Lis and I are terrible influences on one another. But we have fun.

[xiphias]

So, yesterday, at around 3 o'clock, Lis's boss told her that nothing productive was going to get done, so she should go home early. So she did, which put her on Rte 1 Southbound before five. Which meant that she could stop into that interesting-looking store, Union Jack, which closes at 5 PM, so we've never gone in before. It's a British import shop. So, when she got home, she told me that it looked neat.

Today, we went over there together. And I decided, arbitrarily, that we would spend $20 on British-type food and stuff.

We got:
A packet of lamb-and-mint flavored crisps.
2 cans of shandy (one for me, one as a present for my father, who likes shandies. 11% beer. Which means that it's, what, 1% alcohol? That's like as alcoholic as orange juice.)
1 can of Irn-Bru, because I've heard Dee and Ford talk about the stuff so much that I had to try it.
1 can of dandilion-burdock root soda
1 package of pudapams.
1 Mars bar.
1 package of oat cakes.
1 tinned toffee pudding.

We ate the lamb-flavored potato chips in the car on the way home. They were really good, which surprised me. I thought they'd be nasty; they weren't. Dandilion-burdock root soda tastes like bubblegum-licorice soda, and is therefore nasty. Irn-Bru tastes like dandion-burdock root soda mixed with artificial orange soda. I kind of like it.

A British Mars bar taste like what an American Milky Way bar would taste like if they used decent chocolate. Why is British (and Canadian) chocolate so consistently better than American chocolate? Do Americans actually not taste that, for instance, Hershey's is crud?

The shandy was shandy-like, and quite nice, even if it was totally artificial and had saccharine and stuff like that in it. I still liked it.

Two days ago, I made up a curry-like-object for dinner. It consisted of potatoes, a package of frozen cauliflower, some frozen peas, a big-ass can of chickpeas, lots of curry powder which was a brand we'd not tried before but which smelled good, flaked coconut (the kind that you use for desserts that has sugar in it), rasins, and probably some other stuff that I can't remember. It turned out really well. Lis had it for dinner two nights ago, and lunch yesterday. So we decided to fry up some pupadoms and have them with more curry today.

I looked at the instructions and I told Lis, "Um, you're the one who's involved in fanfic writing of British stuff -- I need a translation."

"Oh? Of what?"

"This says that after I heat up the oil, I need to hold the pupadoms under it using a fish slice. I'm hoping that's different in English and American, 'cause, otherwise, I don't wanna have any pupadoms anymore."

A "fish slice", it turns out, is a "spatula", which made more sense.

So I boiled some oil and held the pupadums under it using a spatula, and they fried up and balooned out to twice their original diameter, and then got all crispy-crunchy-greasy-yummy.

And we had curry and pupadums and it was good.

But, you see. . . then we had this thing of peanut oil. And there was still some left. And Lis said, "What happens if we deep-fry an egg?"

So I cracked an egg into a glass and poured it into the boiling oil, and, after a couple seconds, I turned it, scooped it out, and served it to Lis, who ate it. Basically, it tasted like "deep fried thingy."

Then she suggested deep frying a cookie, which we did, and it ended up okay, I guess. But it wasn't a very good cookie to begin with, so it ended better than it started.

Lis also wants me to point out that we melted the plastic spatula. And I caught a paper towel on fire.

And, in a couple of hours, we'll go to Mystery House for Shabbat Eruv Xmas.

ETA Okay, we boiled the tinned toffee pudding in its can for 35 minutes, then served it.

Ick. It tastes . . . tinned. Which I suppose it's unfair to expect it NOT to do so, as, in fact, it IS tinned. Lis is still eating it, though. But that's because she's the sort of person that things that deep-frying an egg is a good idea.

Comments

[ewtikins.livejournal.com]

If you were in Scotland, correct protocol would have been to deep-fry the Mars bar...

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Yes, Lis pointed that out. But we'd already eaten it before we started frying things.

[stickylatex.livejournal.com]

In some parts of the southern U.S. as well.

[jenett]

You obviously haven't read The Emperors of Chocolate: Inside the Secret World of Hershey and Mars (by Joel Glenn Brenner) which is emminently readable but which also explains precisely why Hershey's tastes that way, and about some of the differences between US and UK chocolate. (And a little bit about other variants, but mostly US focused.)

Very cool book.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

The difference between a fish slice and a spatula is that a fish slice is metal.

But I guess you already discovered that.

You have no idea how weird the idea of British food as weird and exotic and amusing is to me.

But I can answer your question about chocolate. We don't put wax in it. British and Canadian and European chocolate makers sat around one day, just chewing the toffee together, and one of them said "Hey, you know the idea of putting wax in chocolate?" and one of the others said "Yeah..." and the first one said <"Bad idea..." and they all agreed that they wouldn't do it any more, because really, wax in chocolate, it's like about as sensible as chalk in a milkshake or sand in ramen (1). Unfortunately, the American chocolate makers never got this memo.

(1: British ramen, the kind with English writing on anyway, has sand in. It says so right in the ingredients.)

[navrins]

Personally, I like Hershey's chocolate. But then, I also like Kraft macaroni and cheese, and McDonald's hamburgers, so replace that with a grain of salt.

Also, I think it says something about me that my first reaction to reading the beginning of your post was something like, "I didn't know Lis was working nights..."

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

So I should have said, "Yesterday, at about 15 o'clock. . . "

Anyway, I like Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, and McDonald's, too, but I don't particularly like Hershey's. I mean, in comparison to other chocolates. I'll still eat it, of course.

[querldox.livejournal.com]

What, no chocolate (either milk or dark) covered digestives? Y'all missed out on the really good stuff. :-)

[cheshyre]

I saw a package of chocolate covered shortbread (white, dark and milk-chocolate) but by that time we were close enough to $20. Next shopping trip.

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

I tend to stay far away from anything calling itself "British Food". The very phrase is a contradiction in terms. In general, it seems that people in cold climates have bland cuisines..perhaps it's the short growing season, or something.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

But you forget that "British cooking" includes Indian cooking. Among others. The British Empire was large and diverse, and "British food" includes stuff from the colonies. Vindaloo, for instance, was invented in London. Indian food is British, the same way that Chinese food and pizza are American.

There are some very good British dishes

[dakiwiboid.livejournal.com]

and a lot of the foods which have become the core of American cooking came along to the New World with the colonists. Unfotunately, the horrors of rationing during and between the world wars (which actually went on much longer than necessary) pretty much ruined their cuisine.

These days, as a generation has grown up which knows that one doesn't have to overcook vegetables, the cuisine is apparently reviving.

Re: There are some very good British dishes

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

Yanks do just fine on overcooking vegetables. It took me till adulthood to find out that there were ways of preparing vegetables other than boiling them to death. This appears to have been a 1950s/60s/70s thing, and what has brought back the idea that veggies are supposed to be crisp even when cooked is the adoption of stir-frying from various Asian cuisines.

You raise a good point about rationing; I wonder what a typical home-cooked meal would have been like in Britain circa 1900.

[micheinnz.livejournal.com]

In the 18th century, British chefs were the envy of the French...

"British food" doesn't have to mean "bland and boring".

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

I think someone else in this thread pointed out that two world wars' worth of food rationing really did their best to kill anything that might have been considered "British cuisine".

/doesn't care much for French, either

[micheinnz.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's pretty much the case, sadly.

There IS good American chocolate, just not mass market stuff

[dakiwiboid.livejournal.com]

Cloud Nine is fabulous, for instance, and it's made in Piscataway, NJ, even. One of the best chocolatiers in the country is Karl Bissinger, and their oldest and nicest store is mere blocks from my doorstep.

You didn't get any wine gums! Try those next time. I would be addicted to them if I could find them often enough, also to Cadbury's Old Jamaica rum raisin bars. To be honest, I mostly don't like Cadbury products, which have too much vanillin in them to suit me, but Old Jamaica is a superb exception.

Re: There IS good American chocolate, just not mass market stuff

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

We got wine gums at our last supermarket shopping trip. They were . . . odd. But we ate them all.

Re: There IS good American chocolate, just not mass market stuff

[mitchellf.livejournal.com]

Actually some of the finest chocolate in the world is made in California at the Scharffen Berger plant. Granted, Scharffen Berger mostly sells to 5 star restaurants and hotels, and most of thier chocolate is unsweetened, but it's still top quality stuff (I've bought it in Whole Foods and used it to make brownies and chocolate covered fruits & nuts, and Vekson used it to make the most awesome parve fudge I've ever tasted). The standard 8oz bars (which you can buy in Whole Foods) come in unsweetened (99% cacao), bittersweet (70% cacao) and semi-sweet (62% cacao). All of them are parve. You can also purchase smaller bars of milk chocolate (still 40% cacao), and if you go to their website (http://www.scharffenberger.com/) you can also buy other chocolate items from them.

They have been reviewed by the top confectioners of the world, and Shaffen Berger chocolate is the preferred chocolate used by Jaques Torres (of Food Network fame) in his NYC restaurant. Sure it's expensive stuff ($10 per 8oz baking bar--in respect to the $3 Hershey's and Baker's Chocolate baking bars you can find in the grocery store), but it's worth every penny.

Yes, it's good

[dakiwiboid.livejournal.com]

I like it too. What's funny is that two people on my F-list have bought to bake with but not bothered to look for the baking directions under the label and had bad results because of the difference in fat content. RTFM!

Re: Yes, it's good

[mitchellf.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it is a bit different--I guess it might be the lack of wax as well as the higher fat content. :-)

I used the brownie recipe which came in the box of the Unsweetened chocolate. Yummy!

And I used both the bittersweet and the semisweet to cover nuts and fruit. Mmmmm....

It's really nice stuff. I'm considering using it in some savory recipes, but I haven't come up with a good one, yet. Oh, and I also want to try the chocolate nibs. Oh, and the cocoa powder (unsweetened) makes good hot cocoa when you use Alton Brown's recipe.

Hmmm...I think I need some chocolate.....;-)

[ckd]

hr_macgirl, who should know, suggests that a better way to prepare the tinned toffee pudding is just to spoon it out and microwave it, then serve with Bird's custard. Mmmmmmmm.

[voltbang.livejournal.com]

Afew years back at a local fair chrisv and I enjoyed some deep fried oreos. If you happen to be in a deep frying mood again sometime soon, try that out.

I used to go to a lunch counter in the building I worked at, where deep frying was mandatory. The running joke at the office was the deep fried salad.

Don't mind me, someone just pointed me at this post...

[ravenevermore.livejournal.com]

Ah, but what about Jaffa Cakes?

[gilana]

Being in Scotland right now, I had to try Irn-Bru along with my haggis neeps and tatties. I liked it, but I hadn't quite counted on how much caffeine it has. I spent a lot of time that night staring at the inside of my eyeballs...

[dakiwiboid.livejournal.com]

We make tatties and neeps most winters. Mmmm...the last version was low-fat due to a housemate's health condition, but the strong flavor from the rutabaga was just lovely and made up for the lack of butter.

[psu-jedi.livejournal.com]

Then she suggested deep frying a cookie, which we did

Deep-fried Oreos, baby! My husband always said he wanted to try some deep-fried lard. The county fair where we lived aims to please...