Re: Food Thread : Mon Aug 12, 2013 2:21 pm  

cod'ead wrote:

If you like caraway, you could always try kummel. I think one is called Wolfshit

I recently paid £5 or a large shoe box full of someone's miniatures collection (about 70 bottles in total), there were some really brutal Spanish concoctions but surprisingly, many were quite drinkable

Haven't tried Kummel since I was in my twenties so it must be, oooh, nearly ten years ago and my recollection is that it was very sweet, yes?
Mind you, I find most liqueurs a bit on the sweet side, so not ruling it out.

Re: Food Thread : Mon Aug 12, 2013 2:40 pm  

El Barbudo wrote:

Pontarlier ... I hadn't even heard of it and have just had to google to find it.
Hope I've found the right product, an absinthe?
I have also googled the performance with the sugar cube ... does the slow dripping genuinely make a difference to the "louche" effect or can one simply add chilled water into which one has stirred some granulated?

In the African and Caribbean French colonies, it was always frowned upon for caucasian men to fraternise with the local women. All it usually took was a session on absinthe to put such reservations to one side. Hence the phrase:

Absinthe makes the dark grow blonder

Re: Food Thread : Mon Aug 12, 2013 3:15 pm  

cod'ead wrote:

If you like caraway, you could always try kummel. I think one is called Wolfshit

That's what your mouth tastes like in the morning after a heavy session on kummel - It's called Wolfschmidt. Love Kummel

Personnaly don't bother with the sugar with Pontarlier just water and ice.

Re: Food Thread : Mon Aug 12, 2013 4:32 pm  

Another blast from my past: Fernet Branca.

On a holiday in Benalmadena, I used to frequent a bar for my breakfast which usualy consisted of a bloody mary and a cheese & ham toastie. The morning after a particularly heavy session, I rocked up and declined my usual brekkie, in fact all I really wanted to do was crawl back to bed. The barman sensed my problems and offered his personal solution:

He filled a 12oz highball glass with ice then poured a 3rd of Pernod, a 3rd of Fernet Branca and topped it up with spring water. I was instructed to stand and drink it in one. I did as instructed, it tasted foul but apart from one brief moment when I thought the sluice gates would open at both ends, after about two minutes i felt fine again.So sat down and he brought me my usual breakfast.

Re: Food Thread : Mon Aug 12, 2013 6:40 pm  

El Barbudo wrote:

Last night I had a glass of chilled Noilly Prat(*), probably the first time I have tried it.
Very nice indeed.
Like a gently herbed dry sherry.

It started me thinking about drinks that are nowadays unfashionable but are actually a quality tipple.
Ones with which I am comfortably familiar and come to mind immediately are rum, sherry and vermouth.

Any others I'm missing out on?

(*) I'm guessing a pronunciation of something like no-a-yee pratt.

A decent chilled Fino always goes down well as does a white port again chilled.

Re: Food Thread : Mon Aug 12, 2013 8:41 pm  

cod'ead wrote: In the African and Caribbean French colonies, it was always frowned upon for caucasian men to fraternise with the local women. All it usually took was a session on absinthe to put such reservations to one side. Hence the phrase: Absinthe makes the dark grow blonder What about absinthe makes the heart grow fonder?

cod'ead wrote: In the African and Caribbean French colonies, it was always frowned upon for caucasian men to fraternise with the local women. All it usually took was a session on absinthe to put such reservations to one side. Hence the phrase: Absinthe makes the dark grow blonder What about absinthe makes the heart grow fonder?

Re: Food Thread : Mon Aug 12, 2013 8:45 pm  

El Barbudo wrote:

Years ago, I was sort-of-vegetarian(*) for more than a decade, not because I had an issue with killing animals for food per se ... but because I didn't agree with many farming, husbandry and slaughter standards or, more accurately, lack of standards, nowadays that has largely changed and I can usually avoid quite well, except in restaurants...

Pretty much the same here – well, a pescatarian, at any rate.

El Barbudo wrote:

My view is that, if meat isn't good quality, tasty and responsibly reared etc, why bother with it?

Absolutely agree.

El Barbudo wrote:

... (**) I have an aversion to the inappropriate ubiquity of mayonnaise, why would you put mayonnaise in the same sandwich as cheese and pickle, why is horseradish always reduced to horseradish-flavoured mayonnaise? It's like slimy baby food, not for anyone with functioning taste buds...

Not even proper mayo anyway.

El Barbudo wrote:

Last night I had a glass of chilled Noilly Prat ...

Nice stuff. Also great as an alternative to using white wine at the base of a risotto.

El Barbudo wrote:

... (*) I'm guessing a pronunciation of something like no-a-yee pratt.

On the basis of how Rick Stein pronounces it: noir-lee pratt.

Re: Food Thread : Tue Aug 13, 2013 7:37 am  

Big Graeme wrote:

A decent chilled Fino always goes down well as does a white port again chilled.

Indeed they do, and so many people are missing out on the dry white lightness of a chilled Fino, which is the absolute opposite of the sweet and sticky brown "grannie's drink" image that persists around sherry.

When I have a Fino, it's almost always Tio Pepe, available just about everywhere but no worse for that.

However, on a trip to explore the sherry triangle of Jerez, Sta Maria and Sanlucar de Barrameda a few years ago (preceded by London, Paris, Perpignan for t'match, Barcelona and Cadiz, all by train), I became an unshakeable fan of Manzanilla sherry, which is made only in Sanlucar.
It's "softer" than a Fino but with a slightly deeper flavour and still very refreshing, fabulous outdoors when the heat of the sun dips in the early evening, with a short procession of little plates of tapas before moving on to a restaurant for dinner.

Also before or after dinner, a darker but dry Oloroso sherry is delicious.
All the complex richness you'd expect of a darker sherry but dry and still light.

One thing for anyone who doesn't know ... a bottle of sherry should be treated like wine, once opened you can't cork it up again and save it for months and expect it to still taste fine.
It's often sold in half bottles for that reason.

Re: Food Thread : Tue Aug 13, 2013 12:22 pm  

El Barbudo wrote:

One thing for anyone who doesn't know ... a bottle of sherry should be treated like wine, once opened you can't cork it up again and save it for months and expect it to still taste fine.
It's often sold in half bottles for that reason.

They should be sold with crown corks as seals.

Someone once bought me a "wine saver", a device that you put into a bottle of wine an pump out as much air in the ullage space as possible. They couldn't understand my quizzical look and the simple question: "why?" It resided, unopened and unused in the "cupboard under the sink" until I parted with it at a car boot sale

Re: Food Thread : Tue Aug 13, 2013 2:19 pm  

cod'ead wrote:

They should be sold with crown corks as seals.

Someone once bought me a "wine saver", a device that you put into a bottle of wine an pump out as much air in the ullage space as possible. They couldn't understand my quizzical look and the simple question: "why?" It resided, unopened and unused in the "cupboard under the sink" until I parted with it at a car boot sale

Its like when recipes ask for left over wine, got no concept of what that is...