Basic Foods

[A Balic]

I mentioned on my Bio. the taste of a good fresh egg was something that few people will ever get to taste. This was expanded by Steven, that we would be surprised by the flavour of many basic food stuffs in their true/original form.

I was reminded of all this by a large box delivered from Chianti. In the box was two litres of new olive oil (thanks to my sister in law). The oil is about one month old, is bright green and completely opaque. It tastes of fresh grass and reminds me of the sun, even here in Scotland. The colour and taste is from the chlorophyll from the olives, this will degrade over the next few months until what is left its just excellent quality olive oil. My sister in law tells me that in the village were she lives the entire population is eating everything with this oil, while it lasts, my wife and I are doing the same here in Edinburgh. This oil is that good. What a revelation to find in something we use everyday. Has anybody else had a similar experience?

[Liza]

My husband works for an organic farmer and I've been very lucky to have some profound tastes from this connection. I'm almost embarrassed to write that the one that really hit was tasting his organic, heirloom-variety pop corn! It tastes like there's already butter on it, and also very much of corn.

[Fat Guy]

I accept your apology.

[A Balic]

Quote: from Liza on 5:18 pm on Dec. 11, 2001

My husband works for an organic farmer and I've been very lucky to have some profound tastes from this connection. I'm almost embarrassed to write that the one that really hit was tasting his organic, heirloom-variety pop corn! It tastes like there's already butter on it, and also very much of corn.

Cool! pre-buttered popcorn. I bet there are hugh multi-nationals that even now, are trying to develop transgenic popcorn that has the same properties as your heirloom variety. The fools.

[Heather]

As I write, I'm savouring new season's organic cherries, to be followed by an organic white nectarine. Farm-fresh, seasonal organic produce is - like that olive oil - a revelation. My favourite organic greengrocer here in Melbourne (Vic Market Organics) has relationships with small growers, whose number-one priority is the way their produce tastes, rather than its shelf-life or ability to withstand transportation and constant handling. This incredible produce can be for sale at Vic Market Organics just hours after being picked. For me, eating fruit for dessert used to be a folorn experience - a sacrifice motivated by health concerns... and, to be honest, vanity. Since discovering the wonders of fresh organic produce, a fruit-only dessert - say, a baseball-sized heirloom white peach, whacked on a plate - seems like an indulgence. When I fancy rich over sweet, there's nothing like perfectly ripe organic avocado. Cut one in half, and spoon out the flesh. I fully understand Liza's infatuation with organic heirloom popcorn, since organic corn on the cob, simply steamed and left unadulterated, tastes buttery.

[A Balic]

Heather - you make me weep. I lived in Melbourne for eleven years and consider it my true home. The Queen Victoria market, I dream about it here in Edinburgh. My wife is going back to Melbourne in a few days, I can't due to the cost involved, but I have given her strict instructions to take many photographs of the market. I worked near the market, so I went in every morning it was open at about 7:30 am and just walked around, taking in all the smells, colours and sounds until I had found my food items for the day. Bliss.

The organic fruit in the Vic. market are great. Here in Scotland, organic food is basically the same product as conventional food, only organic (duh!). No heirloom varieties. I would kill for a real peach. In the local supermarkets here, they are selling Australian peaches, you can imagine what they taste like. Still I have been buying these amazing heirloom apples here. The UK has hundreds of different types of native apples, so to taste all the different flavours avalible from this one group of fruit has been wonderful.

[Heather]

Adam, we've written a Vic Market story for our website. No photos as yet, but we'll be sure to take many in the New Year and post them for you.

[Bux]

Sometimes I think my memory plays tricks on me, or that my taste buds are jaded or dying, but every now and then I get a reminder of what things used to taste like when I was a child. There's really a big difference in the taste of various eggs for sale in NYC, but even the best here is no match for the best I've had in France. It does't matter if the egg is on top of a crepe or under a layer of truffles, it may not be dish that can be recreated with city eggs.

Here in the states, you can get the novello olive oils from Italy. I suspect the commercial versions may not be as impressive as what you have, but they're still great. There's a lot of variety in the taste, but most are very fruity and many of them have a real peppery bite as well. Supplies are usually enough to last the year, although it appears that flavor fades with time. That just makes the next vintage all that much more exciting when it arrives.

My doctor's warnings aside, I really like the flavor of butter and think I can tell a difference between the average and the better brands, but it's a subtle difference compared to the difference between the best factory butter and some artisanal butter we bought from a farmer at the market in Brittany this summer.

[A Balic]

Butter is the perfect example of a food staple that most people take for granted. The fact the margarine (margarine really is the Devil's spittal) exists at all is proof that most people have never really tasted butter in the context of being a food in its own right, only as the stuff that you spread on bread before everything else.

The range colours,flavours, textures, cooking properties and aromas avalible from different types of butter is quite staggering for what has to be one of the most simple of foods. I love the way that Normandy butter melts to a creamy sauce, rather then into an oily puddle, when gently heated. The tangy flavour of a good Italian Burro on good bread is a meal in itself. Butter heated to brown the milk solids, is the basis of some of the best fish sauces, which are sadly, often done very badly. I fear that with such "simple" recipes are ignored, or badly done, because of this very property which is the key to why they are so good.

[Wilfrid]

Butter 'n' eggs.  Yes, Adam, margarine is an outrageous imposition.  For years, I was dumb enough to eat margarine instead of butter in the belief I was doing something healthy.  Eventually I switched back to butter, and use it a lot in cooking.  Am I fatter, is my blood cholesterol or pressure higher?  Absolutely not.  All those wasted years!.

And on the subject of eggs, I was having a great time with real egg flavours all summer eating fresh duck and goose eggs from Union Square market.  Supply seems to have dried up.  I don't suppose anyone knows any other sources in Manhattan?

Reminds me - must get in a slab of scrapple for the holidays.

[A Balic]

Scrapple? What's scrapple? I assume you drink it and it has an alcohol content, right?

[Bux]

What's scrapple?

Clues are hidden in the word "slab" and the general references to cholesterol. I've had little contact with it and associate it with the mid Atlantic US region, Pennsylvania, to be specific. As I recall it's sort of coarse sausage meat with lots of cereal filler packed in rectangular loaves. You slice off a slab and fry it for breakfast. Eggs and potatoes and toast might complete the breakfast.

[A Balic]

I see, in Australian-speak a "slab" is a block of 24 beer cans. This description of scrapple sounds very much like "Lorne sausage", if so why would Wilfrid need it for the holiday season? What Saint's day is associated with scrapple? Maybe, St. John the hungover?

[Wilfrid]

I dunno, there I am busily extending your bio thread, Adam, while you're up here messing around with my scrapple.  Bux's description is impeccable of course.  The one I buy doesn't seem to have excessive cereal, and I believe the tradition is that the sausage meat is made from some of the more offally bits of the pig.  I buy it from a stall in Union Square Greenmarket, the name of which I always get wrong - High Hogs?  High on Hogs?  Hogs High?  Or is it High Hope Hogs?

For the holidays?  Well, I was just talking to myself really, and the only reason is that there will be quite a lot of days close together when I may have the time and inclination to eat a cooked breakfast.  And you have now reminded me to add a slab of beer to the shopping list.

By the way, I can't remember what Lorne sausage is, but have you come across fruit pudding in Scotland (it's a kind of cereal-laden sausage studded with dry fruit)?

[A Balic]

Quote: from Wilfrid on 9:14 pm on Dec. 19, 2001

I dunno, there I am busily extending your bio thread, Adam, while you're up here messing around with my scrapple. By the way, I can't remember what Lorne sausage is, but have you come across fruit pudding in Scotland (it's a kind of cereal-laden sausage studded with dry fruit)?

Ditto. This is what lorne sausage is. Scrapple sounds so much better though:

http://www.rampantscotland.com/recipes/blrecipe_sliced.htm

Yeh, I have had the fruit pudding, but I find it a little dry even when fried in butter. For a sweet touch in a fry-up, I prefer Maple syrup (quite good on blackpudding) or at this time of the year, fried Christmas pudding. But, only the boiled-in-the-clout type, not that boiled-in-the-basin rubbish.

[Wilfrid]

Fried Christmas pudding?  You're not joking, are you.  I have never heard of that.  I found some mini British (Fortnum & Mason) Christmas puds in Dean & Deluca.  I'm going to need some convincing before I throw one in the frying pan.

[Bux]

Bux's description is impeccable of course.

Of course. Of course? I didn't mention that I don't go near the stuff, although my only exposure was well before my tastes expanded. I'm not a fan of filler in sausage products, perhaps with the exception of blood sausage where I don't mind a bit of rice and stuff. I also find the seasoning of American breakfast sausages is not to my taste. My recollection is that scrapple is similarly seasoned with sage. All things considered, any comment on my part that the meat in scrapple comes from the snout, ears and hooves of pigs might be considered inflamatory by some fans. I think scrapple is much like other comfort foods that remind people of their childhood or some other relatively stressless time of their lives.

[Wilfrid]

Innocent, sir.  We didn't have it where I grew up, so for me it's not really evocative of anything.  I just find it hugely more palatable than supermarket breakfast sausage links.  I guess the version I buy is 'home made' - maybe there are commercial scrapples out there which are less tasty.

Incidentally, I just remembered what got me started with scrapple - it was Calvin Trillin raving about it in 'Alice, Let's Eat'.  Not the best of reasons, because some of the American dishes he praises sound fairly disgusting.

Or was it Lionel Trilling?  No, pretty sure it was Calvin Trillin.

(Edited by Wilfrid at 4:55 pm on Dec. 19, 2001)

[Jinmyo]

I always thought scrapple was just bits of leftover crud like potato bits, meats, fried together with eggs and perhaps onion in lard. Kind of like a frittata but served with ketchup. I think Kerouac has Japhy Rider (based on Gary Snyder) making this in The Dharma Bums.

[Bux]

Wilfrid, few things will compare disfavorably with supermarket breakfast sausages. ;)

Perhaps I should try the Greenmarket scrapple. I've had some of that farmer's sausage which, while not to me exact taste preferences, was quite good.

[yvonne johnson]

Quote: from Wilfrid on 4:05 pm on Dec. 19, 2001

Fried Christmas pudding?  You're not joking, are you.  I have never heard of that.  

Fried, second day's X-mas pudding is delicious.  (Wilfrid, are you sure you're a Brit?!) In some ways it's better than first day's, especially if, as Adam stipulates, it is a clouty dumpling (none of that factory stuff). Fry slices in some dripping till it's crunchy on the outside.

Alternatively, leftovers can be made into a trifle a la sister-in-law. Pudding on bottom, custard in middle then cream on top.

[A Balic]

Quote: from Wilfrid on 12:05 am on Dec. 20, 2001

Fried Christmas pudding?  You're not joking, are you.  I have never heard of that.  I found some mini British (Fortnum & Mason) Christmas puds in Dean & Deluca.  I'm going to need some convincing before I throw one in the frying pan.

Thank you Yvonne. Wilfrid, I can't stress this enough, only use slices of leftover pudding on boxing day. The timing is just as important as the ingredients. I like boiled pudding as you "skin" around the outside of the pudding.

To get back on topic (I hate it when people get of topic and just ramble on about any old crap that is on their mind  ;)). Milk as a basic food. I fear that this topic may not fly, as how many people have tasted raw cows milk? I lived in a dairy farming area as a boy and we used to get a five litre bucket of milk every three days, as a drink in its own right. I remember at the time that I really hated the taste of pasteurised milk, now I drink semi-skimmed and don't even think about milk as a food stuff, just a type of tea whitener.  There is such a basic difference in the flavour of milk from different breeds of cattle, that is is one of the great shames of modern life that we basically only get to have pasteurised milk from the Hostein-Friesian breed, which is a breed that produces high volume with low butter fat and protein content.

[Wilfrid]

Yvonne, "clouty dumpling" indeed.  Sounds like you could throw it through a wall.  I am now going to have to conduct a poll of British friends to see if anyone else has heard of frying Christmas pudding.  Trifle, yes of course, but...you don't put batter on it first, do you?

[Stephen Aldred]

Wilfrid,

I'm with Adam and Yvonne on this.  Try it with a glass of Bucks Fizz for breakfast on Boxing day

[Wilfrid]

Quote: from yvonne johnson on 7:21 pm on Dec. 19, 2001

Fried, second day's X-mas pudding is delicious.  (Wilfrid, are you sure you're a Brit?!)

Results of the poll are in, and it may be a regonal thing.  Some of my friends from the north of England are acknowledging the dish, although they eat it with brandy butter, not as part of a fry up.  Is Adam on his own with that one?

Anyway, I am now caught up in e-mail correspondence about eating corned beef for breakfast on Christmas Day.  Where this is all heading, goodness knows.