Oyster, passion fruit jelly and lavender at the Fat Duck. Photo: smashz, Flickr
The Fat Duck restaurant is one of the world's finest eateries and has the statistics to prove it -- three Michelin stars, a number two rating by S. Pellegrino's World's 50 Best Restaurants, among them -- but it's the number 529 that has stuck with the restaurant since February.
That's the number of customers who fell ill with vomiting and diarrhea at the Bray, England restaurant, and forced its two-week closure. Now, Britain's Health Protection Agency has published a 47-page report pinning the blame on norovirus caused by oysters contaminated with human sewage, the Daily Telegraph reports.
Our counterparts over at AOL U.K. recently ran an article entitled "Comedy Booze" lamenting the unfortunate habit some guests have of using parties to re-gift hard alcohol they found unfit to stomach back when they received it. From Greek ouzo to French pastis, it's a multi-culti takedown.
Of course, sometimes that famous Brit wit doesn't cross the pond. We know some folks who adore pastis, and others for whom a bottle of Jagermeister might be considered quite a smashing (or quite funny) addition to a party.
That said, we can certainly sympathize with the sentiment. After the jump, three things we think you should never bring to a party. Tell us what we missed!
This is a case of the ultimate guilty conscience -- or stomach.
Flash back to 1996, as a customer walks out of the Seaview Palace Tandoori in Swansea, a coastal city in Wales, without paying for his £10 late-night curry meal -- about a $17 bill, for those stateside.
Now, nearly 13 years later, the Daily Telegraph reports the customer is finally footing the unpaid tab plus some.
The police received an anonymous apology in March from the dine-and-dash customer, along with £60 (approximately $100) cash to be passed on to the Seaview Palace Tandoori restaurant owner.
It seems the customer finally wanted to settle his debt, with extra money added to take inflation into account.
Little did the customer know, the restaurant had since been torn down. The police spent the last five months tracking down former Seaview Palace Tandoori owner, 48-year-old Samsul Bari.
Slicing onions makes us cry hot burning tears of pain (which is why we now cut them while wearing goggles), but this photo reminded us yet again that, where onions are concerned, "no pain, no gain." This is particularly true when the results are these gorgeous white onion and pecorino tarts.
Baked by Madalene, the mastermind behind The British Larder, the tarts contrast the lush sweetness of caramelized onions with the sharp bite of pecorino, providing delectable proof that opposites do indeed attract. They are stunning in their simplicity: Rather than (ahem) tart them up, Madalene opts to showcase the onion's whorled, earthy beauty. These look less like tarts than some sort of exotic blossoms, and right now we're plotting ways to make them bloom in our own kitchen.
What better way to celebrate St. Patrick's Day than with a selection of artisanal Irish cheeses? My knowledge on Irish cheese was limited to cheddar until a trip last fall to Slow Food's cheese festival where I met Jeffa Gill, one of the early pioneers of Irish farmhouse cheese production. At the festival, she tasted out remarkable cheeses with an aroma of the Irish shore.
Durrus is a creamy milky Irish Tomme de Savoie produced with raw Freisian cow's milk. This soft-ripened washed-rind cheese was first made by Jeffa Gill in 1979. You can find Durrus at the Bedford Cheese Shop. Once you've got Durrus, pick out a succulent creamy Irish blue cheese - Cashel Blue or Crozier. Crozier is handmade by Jane and Louis Grubb from the milk of sheep raised locally in Tipperary, Ireland where they graze on rich limestone pastures. Check it out at Murray's Cheese.
After selecting your St. Patrick's Day curds, think about pairings. Murray's Cheese makes this process simple. On their website, you'll find a delicious array of Irish cheese and beer pairings put together by fellow cheese expert Chris Munsey.
A couple of months ago, I wrote a post in which I tried to touch bottom in the pantheon of disturbing cuisine. While I stopped short of nightmarishly horrifying food, like rotten cheese and duck embryos, I explored what I imagined were the worst fried foods imaginable.
In retrospect, I was incredibly naive.
At the end of the post, I asked my readers to submit their own choices for worst possible food, promising to do a little more research and write longer pieces about them. I got a fair bit of responses, which led to a fun post about beer floats. However, Guinness and vanilla ice cream only represented the tip of the iceberg, so to speak, and it seemed inevitable that I would return to further explore the wonders that make up the culinary wasteland.
Many of my readers shared tales about their favorite fried food joints. Museum Mouse, for example, turned me on to the joys of Scottish fried cuisine. Having had my fair share of haggis and cock-a-leekie soup, I thought that I had experienced everything that Scotland had to offer. I was wrong. For example, one popular treat is the Stonner, which is basically a sausage wrapped in gyro meat, battered, and deep fried. In Scotland, "stonner" is a euphemism for an erection, which seems ironic, given that coronary occlusions can lead to impotence. Still, I guess we all find our excitement in different places...
My daughter is addicted to Dirty Jobs, a Discovery Channel show in which the host tries out the filthiest, nastiest jobs in the country. Watching him work his way through a septic system or clean gum off a sidewalk, it's hard to imagine worse tasks than the ones that he regularly undertakes. However, in a recent move, Japan and Kit Kat seem to have figured out an innovative new way to lower the bar on horrifyingly bad employment.
Kit Kat's new Human Vending Machines combine the best elements of convenience foods, automatic vending, and slavery in one brutally delicious, schadenfreude-laden package. Basically a snack machine with a human being trapped inside, the machines put a personal face on candy vending transactions. Users put in their money, make their choice, and ask the man inside to send out the chocolate. The vendor, in turn, smiles at the customer, grabs the candy, and drops it into a slot.
There is no word yet on whether, underneath their smiles, the anonymous vendors are dying inside, asking themselves what series of bad choices led them to become nameless cogs in a snack-distribution empire. Similarly, one has to wonder if any of the vendors has found himself on a weekend-long alcoholic bender after selling a candy bar to his former prom date, a slickly-attired professional who pretended that she didn't recognize him.
You've got just over three weeks left to submit a paper for the next Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery. The symposium was co-founded by Alan Davidson, whose name you may recognize from the spine of your copy of Oxford Companion to Food, which, if you are indeed a budding food historian, should certainly occupy a few inches on your bookshelf. Each year, food experts gather in, well, Oxford, England, to explore from every angle some theme in food history. The theme for 2009 is "Food and Language."
Anyone with a deep interest in food history may submit a paper (no later than March 15). If your paper is chosen, you get to attend this veritable who's who of the food world, with the added bonus of partaking in the culinary offerings of Raymond Blanc of Michelin-starred Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons in England. Oh, and you have to present your ideas and respond to questions.
Check out the website as nothing I could say in this abbreviated space would do justice to the incredible range of scholarship presented at past symposia. And no, I've never been. Nor have I yet divined a topic for this year, even though I couldn't hope for a richer and more personally arresting topic than "Food and Language." But there's still time for me, and for you!
I'm quite happy to have some Scottish ancestry. It's led me to the dry and delicious world of scones, the simplicity of shortbread, the warm and satisfying bite of Scotch, and the utter tastiness of haggis. Now, it's led me to warm and tasty baps.
Scottish baps are simply bread rolls made with yeast. They must be kneaded and allowed to rise a few times before being flattened, left to raise again, and then pinched to keep them from rounding out while baking. They only need to be baked for 20-30 minutes, and they're the perfect sort of bread for beginner bakers. The recipe is incredibly easy, it familiarizes you with kneading and rising, and it is hard to mess up. The flavor of a bap is simple, yet rewarding. It tastes much like a freshly made biscuit while having the texture of a well-worked piece of bread. The outside is wonderfully crisp while the inside is soft, airy, and just waiting for a slab of butter.
There's really no limit to the foods that can be slid inside a bap, and Wise Geek notes that regional favorites include bacon batties (bacon, butter, and a brown sauce), baps served alongside Lincolnshire sausages, and fritter rolls that pile potato fritters inside.
When I signed up for the Burns' Night dinner at St. Andrews Restaurant, I was pretty excited. Not only would I be able to enjoy haggis and other Scottish specialties, but I would also have a great post for Slashfood. Unfortunately, Monika Bartyzel got here ahead of me and did a pretty damned good job of talking up the wonders of the "Great chieftain o' the pudding race." Still, having spent an evening eating offal, sipping scotch, and listening to highland poetry, I'm not quite ready to give up...
My introduction to haggis came on a family trip to Scotland. My mother, who was Jewish and had never quite understood my father's extreme dislike of spices, bought A Feast of Scotland by Janet Warren. As we drove around the countryside, she tore through the tome, alternately giggling, gagging, and exclaiming "You're FREAKING joking!" At the end of all of this, she gazed upon my father and told him that she finally understood his problem. The cookbook featured exactly two spices: salt and pepper, and occasionally exhorted its readers to "add suet to taste." While there is a lot to be said for environment, it was clear that heredity had had at least some effect on my dad's palate.
In celebration of yesterday's Robert Burns Day, I thought I'd introduce you all to the world of haggis.
Now don't recoil and run screaming in the other direction. Haggis' urban legend bark is much worse than any bite you could take of the Scottish food. Really, the whole anti-haggis stance doesn't make much sense. Usually larger versions of foods get applauded and loved, but haggis gets the pointy end of the leftover meat sword. It doesn't have the widespread appeal of its cousin, the hot dog, nor the culinary adoration of cousin #2, the sausage.
But it's just a spicy, tasty meatloaf sort of food stuffed in innards, whether they be intestines, stomach, or other lining. In fact, if you're like me, your first bite of haggis will make you think that you're being played and fed ground beef instead. Scots knew what they were doing. This isn't a food where you try to bring out the delicate flavors of the pluck. It's boiled, ground with tasty bits like onions and oatmeal, and heavily spiced so that it slides down with deliciousness, rather than revulsion.
Slop it on a plate with neeps and tatties, and you can't go wrong.
Is there that owre his French ragout, Or olio that wad staw a sow, Or fricassee wad mak her spew Wi' perfect sconner, Looks down wi' sneering, scornfu' view On sic a dinner? -- Robert Burns
In case you forgot, January 25 marks Robbie Burns day -- the day where we delight in Scottish poetry by the master, and indulge in the wonders of haggis.
These days, I'm not so sure why the meal is considered so revolting. It might be encased in intestines, but it's a meal that includes forgotten meats like "sheep's pluck," and a saute of tasty additions like onions, spices, and stock. A food that uses all of the animal, let's your drink to the tune of bagpipes, and allows you to recite rowdy poetry? What could be better?
Okay, I've tried my fair share of weird food combinations. I've munched down on Twinkie dogs and slurped a couple of Guinness floats. Once, in a misguided attempt to revolutionize roast chicken, I stuffed a pullet with banana bread and glazed it with a cranberry and lime juice reduction. For that matter, I even tried Voodoo Donuts' maple bacon long john, a taste sensation that was salty, crunchy, sweet, and altogether delicious.
Recently, I came across an oldie-but baddie: Auntie Bessie's "mash and sausage cone," a snack that consists of mashed potatoes, peas, sausage, and gravy, all packed into an ice cream cone. While some people, apparently, have known about this crime against humanity for a while, it was news to me. Metro, a British blog, may have hit the nail on the head with their caption "horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible." I might add in "Dear God, oh God, why?!?"
To be fair, though, Aunt Bessie has, apparently, abandoned the mash cone concept, noting that the cones got too soggy. With this in mind, I decided to seek out the next generation of horrifying food concepts.
Sure, Monty Python has had plenty of fun at Spam's expense (and made plenty of money in the process, I might add), but there's still a fair share of Brits who like being creative with their meat. (No giggling!)
Case in point, word has just come across the wire that "following the resounding success" of last year's inaugural event, Spam UK will once again be holding their Spam® Cook of the Year competition!
Spam chefs are encouraged to upload their unique Spam recipes and pictures to www.spam-uk.com. From there, seven regional winners will have the opportunity to showcase their canned meat concoctions at the "star studded final in London in June 2009." [Their emphasis, not mine. Personally, I wouldn't have the audacity.] The grand prize? An all-expenses-paid trip to the 2010 SPAM JAM® Festival!
Now, I know what you're thinking, but muffle those arrogant guffaws... The 2010 festival location: Waikiki, Hawaii. Not too shabby, huh? (Plus £500 spending money, which in American dollars, depending on the economy, is worth approximately somewhere between $1000 and absolutely nothing.)
Unfortunately, Spam® UK Cook of the Year is only open to residents of the United Kingdom -- though I'm sure die-hard, international Spam chefs will consider achieving British citizenship just an "added kink to the application process." But before you go hunting down a green card, fun can still be found for us Americans on Spam.com including details on the Great American SPAM Championship. Dry British wit not included.
Time Magazine reports, with a soupçon of punny glee, that sales of offal in Great Britain have surged as of late, likely in response to the international economic downturn. Quoth London's Liz Logan:
"Tough economic times have Britons eating their hearts out and swallowing their tongues. Not literally, of course. But offal - or "variety meats," as the food category is euphemistically called in the U.K. - is experiencing a surge in popularity, with sales up 67% over the past five years."
Thing is, even in advance of the pound sterling's plunge, the nose-to-tail herd, helmed by offal stalwarts like Fergus Henderson and River Cottage's Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, had been squealing 'bout the culinary benefits of tripe, kidneys, brains, tail, giblets and trotters. Come for the savings, stay for the savoring -- the message seems to have come home to roost.
I posted a while back about my love of grilled chicken hearts, and I'm no stranger to whisking up a batch of giblet gravy, or a neckbone ragout, but I'm hungry for your favorite takes on organ meats. Post 'em in the comments below.
What better way to celebrate St. Patrick's Day than with a selection of artisanal Irish cheeses? My knowledge on Irish cheese was limited to cheddar until a trip last fall to Slow Food's cheese festival where I met Jeffa Gill, one of the early pioneers of Irish farmhouse cheese production. At the festival, she tasted out remarkable cheeses with an aroma of the Irish shore.
A couple of months ago, I wrote a post in which I tried to touch bottom in the pantheon of disturbing cuisine. While I stopped short of nightmarishly horrifying food, like rotten cheese and duck embryos, I explored what I imagined were the worst fried foods imaginable.
You've got just over three weeks left to submit a paper for the next Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery. The symposium was co-founded by Alan Davidson, whose name you may recognize from the spine of your copy of Oxford Companion to Food, which, if you are indeed a budding food historian, should certainly occupy a few inches on your bookshelf. Each year, food experts gather in, well, Oxford, England, to explore from every angle some theme in food history. The theme for 2009 is "Food and Language." 
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When I signed up for the Burns' Night dinner at St. Andrews Restaurant, I was pretty excited. Not only would I be able to enjoy haggis and other Scottish specialties, but I would also have a great post for Slashfood. Unfortunately, Monika Bartyzel got here ahead of me and did a pretty damned good job of talking up the wonders of the "Great chieftain o' the pudding race." Still, having spent an evening eating offal, sipping scotch, and listening to highland poetry, I'm not quite ready to give up...
.jpg)
Okay, I've tried my fair share of weird food combinations. I've munched down on Twinkie dogs and slurped a couple of Guinness floats. Once, in a misguided attempt to revolutionize roast chicken, I stuffed a pullet with banana bread and glazed it with a cranberry and lime juice reduction. For that matter, I even tried Voodoo Donuts' maple bacon long john, a taste sensation that was salty, crunchy, sweet, and altogether delicious.
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