttony

Nice Try, Nerds

Food & Drink, Science!

Another breathless warning from some joyless dorks:

Whether it’s a mature cheddar or a crumbly feta, cheese is one of the most beloved foods around the world.  But in news that will concern fans of the moreish treat, scientists have issued an urgent warning about eating cheese. 

For the first time, a groundbreaking study has revealed that these dairy products are ‘ripe in microplastics’.  Scientists believe the tiny plastic particles, measuring 5mm or smaller, could be entering cheese at various stages of production.  Their analysis revealed that the most contaminated products were ripened cheeses – those aged for more than four months – with a staggering 1,857 plastic particles per kilogram.

For comparison, that means a ripened cheese contains around 45 times more microplastics than bottled water.

Yeah, and 45 times “pretty much zip” is still close to nothing.

Since plastics contain chemicals known to be toxic or carcinogenic, scientists are concerned that a buildup of microplastics could damage tissues in our bodies.

“Could”.  Yeah, well at my age I pretty much don’t care, because at some point something’s going to kill me off anyway.  And seeing that these microplastic thingies are pretty much ubiquitous in all food types, I’ll just carry on eating this, my favorite kind of food.

Your opinion may vary, and I don’t care.

Hot Stuff

Food & Drink, Morons & Idiots

No, not some totty flashing her whatsits. Apparently, Dave’s has come to London:

Famously, Dave’s offers a notoriously spicy ‘Reaper’ burger, covered in red-hot batter, said to reduce even the most hardened of chilli lovers to tears.  Although the batter recipe is a closely-guarded secret, the key ingredient is powdered Carolina Reaper, the second-hottest chilli pepper in the world. Carolina Reaper registers a whopping 1.6 million on the Scoville scale, the internationally-accepted system used to measure the heat of chillis. 

So it’s little surprise that customers can only order the Reaper if they are 18 or over and sign a legal waiver. According to the waiver, Reaper can cause ‘sweating, indigestion, shortness of breath, allergic reactions, vomiting and diarrhoea’, but in extreme cases, it can even lead to ‘chest pain, heart palpitations, heart attack and stroke’.

…with dolorous outcomes, because that’s what intrepid reporters do — stupid stuff:

For the first seven seconds after taking a big bite, it feels like the hype around the Reaper has been exaggerated – but the intense burn suddenly takes off like a bullet.  As Johnny Cash’s ‘Ring of Fire’ starts playing on the loudspeakers, the heat-sensitive pain receptors in my mouth are triggered – and I soon turn into a total, sticky mess. Sweat flows from every pore of my face and snot dribbles from my nose, and I can’t wipe the tears from my eyes because I don’t want to touch them with my messy gloved hands.  Struggling somewhat with my coordination, I slosh milkshake over my trousers and the floor. Reaper is ludicrously, idiotically hot.

The only idiot is you, dummy.

Let it be known that I’m not afraid of stuff like Madras curry, for example.  I remember going to a restaurant in Bangalore, and ordering a Madras chicken dish.

The waiter looked at me a little dubiously.  “You know the Madras is very spicy”, he murmured to me.  (“Spicy” being how Indians describe something that’s going to set fire to your mouth.)

“Nah, I’m from South Africa,” I said to him.  “I grew up eating hot curry ” (Which is true.)

And yes it was quite hot, but also very savory.  I could have eaten two dishes of it.  (Madras is actually classed as a “medium” hot curry.)  I have no problem with Vindaloo — the next level up, and you have to hold me back when it comes to Lamb Vindaloo — but I draw the line very firmly at that point, because after Vindaloo, bad things start happening to you.

And for the record:  Vindaloo curry measures about 15,000 to 20,000 Scoville units.

So 1.6 million Scovilles?  You must be kidding.

And I’m calling bullshit on this whole “hot pepper” nonsense.  It’s not manly or macho or any of that crap when it comes to handling peppery heat.  25,000 Scovilles is like rubbing Deep Heating cream on your skin;  1.6 million is pouring gasoline on yourself and setting it on fire.  And I’m not really exaggerating, either.

Guys who brag about how much heat they can handle are vainglorious idiots, and quite frankly, they deserve every perforation they get in their stomachs or intestines.

As our  flipping idiot  brave reporter Jonathan Chadwick describes it:

Reaper is a 24-hour experiment on your body. As it travels, it inflicts different types of pain – burning numbness in the mouth, aching stomach, and, perhaps worst of all, the morning-after sensation of a red hot poker in the worst place imaginable.

A doctor buddy of mine back in Johannesburg told me once of a patient who actually had small lesions and blisters on their anus following a drunken night out feasting on super-hot food.  The patient was female.

But hey:  be my guest, but please don’t come to me for help because I’m just going to laugh at you.

Made To Taste

Food & Drink

From Longtime Reader and Friend Mark S. comes this episode from the Bearded Ones about making biltong, and it’s good.  (Warning:  contains a Seffrican.)

It is almost exactly the way I make it, except that I don’t have a fancy drying room.  And the overnight “cook” in the brine (prior to the drying thereof) I do in a sealed Baggie overnight, turning it over halfway through, as does the Seffrican guy in the video.

Also, if you cannot regulate the drying temperature (as most can’t — I dry my biltong in our garage, for instance), then you can’t really dry it for six days, because then it’ll come out like driftwood.  I go for three days — tops — and New Wife’s piece sometimes only two-and-a-half days.

Note however that our Seffrican star of the show doesn’t actually give any secrets away in terms of the quantities of the spices in the mix that he uses (other than the Bearded Butcher spice, that is), which is kinda cheating y’all out of the refinement of the process.  Dosage, as Doc Russia always says, matters.

Just as a reminder, then, let me list the quantities I use, per 1lb of raw beef:

  • 8 tbsp red wine vinegar OR brown apple cider vinegar
  • 2 tbsp coarse (kosher) salt
  • 2 tsp coarse ground black pepper
  • 3 tbsp whole coriander seeds, roasted dry then finely ground

…and the process is described here.

Of late I’ve been adding about a teaspoonful of Lawry’s Seasoning Salt to the mix — in case you don’t want to go through the hassle of ordering seasoning from Bearded Butchers and just want to grab it at the supermarket.  New Wife, who is more a connoisseur of biltong than even I am, pronounces the new mix “delicious”, so be my guest.  (Oh, and she likes the fatty, moist biltong, whereas I prefer the leaner, drier variety.)

Also, don’t forget to try Reader Sean’s Biltong Recipe, which is excellent.

Finally, let me issue a word of warning about this lovely stuff, as always:  it is highly addictive, so don’t come crying to me when your butcher’s bill escalates.

It’s bad enough that I’m blamed for causing UGPI (Uncontrollable Gun Purchase Impulse) without having a biltong addiction tossed, so to speak, into the mix.

Meal Planning

Food & Drink

This article got me thinking:

Two-time Masters winner Scottie Scheffler is taking the opportunity to plan a Texas-style menu for this year’s Masters Tournament dinner, according to reports.  Scheffler has the honor of arranging the menu for the “Masters Club” dinner, which was first held in 1952 in honor of golf legend Ben Hogan.

The tradition has carried over to today, when the current Green Jacket winner is given the task of planning next year’s dinner.

Your assignment, should you choose to accept it, is to set your menu for such an event. Assume that you’d have excellent chefs (like they have at Augusta National) who could create pretty much anything you specified.  You should have four courses:   a soup and/or starter, antipasto/fish, main course and dessert.

Mine is below the fold, to give you an idea.

Read more

Take-Home Foods

Food & Drink, Travels

As someone who’s traveled quite a bit, this article struck a chord with me:

A recent Reddit discussion has highlighted how trips abroad are capable of permanently changing a traveller’s diet, with commenters revealing foreign dishes they had on their travels that they now can’t stop eating. 

The list includes acai from Brazil*, Morocco’s cinnamon-dusted oranges, onigiri (Japanese rice balls), pasteis de nata (milk custard tart) from Portugal, ajvar (a red pepper paste) from the Balkans and even spaghetti carbonara  from Italy — which is quite different from the stuff you’ll get at Olive Garden, trust me.   (There’s other less-salutary stuff like haggis and buffalo wings on their list, but whatever.)

*can someone tell me the difference between acai and blueberries?

One of the foods on the Reddit list struck home for me:  French baguette and butter — which, having sampled it in Paris, made me refuse to eat American shelf bread ever again. Seriously.  Who would have thought that simple bread and butter would be an exquisite meal all by itself?  (Well, anyone who’s ever tasted the real stuff.)  It’s one of the few dishes which I prefer eating with unsalted butter, because the bread becomes unutterably sweeter.

That Portuguese tart (not Sarah Hoyt) is very familiar to me as the Afrikaans melk tert (they’re almost identical, and the Seffricans have even made a cream liqueur based on its taste).  The only difference is that the Porros use puff pastry instead of pie crust pastry.  Hmmmm… now that’s a thought.

I”m going to try the Moroccan oranges this weekend after I’ve done the Friday shopping (no oranges in the house), but with three different sugars as an experiment to see which tastes best.  (Light brown, Demarara or 10x mixed with the cinnamon, in case you’re wondering.)

I’ll also try making ajvar,  which sounds like hummus mixed with ground spicy red peppers, but I’ll use South African Peppadew spicy peppers because they are spectacular.

There are a couple that I’ve encountered on my travels which I wish were staples Over Here.

One of my all-time favorite imported meals happens to be poutines, from Canuckistan, but only one place around here makes them properly (the Holy Grail pub in Plano).  I must have eaten poutines at least twice a day when driving back from Montreal to Detroit, along with Tim Horton’s coffee to wash them down.

Another is Viennese Sachertorte which, having had some in meine schones Wien, would kill me if I could find it here because aaaaargh it’s luvverly.

Over Here, we’d call it “death by chocolate”, because it really is.

There are a few others, but I think they would be best enjoyed in their home countries (e.g. pisco sours in Chile and Welsh rarebit in Britishland).  Of Wadworth 6X and Greggs sausage rolls we will not speak.

And so, Gentle Readers:  tell me about your favorite furrin dishes, in Comments.