A Balic

Jim, do you think that you could get me the source of information that says sweetbreads sold in the US are the hypothalamus? I have looked myself and haven't been able to come up with anything concrete, although several articles do state "sweetbreads are the hypothalamus". I suspect that there has been confusion of the thymus with the hypothalamus, as they hypothalamus is a) a bit small to bother with, b) The thymus is the classic organ that does atrophy with age, c) if you drop the "hypo-" bit, then thalamus and thymus sound similar. But as I said earlier, "sweetbread" is a very loose descriptor, so it is quite possible that a different organ is used in the US compared to classic French cooking. If so, it would be very interesting to to find out how this difference came about.

OK, I will drop this thread as it is far to annoying for everbody, so I apologise for that. Wilfrid, I also have Global knives, I was making ironic fun at myself, so no offence intended and thank you for you time. I will try communicate a more clear understanding about what I am thinking about next time.

Jim - the hypothalamus is part of the brain, isn't that illegal to sell as food these days with BSE and all?

Now you've lost me Adam, and I'm a philosopher. If we are to say anything about something's innate value, we have to be able to perceive it. So what's the perceived value? No, sorry, completely unintelligible. By the way, I cook pretty neat sweetbreads. Yes, sorry about that, not very clear is it. How about this, a bread roll is of innately (intrinsic, essentially?) better value as food then, say, a rock. But in some circumstances (clearly drug related in this example), the difference between the two in perceived food value may not be as clear. Were they thymus sweetbreads, or did you perceive them to be pancreas?

Wilfrid, I except you apology, but lets not have any more of these slip-ups :). The original "Consuming Passions" dustjacket had a photograph on the back of a loaf of Roman bread in the shape of a very large phallus. This was deemed unseemly, so it was replaced with a photo of the (fetching) author holding a pet rat. Its that type of a book. It seems that you have seen and experienced the changing attitudes of the British to food in at a very personal level (domestic freezers eh, how quaint. Global knives of the '70's). This puts you in an excellent position to give an opinion on the following: The current increasing interest in food in the general population, does it reflect greater appreciation of food or just increased level in our expectations of what we eat?

Bux, if I have a "level", then it is only because I had my pretentious hat on (for which I apologise)! Right, if I stick to the sweetbread example, I agree with all of your points, but why is the situation like this? It is true of of most products that they can be prepared to a better standard in a restaurant, then in a domestic setting, so why the special position of sweetbreads (as an example). True, it is easier to obtain and cook chicken then sweetbreads for domestic use, but this is in part because there is little domestic demand for them, as they are perceived as being a 'restaurant' item, so little retail supply, hence no confidence/skill in cooking this item. It is a bit of a circular argument. So when we choose to eat a particular item, in a particular way, at what point do we distinguish between its innate value and its perceived value? Is this possible?

On the subject of Asian food and European wine matching, I have found the Sushi/Sushimi and Japanese food using butter sauces is well matched with lightly chilled Fino and Manzanilla sherry. Sherry is cheap and vastly under-rated so it can't hurt to try!

On the subject of Asian food and European wine matching, I have found the Sushi/Sushimi and Japanese food using butter sauces is well matched with lightly chilled Fino and Manzanilla sherry. Sherry is cheap and vastly under-rated so it can't hurt to try!

Deep fried haggis with sweet chilli sauce. And a fried egg on top. The haggis is obviously Scottish, but it was my idea to combine it with the sauce and egg. Fusion cuisine slumming it, I like to think. n.b. I am a professional, do not attempt this at home.

The willingness to pay high prices for a given item/experience is, obviously (I guess), an acknowledgement to oneself of the high personal value attributed to such an item/experience. This is a perfectly natural thing for people in our culture to do. I am interested in what people think this 'attribution of high personal value' means and what it says about us. I suspect that a growing sophistication in peoples/societies attitudes to food-culture, is at some point self-limiting due to a lack of recognition of what the "value" represents. "Who would eat sweetbreads?". Good question, it asks what is the intrinsic value of this item and what does this value represent to us. Sweetbreads are an interesting food item to illustrate these points. Some people will not consider eating sweetbreads, others will eat them will relish (no pun intended). Of the latter group, many will eat them at a restaurant, but would not consider preparing them at home. The sweetbread is constant in all of this, but value attributed to it changes dramaticaly. If we can't recognise what this dynamic represents, then what does that say about our food-culture? Mind you, this may be complete sophistry, so in that case you may wish to tell me to shut-up.

My favorite risotto is risotto made by my wife. She can make fantastic risotto, while I am complete rubbish at it. Basicaly, I over cook the rice, so it ends up to mushy. Having said that I will say that I think that fewer flavours are better and certain ingredients work very well. Fresh new peas see to go really well in risotto, maybe it is the sweetness and textural contrast to the rice. On this note of textural contrast, puy lentils in risotto works well, especially for more earthy risotti, say flavoured with smoked chicken breast or sausage etc. Not to many lentils though.

Robert, well yes in part. It is a little more complex maybe ie. the factors that a creating an increased food awareness in the UK, are having the opposite effect in metropolitan France (well, this is what I have read, others may know more). I can think of how this is occuring, but I am interested in "why" it is occuring.

Don't say it's so! I'm not sure I articulated myself very well (part of my reason for writing on egullet is to improve my communication skills), but basically after reading a 170 year old British cookbook I obsessed a little over dynamic, if transient, nature of an understanding of food. These Georgians were very similar to people us in there attitudes to food (they would have been great one egullet!), I guess it has insipired me to think about what our current relationship to food is. Since egullet has many people with a greater understanding of these weight matters, some who even make a living from the subject, I though I would rely on the kindness of strangers, as it were.

On the 'Basic Food' thread a begining of a discussion on the relationship of the British and food was made. I thought it would be better to start a new thread and expand its scope somewhat. Basically, I recently found a Georgian cookbook after reading this I realised that the British middleclass diet was better, in many respects, then that of today. Wilfrid, quite rightly, pointed out that the two world wars may have had something to do with this. Ironically, since reading Philippa Pullar's "Consuming Passions", I have found that the basic British diet improved vastly post-WWII. The general idea is that although nutrition has improved in the population, the appreciation of food has attropied. The demands of the time had created a level playing field between the haves and the have nots. My interest from this is this: The current increasing interest in food in the general population, does it reflect greater appeciation of food or just increased level in our expectations of what we eat? The former case is not necessarily the same as the latter. Or putting it anther way, if you love the taste of say, a perfectly ripe peach, why would you buy a supermarket peach that has been artificialy softened and has very little flavour of a ripe peach? Could it be that the expectation that we can purchase a peach is of more value to us, then an appreciation of what it is about a peach that we actually enjoy? Many comments in various threads have touched upon the subject of our relationship with food. What is ment by "Gourmet", Kosher bacon, why are French cookbooks of such a low standard and even 'who eats sweetbreads?'. I think that this is basically are a relection of food appreciation verses food expectation. So, will the increased interest in food mean increased appreciation of why and what we eat?

Tapas? Well I had some very good tiny cuttlefish in Malaga, their ink had flavoured the batter, so the combination of sweet cephalopod, crunchy bitter batter and lemon was perfect. In Cordoba I had some very good creamed salt cod, wrapped in grilled red pepper and some fried eggplant with a honey sauce which was very good.

I can't help you with locating any Rakia (being in Edinburgh, UK), but I would say that if you do find it, it may be not quite what you remember. Rakia is one of those home made boozes that tends to differ from location to location. Most of them are strongly Anise flavoured, but sometimes they can be very faintly flavoured and are more like Grappa. Ah, Rakia. The last time I had it was at my cousins funeral, my uncles had made about five litres of the stuff. It was a very weird wake.

That's okay, I'll settle for being correct;). Seriously, a further complication is that upscale restaurants in the States almost always offer veal sweetbreads. Elsewhere - certainly in London - there's a fair chance you'll be offered lamb sweetbreads. In the latter case, I think (though I may be wrong) that the pancreas is more likely to feature. And Dstone001...I have a horrible feeling that you do mean it. Well, I order sweetbreads, and I expect a lot of other people on this site do too. And what is this fancy French name for fish eggs? Oeufs de poisson? Don't tell me it's "caviar", because that's a word which has been in the English language literally for centuries, and its original derivation is Turkish. If you do mean caviar, I would mildly observe that people also eat a lot of fish eggs which aren't caviar, for example shad or cod roe. (Deep sigh) I also eat sweetbreads, one of the better organ meats. I would rather have sweetbreads, calf liver, veal kidneys etc then steak, any day of the week. I was interested to see that the pancreas is also called sweetbreads, I guessed that this would be the case, but was unaware that the pancreas was ever eaten in UK/US etc. I haven't eaten the pancreas, but I have seen a fair few sheep pancreasi (it was a work thing) and as I said the construction of the organ is quite different to the thymus, much looser in texture. Yvonne, during my Ph.D. (which was on sheep immunololgy, hence the interest in the ruminant anatomy, professional pride and all), I worked with people who were removing the thymus from sheep. In this case the thymus was located just above the heart, while the pancreas is located nearer the abomasum (true stomach)/spleen. I haven't got any of my sheep text books with me so I did a web search and found this information: http://www.bartleby.com/87/0015.html So, I am unsure of the nature of the neck sweetbread, I think that it most likely is the thymus, but it could also be something else, maybe the thyroid? I am guessing that the term "sweetbread" is a very loose definition and may refer to large variety of vaguely identified organs. For instance you could eat the lymph nodes of sheep/cattle etc (I don't think that anybody does, although they should be very similar to the thymus), in this case I would also define them as sweetbreads. I could also call them "petit blanc" sweetbreads if it would make them easier for people to eat :). Anyway having said all this about sheep sweetbreads, I actually prefer veal sweetbreads. These are very difficult to get in the UK (as is all veal), so the most recent sweetbreads I have had were lamb sweetbreads. From their appearance I would say they were the thymus, not the pancreas. They may do things differently here in the North, compared to London though. Infact I know they do!

The pancreas and thymus are different organs. Sweetbreads are the latter. Mind your if a lamb/calf pancreas was dished up to you it would most likely be described as a sweetbread, lacking and better culinary definition. The pancreas is a much more loosely constructed organ though, so I don't think it would feature as a food item as much as the thymus in Haute cooking. Its a texture thing. The Greeks may eat pancreas though, as they seem to have a use for every other type of organ meat.

Welcome back Wilfrid, I have also had dysentery so I know how unpleasant that is. Glad to here that you baby is OK, poor little thing. Meg Dods, was a fictional name (based on the one of Scotts charaters in St. Ronan's Well) used by the author of the book (Christian Isobel Johnstone). But, yes the cooking is largely Georgian, with a few earlier elements as well. As well as a fine Georgian cookbook it is also, in part, a work of fiction, having lots of discourse of food by entirely fictional characters in the footnotes (very over the top they are too). It is also very funny, I would suggest you get a copy, but I saw the same addition as my book for sale on the internet for US辎, so a little expensive (I found my much loved copy in a junk shop). On of the more interesting books I have read on the subject of the British and food is Philappa Pullar's "Consuming Passions: A history of food and the British". Its a pretty famous book, so you may have already have read it. If not there is a new updated addition published in 2001. Somebody else suggested that I should read "Diary of a Nobody" (I thought they were having some fun with me actually), so I guess that will be my weekend book this week. I would love to discuss the relationship of the British to food, so I will start another thread (maybe on the weekend).

Sandra, my wife and I had some really great fried eggs in Malaga, at a small cafe. Basically, they had been cooked in large amounts of good olive oil (almost poached really). The eggs (sunny side up) were tended and the fruity olive oil flavour went really well with eggs. We were also very hung over, so that may have helped!

From observing this site, I would have agree and say that the law profession produces the most "gourmets", looking at published work, well the diplomats seem to do well. I do think that money does play a great part in the development of an interest in food etc. It allows for an oppertunity to accessibility to a whole range of interests, not necessarily food though. Money doesn't equate to taste, but poverty doesn't produce very many gourmets either. I don't feel that I could/would ever be a "gourmet", as my interests in food are to narrow. My income doesn't provide for much fine dining, so if I am interested in, say woodcock then I have to cook it myself, in the majority of cases. But this does mean that my knowledge/experience on the subject of food etc is rather limited in scope. I imagine that there are many people that have an interest in food/wine etc, but without the ability to develop this further it remains just an interest.

I have read Sue Lawrence's book and I thought it was great. I really nice way of making traditional Scottish food more accessible to people. This old Scottish cookbook, I mentioned, was very interesting, I think that you would be amazed at how well the middle classes ate in the early 1800's. These people were eating better then the middle-class of today, to some extent.

I am a little confused by this concept of Shiraz/sake matching, but for what its worth Shiraz/Syrah is a wine that has a very great range in flavour, depending on the climate, country of origin etc etc. So I would be a little wary of listening to anybody that makes broad statements about matching food and wine (eh, the wine guy, not macrosan - who I agree with). For example, cool climate Australian shiraz is very peppery, while at the other extreme shiraz from a warmer climate can taste like fruit syrup, so the types of food they go well with is going to be quite different. For that matter, "Asian" food is pretty broad as well. Did this chap say anything specific about what type of shiraz or Asian food he was talking about?

Loath as I am to re-pudding this thread, I recently found an old (1833) Scottish cookbook in a junk shop. In the section on plum puddings (including some with meat content, so very medieval) they suggest that to heat up cooked plum pudding, you fry slices of it or re-steam it. So a quite an old British tradition. The book, by the way, was "The Cook and Housewifes Manual" by Margaret (Meg) Dods. One of the very first books on the subject of cooking and food in Scotland. I don't know if anybody else has read this book, but it is very interesting and entertaining. It was published before the British became Victorians, so it is very interesting to compare it to Mrs Beeton's book as a contrast. The food reflects the people of the time, which it still does.

Oh, I give up all semblance control. I was trying not to let this thread become the "son-of-Adam's-Bio" thread. No, I will fight this, "basic foods that demand more respect' is a really interesting topic.