Miss J

Congrats, Rochelle! And don't feel too weird about liking bacon above any other meat product you've tried. Bacon is the crack of all meat products.

And what precisely is wrong with chicken skin?

That definitely sounds like the kind of place I like to find when I've spent too long in the pub. Unfortunately, the small matter of the return airfare could prove to be a problem...

I'll challenge you on that, Basildog - I think pineapple is a fine thing when sugar-dipped and grilled on the barbecue 'til the edges are crisp & caramelised. Serve with a scoop of ice cream - I've tried vanilla, coconut, and white chocolate, and all have been good. Yum.

Chips. Open. With salt & vinegar. Daintily pinking at great big hunks of deep-fried tater with one of those silly little wooden forks. While staggering home after an immoderate number of pints. It just always makes me feel so bad. Edit: But in a good way, of course.

Peter, I promise you - hand on heart - that I have never lived in an American military camp. Anywhere.

Raspberries. Still warm from the sun.

Wow. *applause*

Those sound interesting. Different from the tarts I'm thinking of, but interesting nonetheless. Gotta recipe? (I'm just can't get enough puff pastry, me)

Poutine and pho duke it out to be best hangover food.

Butter tarts. Not bear paw then? Only for British Columbians.

Close: clickity choco-clickity My gran made the best homestyle butter tarts. They had a butterscotch-y, buttery filling, rum-softened raisins, and a very light shortcrust pastry. And when I worked at a restaurant when I was at uni, Karl-the-Pastry-Chef used to make an upmarket chocolate version that caused all the waitresses to offer him a collective proposal. Sadly for us, Karl had a boyfriend.

Butter tarts.

I also haven't been able to participate in this thread as much as I'd like, but I absolutely concure with what Sandra & Jaymes are saying. I also feel that my Indian cooking (and my Chinese cooking, for that matter) are curtailed by my patchy understanding of the cultures that the cuisines spring from. I'm not placing a value judgement on that - if I'd spent a reasonable amount of time in India, I would have seized the opportunity to immerse myself in the culture, language AND cooking - but it's just one of those things. I found the music analogy quite apt. You can appreciate the end product, and yet not be sure if your appreciation really takes in the the experience its creator intended. Interesting how this thread is starting to tap into the whole, "how do you like your steak and do you have the right to judge something according to the way you like it instead of how the chef presents it" discussion going on elsewhere on the site. Takes me right back to English Literature 100, this does. And I'm totally up for this egullet road trip to India, btw.

I'm really enjoying this thread, especially as my unsprayed rose bush has just produced its first two lovely, sunset-pink blooms. Between that and the duck eggs I've scored, I'm seeing some candied petals in my future. Cabreles, I'm interested in the rose ice-cream you've mentioned. Did it use a rose petal preserve, like what Suvir mentions? Or was it more of a rosewater-scented dish?

Fabulous.

Jaybee, you've just completely pre-empted my experience of buying fresh duck eggs yesterday from a farm in Cheshire. I paid £1.50 for a dozen enormous extra-large eggs, and scrambled a couple of them up last night with some crumbled piccante Spanish chorizo, onions, tomatoes and a wee bit of chopped coriander. My observations: - the yolks were HUGE - the shells were fragile, but the membrane inside the shells was very thick - the white was very thick and reassuringly gloopy - the resulting scramble ended up sunflower-bright yellow, which I'm sure was partially due to the healthy yellow of the eggs themselves, and partially to chorizo's oozing paprika-orange oils. - two eggs, two chorizo, a tomato and half an onion made enough to feed two comfortably. They were BIG eggs

I have just found a recipe for gooseberry pickle, and I am HUGELY intrigued. Now if I can still find gooseberries in the shops, I'm going to try making it and let you all know how it turns out.

Eccles cakes at St John.

According to CAMRA and the Brakspear Corporate site, it's highly likely that Brakspear will cease brewing, sell the site the brewery was based on, and shift its focus to "developing its pub and property estate." All future "Brakspear" beers will be made and marketed by Refresh UK, the owners of Wychwood Brewery. CAMRA is running an online campaign to try and influence the directors of Brakspear to continue to make their own products according to the methods they've developed over 200 years, but it seems highly unlikely to succeed. For those who are interested, the campaign is being run here.

Stewed chorizo piccante and potatoes in a wee bit of rice wine. Ate wrapped in steamed corn tortillas, with shredded Chinese leaf on the side. It was like fusion, but not. And surprisingly deeply flavoured.

Steve: I like you and think you're a good guy. And I am NOT trying to pick on you - or on the others who are taking this line - by making the following statement. But there seems to be quite a - how can I put it? - irresponsible approach to identifying trolls at the moment, and I think it's time we stopped. Years ago, when I was a regular on usenet, I used to "track" trolls. The main method was to track down what computer, servers, and ISP (the real one, as real trolls often used false names and addresses) the suspected bad apple used. The BEGINNING of suspision was based on "analysis" of behaviour. It was NOT a positive identification. That's what all the technical tracking was for, and even then we couldn't always be certain that someone wasn't on a shared machine or having their accounts highjacked. A troll is someone who doesn't believe in what s/he's saying, but instead formulates a personae designed to cause a storm in the targeted group. And it's rather important - and relevant - that we often found that a lot of friction-causing people were legitimate. I think it would be a good thing if we tried to keep in mind that where there may be a consensus of opinion, that doesn't mean that anyone who disagrees with it is doing so out of a simple desire to be provocative. And a free speech site - which many egulleteers seem to feel is a good thing - supports that. It doesn't immediately try to muzzle dissidents by a) insisting that their opinions "aren't real" and then b) "prove" that without any facts to support it. And given that the only people with facts are the mods, the rest of us are in no position to wind ourselves up on what may/may not have happened. This is all I'm going to post on this subject. If anyone has questions, comments or arguments that they'd like me (specifically) to respond to, please PM them to me and I will correspond privately.

I like quinces when they're around. Especially baked with butter and eaten with a little cream.

Yep. We've been invaded by that cute Artistic Cow Concept that's hit many major cities around the globe. We have a cow here at Canary Wharf, too. It's got its back to West India Quay: Everything you ever wanted to know about the CowParade Edit - oops, it turns out we actually have EIGHT of the bloody things here. Obviously, being a country girl I'm so blase about them I just hadn't noticed. The St John St cow is named Turbo Cow

It cooks a little in the broth, leaving the strips red in the middle and cooked on the outside. If I had made a more proper pho (rather than a quick one), I would have also had well-cooked meat from the stock around to put in too.