Am I the only person in the world who doesn't like seafood? I love fish, but if it comes out of the sea it's got to have a backbone if I'm going to eat it. The windy miller is the same. I wish I did like seafood, because so many other people seem to enjoy it so much.
[pen] My reaction to mussels is a reboot of the digestive system from both ends. Fish that looks like fish is fine, and prawns and shrimps are ok, but I'm wary of anything else from the sea. I wonder what these are like to eat?
(pen, Raak) With you on that. I'd rather eat Co-op Fish Fingers, let alone the real thing, than fancy stuff you have to pick at. What other people like doesn't bother me; I'm not a social eater, or a particularly elegant one.
[Raak & penelope & Software] I have tried eating (or swallowing) oysters but, regrettably, have yet to manage ingesting one. The same applies to asparagus. I suspect that it's something to do with the smell of them but have no solid evidence to support the hypothesis. [Rosie] Whilst I do like fish meals, at least the ones I cook myself, I find they become cold long before I've managed to scoff the lot. When it comes to fine-boned fish I tend to your approach as it really is, unless one is starving, not worth the effort. [All] Don't get me started on calamari. Maybe it is my aging teeth or the manner in which the samples to which I have been subjected have been cooked, but I'd rather try to eat a standard primary school 'rubber'.
[Duj] Ditto calamari. It's just fried rubber bands, innit? And Aspragus... anything that makes your wee smell so bad can't be good for you, can it? Sadly, the Dutch here go a bundle over it, and I have to eat it to be polite. What's worse, they like the fat, white ones that have lived in the dark (like forced rhubarb), which are bigger than the small green shoots you get in Engeland. Rhubarb, on the other hand, treated the proper way (plenty of sugar, and paired with either ginger or strawberries) is yummy. Fooled, crumbled or just stewed.
[pen] Asparagus does have that strange effect but it is delicious. But I am with you all the way with rhubarb as long as there is cream, ice cream (the Belgian/Dutch way) or custard.
I have eaten plenty of asparagus, but I don't sniff my wee, so I've never noticed the oft-claimed effect. Calamari (or squid, if we're not going to be all precious about it) is blummin' gorgeous in my opinion. Deep fried in a light batter (50/50 self-rasing and cornflour), it should be light and lovely. If it's rubbery it has been over-cooked. I've had oysters, but I'm not as impressed as I thought I ought to be. Sweetbreads though are another contentious foodstuff that I love.
I'm with Phil on this. Asparagus - delicious when fresh and in season (and the after-odour isn't that unpleasant or strong IMO). Calamari - rubbery = overcooked, properly cooked and fresh they almost melt and taste lovely. Oysters - nice - taste of the sea - but too expensive for what they are. In fact I like most molluscs and crustacea (though it's hard to do much with whelks). We need to take some lessons from the chinese - Sour is as good a flavour as sweet and slimy is as good a mouth sensation as crunchy - just different.
(Phil) How does that differ in principle from eradicating the "butter shouldn't be rancid" conditioning from your head? Sour beer tastes awful, like vinegar, which is what it is, at least partly.
[Rosie] Start with something like Hoegarden which is a wheat beer and has a slightly sour note. It's made with a sort of wheat porridge that gives it a great cloudy appearance and the orange and cardamon notes give it a spicy aroma. Once you have developed a taste for that the leap to things like the Lambics is not so great.
[Phil et al] I am rather partial to Franziskaner on a warm day. This is a wheat beer with an interesting smoky flavour. In fact around Munich there are many microbreweries that offer similar smoky beers.
[Phil] I don't think I've tried Lambics. I've had plenty of wheat beers, including Hoegaarden and don't mind the slight sour edge to them. Whether I'd like anything further down that line will have to be determined by experiment. BTW if you're ever in Derby you might like to visit what used to be a fairly unpleasant and run-down pub called 'The Royal Standard', now taken over by CAMRA and revived as The Brewery Tap. At quiet times they do a 'tasting tray' consisting of 3 or 4 different beers - about 1/3 pint of each. On which thought, will you be serving in 2/3 pint measures?
[Rosie] Think of sour sweets, like fizzy-cola-bottle-type things. Or a really crisp granny smith apple. That sort of sour, not vinegar. I have a few bottles of Mort Subite Gueuze (which is a fairly easy entry point to the world of lambics) lying around, and may have one with my dinner tonight, now that my mind is on the subject.
[Software] Have you ever tried the Bamberg-brewed Schlenkerla Rauchbier. "Smoky" would be a massive understatement for it. Again, a shocking flavour and aroma at first, but it is truly wonderful once you get past that. [CdM] A pub run by CAMRA? I shudder to think. It reminds me of the car that Homer Simpson designed. More seriously, I hope their tasting tray is exactly a third of a pint of each (unlike the glasses CAMRA provided at the Derby beer festival, and at least one other I know of, where the third-pint line was at 0.3pints, instead of 0.33pints, meaning CAMRA themselves were selling 10% short measures). And I shan't be bothering with stocking 2/3pt glasses, if the legislation ever comes in. I don't do 1/3pt at present anyway, but 2/3 just seems silly to me.
[Phil] I've not tried the Bamberg but it sounds interesting. Why does the government not grasp the bull by the horns and dump all imperial measures for good and just get on with what was started half-heartedly 40 years ago.
[INJ] I can appreciate your thinking, although I think a litre is a bit big for responsible consumption of draught beer. I don't want the law to change for a few reasons. One of which is that I seem resistant to change in general and I "like" pints. Also, I'll (probably) have to re-stock all my beer glasses, which could cost me over 500 quid. It's currently a little frustrating that I can't sell a pint or half-pint of lemonade. I can sell a "large" or "small" lemonade, in pint and half-pint glasses. Or I can sell "568ml" or "284ml" in the same glasses. As far as I know, only beer, cider and milk can be legally be sold in pints in the UK, although there is no such restriction throughout the rest of Europe, where it is perfectly legal to use Imperial measures for anything. Curiously "shandy and any other beverage of which beer is a constituent part" counts as beer for the Weights and Measures (Beer and Cider) Act 1998. So anything with a bit of draught beer in it, should be served in thirds or multiples of halves. How odd. I have in mind things like the Irish method of serving a Black Russian (with a Guinness head on it). Sorry, I've started thinking out loud now.
[Phil] I did not say abandon the pint glass in pubs, the continentals do use them but you never actually get a pint in them - they do like their froth. What I was alluding to was the indecision of whether we are a metric or imperial nation. At the moment it is a=half cocked with some things sold in imperial and some in metric (metric martyrs in the marketplace for example). There needs to be clear leadership. As for selling liquids in taverns the UK still has a half-cocked approach. Spirits are metric; beer is imperial. While I agree that spirits should be sold in standard sizes (many continentals have a relaxed view on what constitutes a measure) I think that draught beer could be sold in whatever size glass that the licensee chooses - provided that it is priced accordingly and clearly stated.
Softers) Uniformity of units is not necessary except to the tidy-minded. All you need to know is what you're getting and for all users to be familiar with those units. A pub that sold beer in metric units would very likely lose a lot of customers. If it is not necessary to change it is necessary not to change. A pint glass of whatever style is a very familiar object (shut up at the back). This keeps people happier except for the aforesaid tidy-minded commitee members and they are very few in number. Actually we should use cubic attoparsecs (19.34 to the pint).
I've written about this before, but beer sizes in Australia are weird and wonderful. In Melbourne the standard drink is a pot, which is 285ml. In Sydney this same measure is called a middy, in Hobart a ten and in Darwin a handle, while in Adelaide it is called a schooner (or even an up-sized schooner as the old schooner was 255ml or 9 fl oz), however, asking for a schooner in any other city will get you 425ml. If you want 425ml in Adelaide you will need to ask for a pint, but if you ask for a pint in any other city you get 570ml. To get this size of drink in Adelaide you need to ask for an Imperial Pint. In Darwin and north Queensland (where men are men and sheep are worried) you also get a 7, which is 200ml (probably because a small measure of beer stays cold, while a big beer goes warm over time - not because they like drinking girl sizes). It makes travelling in Australia more adventurous.
(nfras) How can a small measure stay colder for longer than a large one? It doesn't; you drink it quicker. The small Queensland measures wouldn't go down too well in Carshalton (London Borough of Sutton) where not only are men men but women are as well.
[Rosie] He didn't say it stays colder for longer. He said it "stays cold" -- presumably for the period while you're drinking it. And there's no assumption that you drink it quicker; you drink it at the same rate :-) </outpedanting>
[Phil] Is it really true that our friends on the continent can use imperial measures? I'd not heard that before, but I can believe it on the general observation that UK governments tend to believe that they must follow EU rules, whereas other European governments (notably France and Germany) know that nothing bad will happen if they don't.