Exotic indelicacies #1: Super Piratos
The horse sausage was indeed fried and eaten, and very good it was too, though the meal’s success relied on the addition of a small amount of super-zingy red chilli relish. As part of the transaction which saw me cooking horse sausage in a flat in Victoria, I was given a packet of SUPER PIRATOS: little black discs of ‘lakrids’, which I assume means liquorice. If only my translating skills had lingered long enough for me to ponder the meaning of another word featuring prominently on the packet: saltlikrids…
Now I like trying unfamiliar foods from strange lands. Don’t we all? And we all love pirates, right? Right. So how could a packet of Danish Haribo products which look like Pontefract cakes be wrong? They’re called SUPER PIRATOS! They have a picture of a pirate on the front! And the pirate’s parrot is saying ‘EN GO’ ST’RK LAKRIDS TIL ALLE LAKRIDS-ELSKERE’, which I don’t understand, of course. It had never occurred to me that parrots could speak any language other than English.
It is my solemn duty to tell you: SUPER PIRATOS are the worst thing I have ever tasted. Sharper readers may have guessed that something labelled ‘saltlikrids’ may involve liquorice and salt, and they would be spot on. These little black doubloons are extraordinarily strong, acrid lumps of badness, all salty and sour. Imagine Mighty Imps pickled in brine and served up in 50p-sized lumps and you may be getting somewhere near. My eyes watered, the taste wouldn’t leave my poor mouth. I’m shuddering now just thinking about them.