Adam Balic

Off topic. Very admirable (not 30-something irony intended) and interesting. One thing I am curious about is how do you cope with the monotony of mid-winter?

Contains Limoncello right? I'm sure there a numerous desserts, but I can only ever remember eating large amounts of fresh fruit when staying there.

Yes, the show format is far too "reality TV" driven and a bit pointless really. What I thought has been interesting is that although the format of the contest is in some way "regional", most of the pairs have really struggled to pull together a regional menu and in some cases, have almost certainly produced a dud dish in the attempt. The Scots made the best attempt at this I think. Obviously, "regional" can be interpreted in different ways, but surely it can't be that difficult to put something together for chefs of this level?

Just for the hell of it I made the Khirino khoriatiko Greek pork and bean casserole. As you can see it is quite similar to a cassoulet really. This recipe is based on the one given by Rosemary Barron, but departs from it in several ways. The beans. Gigante from Greece and Scarlet Runners from Vienna, that later isn't traditional, but I had them in the pantry. Carrot, onion, celery and dried ham are cooked together in lard/olive oil then tomato paste is added. After the TP looses it's rawness, red wine, stock, herbs, spices and the beans, pork and lamb are added. Also added was some dried salted pork skin and a ham joint (both from Spain, not traditional). Bloody beans must have been old as they took six hours to cook. As people were coming around to eat the dish, this caused some nervous moments. These are various sausages that I have made over the last few months. These are cooked seperately and mixed with the beans and other meats. The last stage will be adding back the sauce, topping with bread crumbs and baking until the beans are soft and a crust forms. The finished dish

10/11 Got the one about Scotland wrong. I live in Scotland. Stupid quiz.

Cardoon sformati is very common throughout the countryside in Northern Italy. Basically, at certain points of the year the only plants that are growing in the veg plots are cardoons and black kale. Obviously, in more urbanised regions it's importance is reduced. Another issue is that there are dilect names for the veg. and this means that recipes etc are harder to recognise. In Tuscany they are called "gobbi ", which I think means "Hunchback".

Yes, this is correct, sorry I forgot to attribute this at the time. New baby has eaten my brain it seems.

Nah, I knew that . Heinz BB originally contained a chunk of pork in each can, there is also a Lakeland "Butterbean hotpot" which contains bacon, treacle and brown sugar. Essentially, long slowly cooked bean with cured pork dishes have emerged in many locations as it is an obvious consequence of the ingredients. One thing. Fresh pork products is likely to a more recent addition, as killing of pigs was a seasonal activity.

True enough, Boston baked beans isn't a million miles from cassoulet.

Well at least there has to be pork of some sort, and white beans. The texture relies on pork rinds, a rather overlooked fact. That can be defined as the basis: just beans and just rinds can make a cassoulet. The double cooking (stewing + gratin) is also essential. OK, the name of the Greek dish I was thinking about is khirino khoriatiko. It contains a similar range of ingredients to cassoulet and is gratined, but is quite different in spicing etc. So the basic ingredients and a lot of the technique is similar, it seems that the major differences are in the details.

One of the local poncy stores in Edinburgh are selling these preserved (sardinian) wild cardoons as an anti-pasto. Quite nice really.

A variation of the Occitan language group is spoken in the region (Click) and historically there would have been more native speakers. I imagine that this is what is ment. In my original post I confused "Occitan" with "Occidental", which are different things entirely. Occitan

John - that seems extremely unlikely. I don't know very much about the region, but what part have restaurants/taverns/eating houses historically played in giving the dish a regional identity, in contrast to 'yet another bean and meat stew' made in private homes?

There is a least one Greek casserole or gigantes beans, tomato, pork and sausage that I know of (will try to find out the name). While, "cassoulet" is a spectrum of dishes, rather then a specific dish, I would really like to know what formally distinguishes it from numerous other bean dishes of the world. I haven't read anything definative as yet on the subject. This issue of classification is a common problem for biologists, everybody can tell the difference between a dog and a cat, but it is actually quite difficult (for layman) to accurately describe what makes them physically different from each other. People end up taking about "Doggines" etc, and this seems to be the case with many iconic dishes - "bouillabaisse" is another example.

Fried ravioli seem to be common thoughout the Riviera, the version in Nice is known as Barbajouan ("Uncle John"). I have also had them in the Dauphine in France. Makes sense really, given the regions history and geography. Garibaldi (from Nice) spoke a Ligurian dilect, rather then Italian as a first language for instance and many of the dishes are shared. One day I must work out if there is a connection between these fried ravioli and classic rissoles, I imagine they are one and the same.

Spaghetti alla chitarra, Pappardelle.

The word "scallop" is derived from the old French "escalope" which means "shell". Both the shellfish and the cooking term which means 'small thin slices' derive from that. Some where and when, the latter term also got mixed up with the german word "klopfen" (to beat, in relation to a flat piece of meat) 1845 E. ACTON Mod. Cookery ix. 218 Slice very thin the white part of some cold veal, divide and trim it into scallops not larger than a shilling. 1769 MRS. RAFFALD Eng. Housekpr. (1778) 73 "To warm up Scotch Collops." So "scallop" is just a regional word for a small slice. There is no need to traveling bands of Frenchman etc, as French, German, Dutch words are part of the English language and have been for a long time. Also, this foreign words do get incoporated obviously, and often in relation to new foods. Look at the origin of "Scouse" for instance.

We were at a party His ear lobe fell in the deep Someone reached in and grabbed it It was a rock lobster We were at the beach Everybody had matching towels Somebody went under a dock And there they saw a rock It wasn't a rock It was a rock lobster .... These guys on the left.

There was an article about 8 years ago in The Age on the four and twent pie factory. Any pies that don't make the grade were ground up and became the filling for the sausage rolls. I enjoyed these pies as a kid, but I should think that they have changed significantly in the last 20-30 years. There shelf life at relatively warm temperatures for instance. Things can't have changed that much in Melbourne in the past 6 years sinxe I was there that you can't get a decent non- 4 and 20 pie if you want it. Bocastle (sp?) they were common and pretty good quality. I prefered pasties and dim sims anyway.

The more I look at the images the more the 'spines' look like matted fur, but difficult to say at this level of resolution. There are numerous species of hedgehog (including some in this region), but they don't quite look like this. Of the other spiny mammals I know of are tenrecs and echidna's do not not occur in this region. They could be young Chinese porcupines (Hystrix hodgsoni), which are sold in the region. They could be young sad nutria, with their tails tucked under them. They are exensively farmed in Eastern europe and are eaten also. This is an adult from Tuscany

Well it's a radical move but at least someone has found a use for vegetarians. In the chippies in Birmingham you can get a slice of potato deep fried in batter called a scallop. Whilst this label has obvious comic potential, I've never seen it fully exploited. Possibly those Brummies who genuinely believed that Nicky the Greek was battering shimmering molluscs have died out through natural selection. Either that or they moved to South Queensferry. ← Just as a bit of regional detail. A battered slice of potato is, or at least was in my youth, called a dab in Lancashire. ← "Scallop" isn this case most likely comes from "escalope" (slice), in Scotland these ended up in the form of "collop" (maybe extinct now). In some areas slice potatoes baked in cream and onions etc is called "Scalloped potatoes". "Dab" could be from the flatfish.

Yes it is the same for some of the European preparations I have been told about. The fat is not very good, so they are cooked in a way that removes the fat. Useful as an insect repellent though.

Sure, hence Edinburgh's finest (by a long shot and somewhat unrepresentative). But, I would bet that the majority of chip shop pies in Edinburgh are deep fried. The is nothing wrong with fried food obviously though, good stuff. Deep fried pizza in Edinburgh is an abomination though. Even for supper..

Difficult to say without seeing the heads, but they are likely to be hedgehogs. How are they cooked?

I'd suggest that Edinburgh's brief fad for deep frying everything was, in the main, publicity driven. Offering deep fried (insert random word here) was a very easy way to get a small business into the local paper. It's the same procedure used by all those Birmingham curry places offering the world's hottest vindaloo, or by London eateries that charge £85 for a sandwich. ← Deep frying everything is still populat in Edinburgh. Here is the menu from Edinburgh's finest. Deep fried scotch pie, that is an experience.