The Guardian’s “not Nancy Banks Smith” TV reviewer Sam Wallaston is a reliable sort of guy. I watched last night’s Come Dine With Me and was agog. “This is the best thing I’ve seen on Channel 4 in a long time” I exclaimed while watching between my fingers. Sure enough Wallaston’s review: “the worst programme on television”. He didn’t like it. And that’s why I read his reviews. “Never knowingly correct” goes his strapline. (Don’t get me started on his “ha ha geeks eh, this IS complicated and silly” he did the other day on Battlestar Galactica.)
Anyway… COME DINE WITH ME. Last night’s was more than awesome. This show has grown — a day-time staple, it’s gathered celebrity editions, and now it comes in a new format. No longer a short show every day of the week covering 5 people — they now compress 4 people in to a one hour show. It’s a sensation. Well for something that’s come from day-time. (It even has a rip off version on the beeb hosted by Simon Rimmer who seems to be trying to be on telly every day of the week for an entire year.)
But then having established a regular format, with often witty and interesting people who occasionally come to verbal blows, it goes HAYWIRE. Remember that first edition of Wife Swap with the foul mouthed racist woman — it was well train wreck. This was much the same but written by Mike Leigh. … read on …
Something that became miserably clear to me last week: Marks & Spencers have brutally culled their sandwich range - goodbye most of the black-label “food to go” range which brought us the Steak & Blacksticks Blue sandwich (probably the nicest EVER CREATED by a British supermarket chain) among others. The black-labels have been replaced by an odd range of tortillas, kinda-sorta-open sandwiches and things which look like someone’s started making a wrap and wandered off before the actual wrapping happens. All these new things cost a lot and have visibly less filling - not surprising given the cost squeeze on food suppliers as prices rise.
There’s been another subtle change in the sandwich range though: everything possible is now branded “British”. … read on …
I don’t know how many of you have ever attended a Pentecostal church service, or hung around Christians of that persuasion for any meaningful length of time. The last time I spoke with someone I knew was Pentecostal was back in Tennessee; apparently in the UK it’s the fastest-growing Christian denomination of belief. They’re not as insular as the Seventh Day Adventists, but they’re at least as driven — there’s still the faint whiff of the cult about them. The story of Pentecost is the story of true believers surviving a day of reckoning through God’s grace; a wind from heaven scorches the earth and, among flames, boiling smoke and a blood-red moon, His followers become prophesyers, visionaries and “dreamers”. Essentially, Pentecostalism promises its followers that when the sh1t hits the fan, they will be superheros. Or at least Aquarians. It’s a strange cocktail of doomsday science and unbridled narcissism that apparently proves irresistable to more Britons each year.
Unaware of these tendencies lurking so nearby, I found myself surprised that upon sitting down to a dinner party in Holloway, the pleasant Chinese couple to my right who were cracking flavoured sunflower hulls and sucking out the contents with nimble aplomb announced to me, apropos of absolutely nothing (which is how these things always come out), that they were “very religious”. And left it there, picking at their seeds intently.
There really is little I enjoy less than discussing my dinner companions’ religious predilictions, but you have to say something, so I did.
“We’re Pentecostals,” he said, the mound of hulls having now grown to the size of a small anthill. She looked at me and said “Christian!”
“For 15 years,” the man said, grimly, I thought. After dinner was over he went out to the back patio and smoked the rest of a half-finished cigar, by himself.
Before that, though — but after the sunflower seeds — the entire table tasted what our host called “1000-year-old egg”. A delicacy in China and Hong Kong, 1000-year-old eggs are created by essentially burying eggs in mud for several weeks or months, turning the shell black, the white a translucent amber, and the yolk a mysterious dark green. A bit like some crash-landed alien, thawed out only in order to be eaten. (But will it change us if we do?)
The Chinese Pentecostals dug in, and smiled at our giggles and hesitant sniffing. They had nothing to fear from a 1000-year-old egg.
Nice to see them still pushing the Dark Chocolate flavours, although I think I’m still yet to see a dark chocolate teacake in this ‘ere London. Then again! I am no teacake fan. Get your marshmallows off me bleeergh cough hack splutter. Even IF they are arguably the most fun to eat in their methodology as long as you do it correctly, ie smash the teacake against your forehead first in order to crack the chocolate coatin. If you like, you can shout “Haaaaaaai-YAAAA!” whilst doing so, but hey, it’s not essential. I’d shout “YAAAMAPIII DAAAAAAI-SKKKIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII” - or I would - if I liked teacakes. But as I don’t - my confession remains…. unmade. DAMN YOU FOUL MARSHMALLOW.
This afternoon the mindreading goblins who decide which ad goes at the top of yer Gmail ceased their Cougar obsession for long enough to point me to a site called “Openanduseb4″. This turned out to be a place which sells pre-printed labels which you can put on things you’ve opened so you don’t forget to use them before they go off. I am of course a great fan of entrepreneurial innovations but it does strike me that in this case the basic idea is really quite replicable to, well, anyone with stickers and a pen.
But really I was just annoyed because of what I hoped the site was: a food science exploration into whether or not a given use-by date actually means it. … read on …
the project: to road-test some of the fillings people have (incomprehensibly) not yet adopted
the fillings of the future:
i: mushrooms fried in pumpkin seed butter, with garlic oil and red wine
ii: fried bacon and date syrop
iii: chopped avocado and marmite
iv: spinach and ginger syrop
v: ham and gentleman’s relish
vi: brie and japanese plum sauce
vii: grated carrot and cinnamon … read on …
YOU WILL NEED
3-4 fennel bulbs
2oz butter ( = quarter of a butter)
1 x cup double cream (use the whole cup-sized carton)
6 oz parmesan (this is abt 3/4 of the slice you generally get)
Pork loin chops
THEN DO THIS
a: grate the parmesan
b: meanwhile heat oven to gas mark 6-ish, 350°F, 175°C
c: slice the fennel (top and tail, then quarter vertically)
d: place fennel in large oven-proof dish, dot with butter, float in cream, smother in parmesan (but keep abt 1/3 back for later), grind fresh pepper on top — ideally it should all be packed in there … read on …
Because we’ve been talking about this all over Poptimists and at Poptimism, and it needs its own Freaky Trigger mention for sheer grime/chicken amazingness….
Here’s a couple of food science-y items recently brought to my attention.
Firstly - the hygiene issues surrounding ‘communal dipping’. I’m sure everyone is pretty familiar with this practice, unless you live in a cave or something. This New York Times article deals with a study about bacteria levels in dip, with what to me seem quite obvious results - that dipping the same chip twice into a pot of shared dip = more bacteria, although the article seems surprised by this result. The scientist’s general conclusion - do not eat dip at parties unless you’d also be willing to kiss everyone else there, as it (bacterially speaking) adds up to the same thing, a conclusion that makes me feel vaguely paranoid - what if everyone finds out about this study? I foresee situations at parties where eating dip is seen as a come-on, ie if you’re happy to eat the dip, you’re also happy getting off with whoever else is ‘dipping’.
Can you find three foods such that all three do not go together (by any reasonable definition of foods “going together”) but every pair of them does go together?
(There’s more instructions and explanation under the link)
Anyone got any solutions?
There’s also some interesting possibilities for food science experiments, personally I’d love to see what Lemon Mole tastes like.
I don’t know how many of you have ever attended a Pentecostal church service, or hung around Christians of that persuasion for any meaningful length of time. The last time I spoke with someone I knew was Pentecostal was back in Tennessee; apparently in the UK it’s the fastest-growing Christian denomination of belief. They’re not as insular as the Seventh Day Adventists, but they’re at least as driven — there’s still the faint whiff of the cult about them. The story of Pentecost is the story of true believers surviving a day of reckoning through God’s grace; a wind from heaven scorches the earth and, among flames, boiling smoke and a blood-red moon, His followers become prophesyers, visionaries and “dreamers”. Essentially, Pentecostalism promises its followers that when the sh1t hits the fan, they will be superheros. Or at least Aquarians. It’s a strange cocktail of doomsday science and unbridled narcissism that apparently proves irresistable to more Britons each year.
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