Odd list

[pecunium]

Snagged from threnody who grabbed it from someone else. It purports to be a list of fifty things one ought to eat before one dies.

First, some of the items are vague, how fresh does the fish have to be? If I don't toss it, still flopping out of the water and into the pan, does it count? Tapas? That's the same as saying, zakhuski or appetizers, or dim sum. It's not a single food. When they say barbeque, do they mean meat cooked over coals? Or is is the slow cooked wonder that is "real" barbeque (such as I had with akirlu at Johhny Reb's this past Thursday).

Well, regardless, I've bolded the one's I've eaten. Commentary where appropriate.


1. Fresh fish
2. Lobster
3. Steak
4. Thai food
5. Chinese food
6. Ice cream
7. Pizza
8. Crab This is one of the few foods I will stuff myself on. Usually when I am full, I can't eat any more. Not so with crab (or lobster, but I don't order it as often). I will eat until I am stuffed, and then keep eating, until it's gone, I'll keep going.
9. Curry
10. Prawns
11. Moreton Bay Bugs
12. Clam chowder New England, not Manhattan.
13. Barbecues
14. Pancakes
15. Pasta
16. Mussels
17. Cheesecake
18. Lamb Probably my favorite meat. Hard to get with really good flavor, but one can intensify the lambiness of it by letting it cool, and eating it the next day. It, to me, is as good cold as it is warm.
19. Cream tea
20. Alligator
21. Oysters
22. Kangaroo Very good, with caribou/reindeer, it in the category of sweet/rich meats. A little is enough, though one can eat a great deal.
23. Chocolate
24. Sandwiches
25. Greek food Oh, yeah! But this is (like Mexican, Chinese, Thai, etc.) one of the categories which is too vague. There is so much greek food, and so many ways/styles of it's being made, that this isn't really a good term. Someone who's had dolmas or gyros can say they've had it, but it's not a chicken napflion, or taramasalta nor yet the sweet rice with cinamon one gets from those Greeks whose families came from the east, where the cooking of Istanbul favors the mixing of sweet and savory.
26. Burgers
27. Mexican food
28. Squid
29. American diner breakfast Northern diner, or southern? I've done both. You can keep the grits, and the red-eye gravy.
30. Salmon I don't like it cooked. Thanks to akirlu and libertango I discovered the joy of raw sushi. Hajime let me, later, discover the joy of a sashmi salad of salmon, scallions, garlic wasabi sauce, shredded nori and sesame seeds. Ah, to be back in Puget Sound where the salmon is plentiful, and fresh.
31. Venison
32. Guinea pig
33. Shark
34. Sushi
35. Paella
36. Barramundi
37. Reindeer
38. Kebab
39. Scallops
40. Australian meat pie How does this differ from other meat pies?
41. Mango I've had it, can do without it.
42. Durian fruit Which kind? There are a lot of varieties. Reports say they vary, from the exquisitely delicate, to those reminiscent of well used, and then aged, sneakers.
43. Octopus
44. Ribs Lamb, and and pork, and beef, and kanagaroo, which come to mind immediately. All different, and some of them done so differently from place to place as to be completely different foods.
45. Roast beef
46. Tapas
47. Jerk chicken/pork
48. Haggis It was ok, not stellar, but not horrid. I can see where it might be very good. I can also see where it could be wretched, sort of like blood sausage.
49. Caviar This varies a lot. I've had caviar, a few times, which made me understand the hype, but usually it was only so-so. Not horrid, but not worth the trouble/expense. A few times it was nasty.
50. Cornish pasty

Ok, so that's that list.

I think it needs (if one believes such a list is a valid thing, and honestly, I don't) to be more specific.

Some things are really variable. Take honey. I like it, in small doses, as a pure counterpoint (I don't care for it drinks, and it gets oppressive as a dominant flavor). I bought a jar of chestnut blossom honey Friday last. It's potent. It's not for everyone. It might not even be for me. It has a pleasantly bitter note, but then gets a tad acrid and a trifle soapy. I'm going to have to work to find things to use it in (it's not acceptable as a topping for yogurt). So, kebabs isn't really a good thing to have on such a list.

It was also a pretty pedestrian list. It had kangaroo, and whatever the bugs are, but no duck, nor quail. None of the wonderful sausages of the world (is life really worth living without such things as bratwurst, mortadella, braunswieger, kielbasa, chorizo, leung cop, andouille, cervelat, bangers... the list could go on for pages), nor such things as fresh corn, boullabaise/chioppino, green corn tamales, rice pudding, miso soup, etc.

Me, I'd like to see truffles on there. Probably a few other things as well, but food is so idiosyncratic (and cultural, the japanese don't like cheese, to them it smells rotted, many Westerners think raw fish is physically revolting, I happen to like most of one, and many of the other, but that doesn't mean I think everyone ought to like shropshire blue).
The world is too vast for any limiting of things to a "top 100" to be useful, much less valid, and shows more the prejudices of the writer, than the merit of the reader's experience.

So, if you want to respond by bolding things, feel free. If you want to make a list of your own, that would be interesting. It would be more interesting if it were a list of things which were memorable; and why, not just the ones you liked.

Comments

[trinker.livejournal.com]

Hrr. Was that river-caught salmon you were eating raw?

If so, that's something I caution people against, as the risk of anisakis infestation is rather high.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

I don't know. One trusts one shushi-ya to get it right, or one doesn't.

TK

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

It's originally from the BBC. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/tv_and_radio/50eats_index.shtml) It was a reader poll in 2004.

I mostly find the wide chasm interesting, from the very specific (like lobster) to "Thai food." There's a lot of variation in Thai food, people...

(The bugs are a type of Australian shellfish.)

[anna-en-route.livejournal.com]

For the record, the Australian meat pie is distinguishable by its distinctly dodgy meat byproduct contents and the fact that ozzies suspend it upside down in pea soup, slather on tomato sauce and call it a "floater".

You'd be much better off with a kiwi mince pie as the mince at least has to be recogniseable. Not that this is all partisan...

I think the difference between both ozzie and kiwi meat pies and
American ones is that the pies are much much smaller (and a large part of both cultures)

Also having eaten Durian candy I'd have to say that the smell goes well beyond sneakers and into rotting corpse territory.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

I understand the smell is powerful.

I also understand that the variation in actual flavor, from variety to variety, is huge.

I tend to thnk of meat-pies, and pasties, as a one handed food. The states have those, as well as larger meat-pies, meant to be family fare, not individual.

TK

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

That was my guess, from the name.

TK

[trinker.livejournal.com]

Ah.

Was not clear to me that you were referring to sushi-ya-san sushi, rather than to "bought it at Pikes Place Mkt and made it myself" stuff.

[fucking--snow.livejournal.com]

i think maybe caviar is an acquired taste. i grew up on the stuff and i think it's delicious. of course it varies a lot too, red, black, which fish, etc, and i don't like all caviar, but i have to say this is the first time i hear someone say they actually dislike it.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Caviar is one of those things I can, generally, take or leave. Most is, at least, edible. The best is divine, the worst (which is hard to find, or I know what I am looking for) is foul. It tastes like bait smells.

TK

[feonixrift.livejournal.com]

Best:

Octopus
Chicken feet
Red cavier (I really don't care for black)
Real tamales
Eel with avocado (it's the combination that really does it)
Shrimp chips (favorite snack back in college)
Dumplings, of all sorts
Calamari (tasty stringy rubbery slime?)
Pickled duck eggs

Worst:

Tofu "beef"
The common excuse for pasta
White sandwich bread

Which Mexican food do they mean, I wonder?

[waterlilly.livejournal.com]

I would make the same arguments about Mexican food being a vague descriptor. There's Tex Mex, which is really only much good in south and central Texas, go much further north than Austin and it's not the same (gets bland and Anglicized, generally). And the there's New Mexico Mexican food, which has a lot of blue things in it and doesn't appeal to me as much as the Texas variety. There's also California Mexican food, which is influenced heavily (near as I could tell) by the variant of Mexican food native to Baja California. (I find California Mexican food to be horribly bland, to be honest.)

And finally, at long last, you get the cuisine of interior Mexico, which doesn't really resemble much of any of the above. I like most of it to varying degrees, with a strong preference for Tex Mex since it's what I grew up eating. But Mexican food shouldn't merely have connotations of Taco Bell, if you see what I mean.

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

I had the Bad Kind a lot while in the then Soviet Union. It was a staple of the sort of semi-banquets they kept feeding us, and it eventually felt like the caviar (and the really really salty bottled water) was following me around. Gah.