StephenT

Definitely something to do with the texture. Also, flavours of marinade, etc, seem to have permeated it more by that point. And once it's sat around enough to get cold, it's done a lot of "resting". I love cold fish as well. In fact I have an urge to rush home in a big hurry and cook up some fish and then... leave it in the fridge and eat it tomorrow morning!

Peter, It's well said because it distilled into a few clearly understandable paragraphs something with which I agree. In fact, in your response you said that you don't care about authenticity either, you just happen to like the food as it's served in Italy. Therefore you agree with macrosan too.

Well said macrosan!

Probably that it was grown in the dark and is paler than usual.

Well in my mind the names of those chefs that have great reputations but don't promote themselves are still brands. They're just not what most people would consider successful brands as they're only known to people who go to their restaurants. The notion of "a brand" as "a brand that everyone knows because someone spends lots of money and/or energy promoting it" is something that's in common use but that doesn't mean it's the only correct use. Take hi-fi equipment as an example. Only people who are really into it know the top-end brands that will set you back many thousands of Dollars for a single component. But that doesn't mean that they're not brands. As I said in the beginning, that's how I see it. Arguments over what exactly what "brand" means are unlikely to change that

Branding is just making the brand, i.e. associating something with your name. Telling lots of people how great the brand is a different issue - that's promotion and marketing. Having a brand but not promoting it is a bit pointless, but that doesn't mean that branding and promotion are one and the same. PS I know almost nothing about either branding or promotion but the above sounds like common sense.

I've been reading a book on making sauces, written by a chap who's a real perfectionist about recipes. He says not to use any chicken skin when making chicken stock as it gives a harsh flavour as well as being fatty. Has anyone does any specific tests of stock made with skin against stock made without skin?

Possibly ducks and geese are naturally putting on fat during the winter, so they take to the fattening process for foie gras more readily?

Nothing at all... I seem to be very lucky in that regard

The gustatory version will be a combination of two things - how good your memory is generally, and also how much attention you're paying to what you're eating. The latter is something that's likely to be present in people who really enjoy food and have practice at paying attention to it. Note-taking as mention above, also helps in the way that revising work for an exam helps you remember (quite apart from the fact that it allows you to look back at your notes once you've eventually forgotten). Also, having a frame of reference for a meal before eating it will enable you to gauge it properly (as discussed before on this thread of course) and therefore remember it more correctly. Yvonne mentioned fondness of childhood dishes - I'm sure that one of the reasons many people have fond memories of childhood dishes is that they don't really have a frame of reference at the time they had them and also aren't critically assessing their mother's / gran's / whoever's cooking when they're children (or they might be, in which case they're probably Frasier Crane). Edit: Fat Guy sneaked in while I was typing and said the same thing by way of an example!

That is what I was implying, but as John points out it wasn't exactly what he was describing in his post. I still think it could be true though. Sometimes the first time I have a wine I've not had before I'll think it's brilliant and soon afterwards I'll buy another bottle and probably tell my friends they have to have some because it's brilliant. But while I'm drinking it I'm secretly thinking to myself that it's not all I remember it to be. The first time there is a "wow" factor in addition to the actual taste and everything falls into place, whereas the second time I find myself concentrating, trying to detect the notes that appealed to me the first time (were I more experienced in "tasting" as opposed to just "drinking" wine, I'm sure this would be easier). The first time I ate Thai food I thought "This is brilliant, why haven't I ever eaten lemongrass before?". Now if I look at the menu of the Thai restaurant near where I live, I know exactly what everything tastes like so I don't particularly feel like ordering anything. If it was a different Thai restaurant, I might still have something that I've had before because they might prepare it differently (and hopefully better or more interestingly) than I've had before. My wife on the other hand is happy to continue ordering Phad Thai with prawns time after time regardless of where she has it. After all that, I'm not entirely sure what my point is. I think it's that when calibrating memory, you have to try to have an objective experience when relying on something for calibration - hence the first experience of something can skew this due to factors other than taste. I'm the sort of person who gets bored of things easily so this sort of situation probably affects me more than other people. When I find something that I do really enjoy eating (or drinking!) several times without getting bored of it, that's when I believe that it really is good.

Interesting that in both Steve's and John's examples it was the second bottle that was the less interesting of the two?

I take it that going go Djibouti and eating at McDonalds wouldn't count.

My wife is quite (very) picky. She doesn't like tomatoes and won't eat anything that's a "stew" but she'll eat a lot of things that are very much like a stew or in fact actually are a stew but are called something else. I think it's because when she was growing up, "stew" always contained tomatoes. To her credit, every now and then she does try to eat a tomato to see if she's changed her mind about them but she never has. She likes Indian, Thai, Chinese and various similar sorts of food but if we go to a French, Italian or "modern" anything restaurant, chances are she'll order steak because nothing else on the menu appeals to her. And if I say we're going to a restaurant, she says "is this one of those places where you pay a lot of money and get very small portions?". It does irritate me, but I cope. My plan is to try making those sorts of dishes at home so she'll HAVE to eat them and then when she goes to a restaurant she won't think they're odd and she'll order them.

Absolutely. It's just that the opinion of people who aren't interested in the conversation wouldn't carry any weight in the sample . Hrm okay then all conversations are interesting

You can contract tuberculosis by eating rich food now?

I think you'll find that if you look closer at what he said, LML didn't actually ask that question... he said that it would be a good question to ask. My initial reaction to reading that post is that it was a clever trick question to ask of someone. If you ask someone what would be best to drink with steak frites and they bother to try to answer it then they've missed the point that if they were looking for an interesting dining experience then they shouldn't be ordering steak frites in the first place! Although maybe I saw some secret underhand snobbery where there wasn't actually any intended. Of course, if you've already made up your mind to have steak frites and are looking to make that into as interesting a dining experience as possible given that starting point then the question still stands.

Skipping breakfast is bad, mmmkay...

Anything containing tomatoes. The list is fairly lengthly actually but I'm at work and can't reasonably spend the rest of the day typing it all in.

I think I know what would happen if you did that. GR would come out of the kitchen (if he's actually in there) and throw you out himself.

I think such things happen to most people at one point or another. I have a boring "there must be an explanation for things" way of thinking about things like this but since you said it's been bugging you then I'll mention a few possibilities which could well be utter rubbish 1) When I find myself craving something "junk" I sometimes eat it and then wonder why I did because it wasn't that great. This I put it down to a deficiency of something. For example if I haven't had much salt (or indeed MSG) recently then my brain knows that if I get some junk food it'll get a good dosing of salt and/or MSG. This sort of thing happens a lot after drinking too much when your body needs all sorts of things to replenish what the booze sucks out of you. 2) Mental associations with the food in question. You said you ate a lot of it while growing up - perhaps you enjoy eating it as a sort of comfort food? I associate tinned asparagus and tinned ham with happy times because we used to have them at Christmas when I was young - I'm sure most people would categorise them as being rubbish though. 3) It actually does taste good regardless of the fact that it's junk. If junk food always tasted bad then why would anybody eat it? But the question of "taste" has been debated at length all over this board so doesn't warrant any more discussion here. So think about it really hard next time you eat one of those sandwiches and see if it fits into any of those categories. And try looking at the two sandwiches when you're not actually hungry. Don't forget that it's not just your tastebuds that food satisfies, it's the rather complex chemical soup in your brain that it satisfies through a number of different channels.

Maybe you're getting addicted to evil additives in the first sandwich

I ate lots of leftovers when I was younger. My mother managed to do great things with them. Now I feel guilty if I don't try to use my own leftovers even though I can afford not to. Of course, often they just live in the fridge for a week and then get thrown away but it's a token gesture at not subscribing to the "consume, consume and dispose" mentality.

I thought that would work the other way round...

I've had strawberry (my favourite), chocolate, white chocolate and almond. Strawberry's been my favourite. My gripe is that when I get them often most of the sticks are broken.