This Little Piggy Went To Market Borough Market London Bridge Station Website Opening times: Thursdays: 11am - 5pm Fridays: 12pm - 6pm Saturdays: 9am - 4pm Walking through Borough Market the other day I caught a whiff of something deliciously smoky in the air, and I wondered what rare delicacy it might be. I turned the corner to discover that an estate agents was on fire.  Such is the wonder of London’s great food market that even the burning buildings are mouthwatering. Fortunately the fire did not spread, and the market survived. If London lost Borough it would lose not only one of its greatest assets, but also perhaps the finest food market in the world. No other market I’ve visited, from La Boqueria in Barcelona to the Great Market in Budapest, can match it for colour, quality and choice. Other great food markets are like amazing grocery stores on a grand scale. Borough offers that as well, but it offers so much more that it becomes a dangerous place to do your grocery shopping. The groceries themselves tend to be very reasonably priced considering how good everything is - I usually pick up a punnet of gorgeous sweet red cherry tomatoes for a quid and eat them like sweets as I walk around - but the temptation of all the expensive gourmet offerings can be too much, and I rarely leave the market without parting with about fifty quid. Across from the stall where I buy my cherry tomatoes is a stand selling rather less healthy sweets. I’m on record as a man who enjoys a big bar of Cadbury Dairy Milk, but I do also enjoy good posh chocolates, and L’Artisan is one of the best chocolatiers in town. The range includes such delights as champagne truffles, salted caramels, praline feuillantines, cardamom chocolates and passion fruit thins, but the great thing about their stall at Borough is that it exclusively sells bags of unidentified misshapes that could include any of the above for just £2 - perfect for an indulgent evening in with The X-Factor and a bottle of red. (Frankly I prefer misshapes to polished chocolates - chocolates should never be too fussy.) If that’s not enough chocolate for you, another nearby stall sells the ‘ultimate chocolate brownie’, a rich thick gooey slab of sin that has earned a bit of a following. Many find these brownies irresistible. My willpower is more thoroughly tested deeper into the scrum of Borough’s Green Market, at a stall billed as the ‘Borough Cheese Company’. It seems like an oddly generic name given that there are many cheese companies at Borough - the most notable pair being Neal’s Yard Dairy and fine French affineur Hervé Mons. It’s also odd because the Borough Cheese Company generally only sells one cheese; Comté.  Of course, if you’re going to sell just one cheese, this is a good cheese to go with. Comté is one of the best cheeses in the world; a robust, nutty, lively unpasteurised Gruyere-style cheese made throughout the summer in Franche-Comté with the same milk that, during the winter, makes Vacherin. Those really are some very talented cows.  It’s easy to eat a full brunch made up entirely of free cheese samples at Borough, grabbing a little chèvre here, a little Gorwydd Caerphilly there, perhaps some mature Parmesan; but it’s the Comté that always grabs me. I can’t pass the stall without grabbing a sample or three, and once I’ve had a taste I will almost always buy a tranche, which I will then devour before nightfall, without so much as an oatcake to keep it company. Two stalls down from the Borough Cheese Company is a little stall selling Calabrian delicacies, manned by a couple of very Italian men. This is another stall that demands my attention almost every time, because this is the stall that sells nduja. Nduja is an intensely spicy soft chili pork sausage. I’m told the name is derived from the French ‘andouillete’, which is a rather sinister offal sausage with the distinctive flavours of an abbatoir. Nduja may also have some dubious meats in it, but it’s hard to tell when the chili is so dominant. I’m told nduja is great in soups and sauces, but I prefer to spread it on hot toasted pita. And this is why I can’t buy my groceries at Borough. It eats my money. I end up going home with a heavy bag laden with wax-paper-wrapped cheeses, sausages, salami and pancetta, a bottle or two of booze, a bag of fudge, a tub of pickles, a tin of tea and some bean dip, and a big hole where my cash used to be. It’s money well spent, though. They say that money can’t buy you happiness, but it can buy you Comté, and that’s the next best thing. Dinner In A Mo’ Inamo 134-136 Wardour Street, London W1 Website Ever ponder what eating will be like in the future? Ever wonder where your food pills are, and why your waitress doesn’t have a jet pack and a silver jumpsuit? Well, here’s a possible glimpse into that shiny but unattainable world. At Inamo, they have seen into the future, and they have spotted where The Matrix went wrong. Remember how Keanu thought that everything was down to a lack of spoons? Well, at Inamo they believe it’s all about a lack of menus. Instead of such crusty old concepts, you get this bright and shiny thing. It’s a menu, Jim, but not as we know it. Neither the menu nor the tablecloth really exist: they are projected onto the table by magic lamps overhead. Next to each place setting is a touch-sensitive pad with a cursor, which you can use to make the menu appear, click through the different dishes and their descriptions, and see an over-large picture of whatever-it-is where your plate will eventually go. It might seem complicated at first glance but anyone with the most basic PC skills will catch on in a trice. The food itself is a round-up of things from South-East Asia, with Japanese-style sushi, Thai-style curries, and Chinese-type nibbles all on the cards. Dishes come as you order them, so be careful not to order starters and mains at the same time, or you’ll get them together, and won’t be able to fit them all on the table (the future has unfeasibly large plates, but rather small portions). While you wait for your food, the technology provides other fiddling opportunities: changing the tablecloth pattern and colour (I liked this bit, although most of the options are rather lurid), playing games (Battleships if you have a dining partner to play against, a slightly lame picture puzzle if you’re on your tod), or trying to find a nearby tube station, taxi or nightclub (if you’re a tourist or very, very drunk). My starter was Vietnamese spring rolls, served on lettuce leaves with some coriander and mint: you’re meant to roll the whole thing up in the leaf, dip it and eat it. This was a slightly messy process, not helped by the fact that the accompanying sweet chilli dip was served in a small wooden crate which was clearly not as watertight as it ought to be, because the sauce started to leak out of the bottom. (In the future, they still have design teething problems, apparently.) Nonetheless, the rolls, with a filling of glass noodles and mushrooms, were pretty tasty, and the sauce had a decent kick of chilli in it. The cocktail I picked from their short list was a Raspberry Lemon Cooler, a pleasant concoction of lemongrass, raspberry and gin in which the lemongrass was very detectable but the gin wasn’t especially. Although the restaurant’s website lists several veggie main courses, there was actually only one available on the menu: this Thai red curry with butternut squash. The sauce was described as “subtle” and I feared this might mean tasteless, but I was very pleasantly surprised indeed: it was fragrant and flavourful, and the squash was fresh-tasting and happily not stewed into mushy oblivion. Overall it was MUCH better than the very similar dish served at Busaba, which I used to enjoy but which always seems to be swimming in oil these days (the curry, I mean, not the restaurant). The dessert selection isn’t massively exciting: I plumped for “roast banana, served with passion fruit mousse”. Why they don’t just call it passion fruit mousse, served with roast banana, I do not know, because the banana is little more than a garnish, really. The mousse was nicely fruity, however, although its biscuit “sail” was a bit too cardboardy. From the rather interesting selection of teas I chose jasmine pearl, and particularly admired the cool-wall handle-free glasses that you can pick up without burning yourself. Now that is what I call progress. So, what are the downsides of the future, I hear you ask? Well, the techno-magic aspects of service seemed to work quite well but the human side was a bit all over the place: it was very reliant on one waiter who was very competent and good at explaining things, and he was kept busy apologizing for the fact that some of his colleagues weren’t and weren’t. At a total cost of £32 for everything you see pictured above, the value for money is also rather questionable: you could have food from the “really good” bracket for that price, whereas this is merely from the “quite nice” box. But as Gypsy Rose Lee might have said, it’s all about the gimmick, and I reckon Inamo’s gimmick is cheerily novel enough to keep them buzzing along for a good while. While it’s not a place to linger all night, if you’re bored with Wagamama and its kin, and feeling relatively flush, you could do a lot worse than exercising your mouse finger here. Tempted? That’s some serious Hot Shito right there. What can I say? Sometimes you see a product on the shelves and you just have to buy it. Even when you can’t quite bring yourself to eat it. Hot Shito is a spicy fish-based sauce, a sort of Ghanaian nam pla with added chilli kick. Well, so I suspect anyway. I still haven’t quite had the courage to open it.  Hot Shito comes from one of the many interesting little grocery shops that pepper south London. I get most of my vegetables from these shops, and often I spot odd little sauces that I can’t resist picking up. Here’s another example: Now, I can’t say I’m entirely seduced by the name ‘Chef Publis’, though it is an improvement over ‘Hot Shito’, but the idea of olive pickle appealed to me. I like a good pickle. Mango pickle is lovely; brinjal pickle is terrific; lime pickle is simply one of the greatest things the world has ever seen. I like olives, so olive pickle sounds like a winner. Imagine my surprise when I opened the jar and found it was… full of olives.  Not chopped up olives made into a delicious spicy Sri Lankan preserve; whole pickled olives with a gritty texture, covered in something that tastes like a sweet Dijon mustard, though the label only lists pepper, turmeric and vinegar. Oh, and when I say ‘whole olives’, I do mean whole, with the stones in. It wasn’t quite what I was hoping for.  You take a chance with these odd import brands from the corner shops. Sometimes it doesn’t pay off. Sometimes it does, as with TRS’s Ginger Pickle, a terrific, hot, punchy pickle packed with chewy fat strips of powerful ginger. It’s so good, it’s almost lime pickle good. You’re still wondering what that Hot Shito tastes like, aren’t you? All right, wait there, I’ll go and find out. OK, it’s an unfortunate dark reddish-brown colour and rather resembles… shall we say… mud, but it doesn’t taste at all bad. It turns out it’s nothing like nam pla - the fish adds savour rather than fishiness. It’s more like curry paste with a salty, meaty flavour and some serious heat. I think I could actually find a use for this. Anyone for some shito stew? Anyone? Hello? One Day Less It’s 5:17am in London at the time of this posting, and it won’t be time for breakfast for at least another couple of hours - that is, unless you’re a practicing Muslim, in which case it’ll be fourteen hours before you break fast. It’s Ramadan, the ninth month of the Islamic calendar, the month of fasting, when Muslims do not eat or drink anything at all between sunrise and sunset as a lesson in sacrifice and humility. This year it happens to synch up with September, so we’re on the 16th day. One of my friends at work is a Muslim, and like millions of others she observes the fast every year - and it never ceases to impress me. Most religions have their periods of fasting, and in my Catholic faith this is Lent, when some churchgoers - but not all - give up chocolate or alcohol or pizza for forty days, and spend much of those forty days moaning about it and constantly reminding everyone of their astonishing self-denial. Lent looks like just a hobby compared to the committment of Ramadan. Of course, every religious fast is paired with a feast - or often two, one at either end. Lent begins with pancakes and ends with chocolate eggs. Ramadan ends in the feast of Eid - but in a sense it can also be a month of feasting, because while Muslims can’t eat or drink while the sun is in the sky, they often gorge themselves after sunset. (I’m told you can actually gain weight during Ramadan because of all the eating after dark.) Yet these daily feasts - which aren’t an option for many Muslims - should not be seen as diminishing the challenge of the daily fast. During Ramadan last year my friends and I decided to join our Muslim colleague in her fast for just one day, because after asking several dumb questions like ‘can you have water?’ (no), and ‘can you have chewing gum?’ (again, no), we wanted to try to understand the experience for ourselves - and to see if we were capable of doing it. It was a tough day. Headaches came and went, energy levels dipped as we dragged ourselves through the long afternoon, and water became an obsession. Watching other people drink was both exalting and punishing - it looked like the most wonderful pleasure imaginable. The hunger built and built through the day, and just when it seemed my stomach would wrap itself up in a knot and come rampaging out of my belly button, my hunger seemed to disipate. No churn, no sickness; just an inner numbness. Stomach zen. Yet as the hours to sunset turned to minutes, the hunger crept back, and all of us undergoing our one day Ramadan found ourselvs sat around a table with plates of food in front of us as we watched the seconds tick away towards official nightfall. I ate ribs and roasted chicken and ice cream until I could eat no more (and when you’ve eaten nothing all day, you get full surprisingly quickly), and we all felt thoroughly pleased with ourselves for our achievement. And that was just one day, of course. Just one day of constant complaining and idly ogling other people’s cups of tea, and at the end of it we felt like we had stretched ourselves and accomplished a personal best. It genuinely was a challenge, though, and I really can’t imagine what it would take to do it for thirty days. That this fast is a cornerstone of the Muslim religion is something that I find extraordinarily impressive. It’s a testament to the strength and dedication of their faith. Even that one day was an educational experience. Perhaps it seems obvious to say it, but to go without for one day really does teach you to appreciate what you have, and to think well of others. You and I are very lucky that we can eat just about anything we want to. It can be humbling to deny yourself these things, and still know that it is a choice, and that you can stop any time you want and go and get an ice cream from the freezer. Others don’t have that choice. Imagine waking up tomorrow and knowing that not even a single grain of rice will pass your lips that day.  Conservative Tastes Early last year the government Food Standards Agency introduced traffic light labelling, an opt-in scheme wherein food manufacturers and distributors could label their products to show the fat, salt and sugar content with simple red, amber and green colour codes. If a food is high fat, it’s marked in red. If it’s low salt, it’s marked green. Anything average is amber. This incredibly simple system allows consumers to make quick and easy decisions about the foods they buy without necessarily having to worry about calorie arithmetic or whether the ‘guideline daily amount’ applies to their own dietary needs, or their children’s. The traffic lights empower consumers - and they also provide an incentive to manufacturers to make their food more healthy. It’s really quite brilliant. So of course there are people who want to get rid of it. Tory shadow health secretary Andrew Lansley has promised that the Tories will scrap the traffic light system if they come to power. Why? Because it’s “nannying”. This is the same party that likes to thump the tub when it comes to responsible labelling for all your entertainment media, lest children be corrupted by their movies, music or video games - with parents apparently relieved of all responsibility for guardianship. Yet try to inform people about what’s in their food and it’s condemned as ‘nannying’. Now, bear in mind that the traffic light system is entirely voluntary on the part of manufacturers and distributors, and it only offers guidance. ‘Nannying’ is a weak objection for what is, after all, just the provision of information. Why would anyone want to get rid of it? For the answer to that question, look no further than the Daily Mail, which ran an article back when the scheme was proposed in 2006 headed “Fury at ‘traffic light’ warning labels”. Who was it that was so furious about these food labels? Why, it was Walker’s, who make crisps and corn snacks! It was Kellogg’s, who make sugary cereals and those horribly unhealthy ‘cereal bars’ that dress up like health bars! It was Nestlé, whose death-flavoured chocolate is perhaps the true Antichrist, as prophesied in the Bible! In short, it was food manufacturers, who don’t want to have to put a red circle on their products saying ‘high in salt’ because then you might be less likely to buy it! Food manufacturers don’t want health labels on their food any more than cigarette manufacturers want them on their packets, but it’s not because they’re worried about too much ‘nannying’. So why would the Tories oppose the labels? For that, you need only look to whom Andrew Lansley has appointed to head his working group on public health; Dave Lewis, the chairman of Unilever.  That’s Unilever, the multinational food manufacturer behind Pot Noodle, Findus, Knorr and Wall’s. The same Unilever that spent $440,000 in the first quarter of this year lobbying the US government on issues ranging from food safety reform to climate change to animal cloning. The Tories plan to ask Unilever how much of a role Ragu pasta sauce should play as part of a calorie controlled diet. I can’t wait to hear the conclusions! A lot of food manufacturers prefer the ‘guideline daily amounts’ labelling system. The example shown above is from Tesco, which already uses this system on all its food, having earnestly rejected the traffic light system. I find that using GDA is hopelessly confusing and largely meaningless given the enormous differences in people’s dietary needs, and Tesco like to confuse things further by ascribing seemingly random colours to its labels - but never the colour red, for some reason. The GDA approach to labelling is already common in the US where food manufacturers seem to play an enormous role in shaping legislation. The trend in the US has for years been towards laxer standards, less regulation and more homogeneity in production. Where the US used to have some of the highest food production standards in the Western world, it now looks like a squirrel-eating hick compared to its sophisticated unpasteurised cheese-eating European Union cousin. But of course, Europe could be going the same way - especially if something as useful and innocuous as the traffic light system finds itself on the chopping block. Traffic light labels aren’t perfect, mind you. Often times a product is only low in fat or low in salt because some other dubious flavour enhancer has been added, and if it’s low in sugar, it may be full of sweeteners. A degree of common sense has to come in to play; if you see a chocolate dessert that isn’t red for fat and red for sugar, you should probably treat it with scepticism (and it’ll probably taste like cack). If you really want to eat healthily, you should spend as little time as possible in supermarkets and try to avoid processed foods altogether. For most people that isn’t a realistic option, so the best we can ask for is clear and helpful labelling that allows consumers to make better decisions. After all, the thing about nanny is that she’s been doing this for years; she usually does know best. Drink London Mixology Monday is an ‘online cocktail party’ dating back to 2006, wherein bloggers are challenged to blog around a given cocktail theme every month. It often involves a few original cocktail creations as well. I’ve never taken part, and I missed the cut-off date for entries this month as well, but, buoyed by Britain’s Olympic victories, I decided to have a go at this month’s theme anyway; local ingredients. Specifically, I wanted to make a very London cocktail. After some dabbling and experimentation, I came up with the following: Garden Party 1/2 shot nettle cordial 1/2 shot St Germain 1/2 shot Pimm’s 1 shot London dry gin 1 shot apple juice soda water mint and lime to garnish Shake first five ingredients with ice. Pour into an ice-filled glass, add garnish and top with soda. Now, this cocktail presents a few problems, the first being that it’s quite fussy, and I prefer simple cocktails. Of course, the only way to invent a simple cocktail these days is to invent a new ingredient, otherwise someone has already come up with every imaginable simple mix under the sun and over the yardarm. Second, those who know their drinks will note that St Germain - a wonderful elderflower-based spirit that’s great with soda or in a glass of white wine - is French, and that Pimm’s - not often found in cocktails - is already gin-based. The St Germain is in there because I wanted to include elderflower, which is both delicious and native to London, but I found I’d run out of elderflower cordial. What I’d thought was my bottle of elderflower cordial turned out to be nettle cordial - but since nettles are also native to London, I added that instead and used the St Germain for the elderflower. (If I’d had both types of cordial, I wouldn’t have used them both, as too much cordial would have made the drink horribly sticky.) I knew that the drink would be made with gin, of course. Gin may be Dutch in origin, but it was perfected in Britain, and it could be considered the definitive civic spirit of London. Why add gin-based Pimm’s as well? Because Pimm’s - also made in London - adds a distinctive spice-and-citrus flavour that perfectly evokes the English summertime. The only non-native ingredient is the lime garnish, but I think that’s forgiveable considering Britain’s seafaring association with lime. The resulting concoction is a long summer drink with a lovely orange-bronze colour and a breezy floral garden flavour - hence the name. It begins with the elderflower, then opens up with the grassy nettle and the botanicals of the gin, underlined by a dry musk note from the Pimm’s. The apple juice adds sweetness, the mint and lime add freshness and tartness, and the soda cuts through the heavier ingredients and opens up the flavours. I thought the apple juice would dominate, but I’m pleased to report that it’s a very well balanced drink, ideal for hot summer days. If we ever have one of those, I’d recommend giving it a go. That’s my suggestion for a uniquely London-inspired cocktail, but you might have better ideas. Let me know if you think there’s something I’m missing that belongs in a quintessential London cocktail. Hundreds And Hundreds The Omnivore’s Hundred has now received almost 500 comments and trackbacks from respondents, and they’re still flooding in every day - faster than ever, in fact. I find this staggering, especially when I know that a fair chunk of the people now spreading the meme actually aren’t linking back here or posting comments. There could be as many as a thousand respondents or more out there - and initially I was nervous I wouldn’t even get a hundred! (The Omnivore’s Hundred has also spawned a Vegetarian’s Hundred, a Vegan’s Hundred, and now I’m told someone is making an American Hundred!) I confess, I’ve now fallen well behind in reading all the responses, though I am reading the comments, and it’s gratifying to see how many people have enjoyed the list. (I’ve only received a tiny handful of objections, my favourite being the paradoxical; “Why is the list so Western, and why is there so much Indian food on it?” Hrm.) Initially I made a record of the responses in order to look for trends, but I’m afraid I had to give that up in the face of the continuing deluge. However, I did make note of the first 200 responses I found, and I wanted to share the results with all of you. (Bear in mind that the Omnivore’s Hundred was not designed as a survey. It’s self-selecting, and people were free to apply their own interpretations to the list.) Unsurprisingly, wild berries proved by far the most universal item on the list. It seems just about everyone has spotted a tasty berry while out walking, picked it and popped it in their mouths. This was followed by baklava - something I think was almost unknown to most people twenty years ago - and then rice and beans, a staple of about a dozen different cuisines around the world. The top five is rounded out by cheese fondue and edible flowers. Sauerkraut and calamari were also very popular, while venison took an early lead over even the berries, but eventually slipped down to ninth, behind Krispy Kreme. The PB&J sandwich took tenth place, with one in eight people saying they’ve never had one. Right at the other end of the scale, the food that the least number of people had tried was, quite predictably, fugu - the poisonous Japanese pufferfish. For every person who had tried it, four swore they never would. Evidently most people are not prepared to risk death for an expensive delicacy that consumers have described as ‘bland’ (though fans prefer to call it ’subtle’). The second least-eaten item on the list was roadkill, though roughly one in ten have eaten it and most speak well of it - it was often the aforementioned venison, rather than something peculiar like squirrel, badger or armadillo. Roadkill was also the item outright rejected by the highest number of people - more than 30% of respondents said they would never eat it. The other least-experienced items were stinky horrible baijiu, super-hot phaal curry, and the tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant - presumably because people couldn’t easily afford to get to one, not because they didn’t want to. Returning to the items no-one wanted to eat, roadkill was followed by insects, fugu, raw Scotch Bonnet (pictured, top) and horse. I think those are all easy to understand, though only fugu gives me serious pause, and I’m a big fan of tasty delicious horse! Kaolin was deemed to be just as repulsive as black pudding, both of which were thought more palatable than Cognac with a cigar. Additionally, though three quarters of people have had a Big Mac Meal, almost half of those who haven’t now swear they never will! In fact, more people have had oysters than a Big Mac meal. More people have had Spam than Foie Gras. About as many people have had Bellinis as have had vodka jelly (or ‘Jell-O shots’, as American respondents insist on calling them). Around four fifths of respondents have had carob chips; only a fifth have had desirable and expensive Criollo chocolate (pictured, above). Only half of all respondents have ever had a clotted cream tea. The other half are, presumably, crying. This is probably my last full post on the subject of the Omnivore’s Hundred, but I’ll certainly return to the theme in future, as I’m making an effort to eat the things I haven’t already eaten, and I’m also sure to write about a few of the things I have. In the meantime, keep those responses coming in! Hundred Reasons The Omnivore’s Hundred has proved far more popular than I had anticipated, even appearing on my two favourite food blogs - Jennifer Hess’s Last Night’s Dinner and Clotilde Dusoulier’s Chocolate and Zucchini. (They also happen to be the very blogs that inspired me to start VGT.) I’ve been following the links in comments and backtracks, and it’s been fascinating reading people’s responses, but along the way I’ve come across a lot of questions (and a lot of variations on one particular question; ‘What the hell is kaolin doing on this list?’), so I thought I’d take the time to answer a few of them in handy-dandy FAQ format. Q. Why did you create the Omnivore’s Hundred? A. I was inspired by the lists that circulate with titles like ‘100 Books You Should Have Read’, usually inspired by polls or surveys or expert panels, and often featuring a mixture of highbrow classics and populist or children’s works. People may read these lists and be reminded of books they want to read, or they may discover books they’ve never heard of, or they may see books they’ve read already and don’t think belong on the list, but the important thing is that the lists stir people’s thoughts and get them talking. I wanted to do the same thing with food - a list of 100 things everyone should eat. I didn’t have a poll or a survey, so I convened an expert panel of friends and used their suggestions to put this list together. Q. So everyone should eat these 100 things? A. Well, no. I knew that various dietary and religious and cultural and personal restrictions would stop a lot of people from eating many of the things on the list, and I knew that if I made a list that was sensitive to all of those restrictions it wouldn’t be very interesting. It would probably just be a list of different sized glasses of water. So I made it a list for omnivores - a list for people who will eat (and drink) anything. That doesn’t mean that non-omnivores can’t play as well, of course - it just means that they’re going to have a few less choices. Q. How did you decide what made the list? I wanted it to be a diverse list covering everything from junk food to gourmet delicacies, because I think an omnivore should have diverse tastes, and because an omnivore should keep exploring new tastes, and because one shouldn’t say one doesn’t like something just because it’s cheap, or because it’s expensive, or because it’s fish, or curry, or alcohol, and so on. I also wanted it to be a list that would both respect and challenge the experiences and cultures of the people taking part, and I knew that you’d be an eclectic bunch. Something that’s commonplace to one person might seem exotic or unfamiliar to someone else. Someone with easy access to good Mexican food might have less exposure to Indian, for example, and someone who has never had a PB&J sandwich will seem immediately strange to someone who grew up on them. So the list had to cover a lot of ground in terms of quality, cuisine and culture. I started with a list of around 300 interesting foods and whittled it down from there. Where I saw a significant gap in the list’s coverage, I tried to plug it. Q. There are some strange and expensive items on this list. Don’t I need to be well-off and well-travelled to eat my way through it? A. Well-off, well-travelled people and those living in very cosmopolitan areas obviously have an advantage with this list, but anyone with serious foodie ambitions will seek out new eating experiences, and perhaps even save up to experience those special little luxuries once in a while. Foie gras is expensive if you have it all the time; it isn’t all that expensive if you just try it once. Anyway, I don’t think an omnivore’s list made up entirely of cheap, commonplace foods would have been very exciting. Toast! Potatoes! Salt! Everyone’s a winner! Q. What about those three-Michelin-star restaurants? That’s asking a lot, especially if you live in North America. It is, and I think it’s a shame that the Michelin guide doesn’t cover more than just four cities in the US, but whether you live in the city of Lebanon, Kansas (about as far as you can get in the lower 48 from a three-Michelin-starred restaurant), or in the small village of Bray in Berkshire (Britain has three three-star restaurants, and two of them are in Bray), going to such a restaurant ought to be an incredibly special treat. Anyway, if you live in the US you do have easier access to Hostess Fruit Pies, so it all balances out! Q. I don’t live in the US,so I don’t have access to Hostess Fruit Pies! Krispy Kremes and Big Macs are available outside the US, but Hostess Fruit Pies are not. Why are they in there? A. Self-indulgence. I grew up reading American comic books, with their famous Hostess Fruit Pie superhero ads. For many visitors to the US, sampling iconic American junk food (and finding out how horrible it is) is usually something of a secret burning ambition. The Fruit Pies and the Japanese Pocky are in the list to represent lowbrow food tourism. It was these or Twinkies, and I don’t want to encourage anyone to eat a Twinkie. Q. Doesn’t the list have a bit of a Anglo-Western - and especially American - slant? A. Yes. I expected the list to mostly circulate among Anglophone Western bloggers, and it comes from an Anglophone Western blogger, so there you have it. As for the American inclusions; on the one hand I wanted to represent American cuisine, which is a pretty diverse concept that gives us everything from gumbo to eggs Benedict. On the other hand I wanted to represent junk food, and that unavoidably skewed American as well. The list was not created by an American, so there is no insidious American cultural bias at work here. Q. I’ve eaten crocodile/insects/polenta/etc, and I didn’t think it was very interesting. Why is it on the list? A. Because each person’s experiences are different! People shouldn’t decide what to eat based solely on what other people tell them! It’s not just all about you, you know! Q. Why is there so much curry? A. Because I’m English. But also because curry is a pretty broad concept (’food with spices’) that deserves representation, and the four curries in the list (there are only four!) are each from different cuisines - Punjabi, South Indian, British and Caribbean. There were also seven soups from different cuisines on the list, but no-one complained about them! Oh, the list also includes a sausage covered in curry sauce, but that’s not a curry, any moreso than poutine is a cheese. And there’s a South Asian cheese and an Indian yoghurt drink in the list. Those aren’t curries either. Q. Why is there so much alcohol? Because I’m English. Q. Alcohol is one thing, but you can’t eat cigars! Why should I have a cigar with my Cognac? A. Cigars have a flavour, and many connoisseurs consider it complementary to alcohol in general and to Cognac in particular. Hickory chips aren’t food either, but we still use them to smoke meat, so think of this as smoked Cognac! Q. Isn’t abalone endangered? A. Yes. I didn’t know that when I made the list. Sorry about that. If you are going to try abalone, please make sure it comes from a sustainable source. I believe there is a sustainable abalone fishery in California. Beyond that, you’re on your own. Q. Why would I want to eat a Scotch Bonnet pepper, or a phaal curry? Isn’t that just macho nonsense? A. Yes and no. I’ve talked before about the tiresomeness of people who eat at extremes at the expense of their enjoyment - but conversely, one shouldn’t resist new food experiences just because they’re macho. This list is about food experiences, and you have to make up your own mind which ones you want to try. If you don’t want to do it, that’s fine with me. Q. Where’s Marmite? Or kimchee? Or Rocky Mountain oysters? Etc… A. Most of the things people have suggested actually were in earlier drafts of the list, but I had to cut it down to a nice manageable hundred. I may not have made the same choices you would have made, but something had to give, and the list was always going to be a little idiosyncratic. Still, given the popularity of this list, there’s bound to be a sequel, and your favourites may be in it! Q. OK, so… kaolin? A. Yes, it is clay. No, it’s not exactly ‘food’. Typically the only people who eat it are folks with eating disorders, poor people with mineral deficiencies, and pregnant women with strange cravings. A lot of people who said they’d had it had done so because it’s used in medicine or as a food additive, and those are legitimate answers. The reason I put it in the list, though, was to probe the limits of your omnivorousness. Kaolin is edible and nutritious, with a unique flavour and texture. It’s a mineral, yes, but then so is salt. It’s not food - but by most definitions it’s not far off it. You may be quite certain that you don’t want to eat it, but you don’t know that you don’t like it unless you’ve tried it, and that’s really the defining principle of a list like this. Plus, as my dear old grandmother used to say, you’ll eat a peck of dirt before you die. If you have any questions I haven’t answered, feel free to ask them now! In the meantime, credit where it’s due; thank you to Hugh, Lyssa, Jenni, Wyc, Steve, Sarah, Stu, Andrea, Maria, Elise, Alasdair, Ross, Lindsay, Kate, Chris, Cheryl and Aardy for helping me put the list together! And thank you to all of you who helped spread it around! Come back later in the week, when I’ll be taking a look at some of the answers you good people gave. The Omnivore’s Hundred Here’s a chance for a little interactivity for all the bloggers out there. Below is a list of 100 things that I think every good omnivore should have tried at least once in their life. The list includes fine food, strange food, everyday food and even some pretty bad food - but a good omnivore should really try it all. Don’t worry if you haven’t, mind you; neither have I, though I’ll be sure to work on it. Don’t worry if you don’t recognise everything in the hundred, either; Wikipedia has the answers. Here’s what I want you to do: 1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions. 2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten. 3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating. 4) Optional extra: Post a comment here at www.verygoodtaste.co.uk linking to your results. The VGT Omnivore’s Hundred: 1. Venison 2. Nettle tea 3. Huevos rancheros 4. Steak tartare 5. Crocodile 6. Black pudding 7. Cheese fondue 8. Carp 9. Borscht 10. Baba ghanoush 11. Calamari 12. Pho 13. PB&J sandwich 14. Aloo gobi 15. Hot dog from a street cart 16. Epoisses 17. Black truffle 18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes 19. Steamed pork buns 20. Pistachio ice cream 21. Heirloom tomatoes 22. Fresh wild berries 23. Foie gras 24. Rice and beans 25. Brawn, or head cheese 26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper 27. Dulce de leche 28. Oysters 29. Baklava 30. Bagna cauda 31. Wasabi peas 32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl 33. Salted lassi 34. Sauerkraut 35. Root beer float 36. Cognac with a fat cigar 37. Clotted cream tea 38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O 39. Gumbo 40. Oxtail 41. Curried goat 42. Whole insects 43. Phaal 44. Goat’s milk 45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more 46. Fugu 47. Chicken tikka masala 48. Eel 49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut 50. Sea urchin 51. Prickly pear 52. Umeboshi 53. Abalone 54. Paneer 55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal 56. Spaetzle 57. Dirty gin martini 58. Beer above 8% ABV 59. Poutine 60. Carob chips 61. S’mores 62. Sweetbreads 63. Kaolin 64. Currywurst 65. Durian 66. Frogs’ legs 67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake 68. Haggis 69. Fried plantain 70. Chitterlings, or andouillette 71. Gazpacho 72. Caviar and blini 73. Louche absinthe 74. Gjetost, or brunost 75. Roadkill 76. Baijiu 77. Hostess Fruit Pie 78. Snail 79. Lapsang souchong 80. Bellini 81. Tom yum 82. Eggs Benedict 83. Pocky 84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant. 85. Kobe beef 86. Hare 87. Goulash 88. Flowers 89. Horse 90. Criollo chocolate 91. Spam 92. Soft shell crab 93. Rose harissa 94. Catfish 95. Mole poblano 96. Bagel and lox 97. Lobster Thermidor 98. Polenta 99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee 100. Snake (PS. The list has generated a lot of questions, so I’ve created an FAQ for it over here!) Come On Tim! I have long been fond of Canada, for many reasons. It’s a bit like the US, except they know how to use cutlery and don’t go around shooting each other for no good reason. They manage to speak French without forgetting how to be polite and respectful. They have Mounties and mooses and Montreal. And they have Tim Horton’s. I fell in love with this ubiquitous coffee and dougnuts chain when I visited Canada a couple of years ago, and the reason for my love was simple; steeped tea. Tim Horton’s is perhaps the only place in North America where you can get a decent cup of tea, and the prevalence of the chain (it’s very nearly Starbucks in terms of saturation) means that Canada wins a big green tick on my list of the tea-safe nations of the world. Steeped tea is what we in the UK would call ‘tea’. It’s loose leaf tea that’s been brewed in an industrial samovar, so that it’s ready to drink the moment it’s poured into your little paper cup - though you might wait for it to cool a little bit. I tried Tim Horton’s tea in various outlets across Ontario and Quebec and it always tasted good. The other wonderful thing about Tim Horton’s is timbits, little bite-sized ‘doughnut holes’ (not literally, you understand), which allow you to sample many different flavours of doughnut in little nuggety lumps. Just as Krispy Kreme is now available in Tesco supermarkets up and down the UK, so Tim Horton’s has made tentative steps into the UK and Ireland markets, initially with five kiosks in Dublin and one each in Newcastle, Nottingham and Clackett Lane motorway services (glamorous!). Now I’ve discovered there’s a kiosk in the Spar on Haymarket. Tim Horton’s has come to central London! Oh happy day! Oh frabjous joy! Except, of course, it’s not quite the same. For one thing, the Spar kiosk doesn’t offer steeped tea - and why should it? We don’t actually need steeped tea in the UK; we have tea everywhere. Second, I didn’t see any timbits in there - but I did pick up a classic glazed ring doughnut, and a maple-glazed ring. Compared to Krispy Kreme’s devilish lard-and-sugar puck doughnuts, these import Horton’s are definitely a marked improvement - lighter, doughier and tastier, and perfect with a good cup of tea. Naturally I took them home and made the tea myself, using a mug rather than a paper cup. I mean, I can stoop to disposables when the devil drives, but for heaven’s sake, I’m not a barbarian. The Fat And The Furious Supermarket chain Waitrose is known for its ethical approach to the food business. It places an emphasis on local and sustainable food, it was a pioneer of the organic movement, and its own-brand products are GM free and contain only free range eggs. As of last Christmas, they also no longer sell paté made from foie gras - the massively enlarged livers of force-fed ducks and geese. Instead Waitrose now serves goose and duck patés that they call Faux Gras. Faux Gras is made with 50% liver from free range birds who are at liberty to eat as fussily as they like. The result is a very smooth and pleasant paté, but one that does not come close to the taste or texture of paté made from foie gras. Foie gras has earned its reputation as a gastronomic wonder at the very high end of the pyramid of luxury dining experiences. It is a sublimely buttery, silk-smooth delight with a long, rich depth of flavour. Faux gras is good paté - creamy and slightly shroomy and without any bitterness - but a good paté is to foie gras as good lemonade is to finest champagne. To their credit, Waitrose are not blind to this reality. A spokesman for the supermarket admits, “fans of real foie gras will realise this is not the real thing”. The supermarket claims that Faux Gras is as close as they can get to the real thing without animal cruelty. Waitrose is not alone in bringing the curtain down on foie gras. California has passed a law that will prohibit its production after 2012, and other states may follow suit, though a ban in Chicago has already been overturned. Production in the European Union is prohibited except in countries where it is already a “current practice”. The English cities of Brighton and York have both banned foie gras in their shops and restaurants. Yet is foie gras really cruel? I’d like to say that the debate is raging, but in fact the two sides are resolutely entrenched. Animal rights activists are adamant in their condemnation of foie gras, and have hounded producers, restaurateurs and shop-keepers to stop trading in the product. Foie gras supporters, for their part, are so enamored of foie gras that they would probably keep eating it even if it were made from babies. However, there is a fairly convincing argument to be made that foie gras is not a product of cruelty, and that is that, quite simply, foie gras tastes wonderful. It’s well documented that stressed and suffering livestock taste less pleasant; if the birds are being abused and manhandled, their livers will become bruised and bitter. In fact, foie gras birds often enjoy some of the best living standards of any farmed animal. Images distributed by protestors show them crammed into cages with a tube seemingly permanently shoved down their throats, but these battery farming practices are no more essential to the production of foie gras than they are to the production of chicken. Good foie gras comes from pampered, well-exercised free range birds, and the force-feeding only happens for a few seconds, three or four times a day. Studies of the stress levels of these birds show that they don’t suffer at all, and in fact that they seem to quite like eating all that grain mash. Done properly, force-feeding causes absolutely no injury or discomfort. Medicine is delivered to fowl in exactly the same way. That’s not to say that there aren’t foie gras producers who mistreat their animals, or that there is no such thing as inferior foie gras. Some birds do suffer from poor conditions. Some foie gras does have an impaired flavour. The solution is not to outlaw foie gras, but to establish and enforce high standards for its production. None of which will dissuade animal rights activists from pursuing their campaign against foie gras - but foie gras is the wrong target, albeit a soft one (a deliciously meltingly soft one). Foie gras production is a niche industry that has already embraced some of the best standards and practices in farming. While the protests continue outside the gourmet food stores and restaurants, there’s a KFC around the corner that better deserves the attention. I Am Pepsi, Hear Me Raw Pepsi has recently released its first new cola in a decade, with the UK as its test market. We’ve had sugar-free colas, caffeine-free colas, low-calorie colas and low-carb colas, but what makes Pepsi Raw special is that it’s free from artificial colourings, flavourings, sweeteners and preservatives. It’s a Pepsi made from “all natural ingredients”. It’s healthy Pepsi! Except, of course, it isn’t. There’s a great confidence trick at work here; Pepsi tells us the new cola is natural, and consumers read ‘natural’ as ‘healthy’. Supermarket shelves have been full of ‘natural’ alternatives to unhealthy foods that still have no place in any sensible diet ever since the first sugary cereal bar was wrapped in barcode-printed foil and shipped out to the high street. Pepsi make no health claims about Raw, but the pitch is pretty clear; Pepsi Raw contains apple, kola nut, coffee leaf, acacia and grape! It uses naturally sparkling water rather than carbonation, and natural caffeine too! It’s made by dancing naiads on a pastoral hillside in springtime, with ingredients plucked from Almathea’s horn of plenty, and the birds do sing and the lambs do play! Natural is good; artificial is bad; as consumer superstitions go, that one certainly has some truth to it, and maybe Pepsi Raw is a little less poisonous than Pepsi ‘Cooked’. It does at least contain cane sugar rather than high-fructose corn syrup - but then, so does regular Coke in most countries. Besides, just like Coke or Pepsi, Raw still contains around a third of your recommended daily allowance of sugar - a fact that continues to amaze me. So Pepsi Raw is not a health drink. But is it a nice drink, and does it taste like Pepsi? To be honest, it tastes like a slightly anaemic cousin to Pepsi - the vegetarian in the family, so to speak. It’s paler in colour and thinner in flavour, and the natural sparkle certainly makes it less bubbly. It doesn’t have what I’ve come to think of as Pepsi’s distinctive ‘peppery’ flavour, but it also doesn’t have the sourness that I associate with cola - it has a note of apple where other colas have a note of lemon. Raw doesn’t taste like a cheap imitation cola, but if you have a cola craving this may not satisfy your itch - it’s merest morphine to the Big Two’s pure heroin. Is there a place for Raw in the market? Perhaps. The long-established success of diet versions of Pepsi and Coke, which in most markets now out-sell the originals, show that people will drink bad cola if they think it’s better for them rather than deprive themselves entirely of any kind of cola. If people can be seduced by the ‘natural’ message, Raw could sell like snake oil to hicks. Bane Of My Lunch Daft ginger moog Antony Worrall Thompson is trying to kill you. According to a report on the BBC News website, AWT told readers of Healthy & Organic Living magazine to put henbane in their salads. Henbane, also known as stinking nightshade, is a psychoactive anaesthetic poison, which means it causes drowsiness and disturbing hallucinations in small doses (as indeed does Anthony Worrall Thompson). It can also cause convulsions, heart palpitations, fever, ataxia, hypertension and death, and even the odour of fresh henbane leaves can be enough to cause stupor. In fact, henbane was the poison of choice for Dr Crippen. It seems that eating henbane does not in fact constitute ‘healthy’ living, and it is not really an advisable ingredient for salad, nor for pizza, pasta or a nice cheese sandwich. (The fact that henbane is a nightshade is not in itself a cause for concern. Tomatoes, aubergines, physalis, capsicums and potatoes are all members of the nightshade family as well.) Thompson has issued an apology and said that he confused henbane with a herb called ‘fat hen’, which apparently actually is a delicious succulent salad plant. Except in large doses, when it too can be poisonous, and can exacerbate arthritis and gout. Ah well. Thankfully no-one has yet died from following this Anthony Worrall Thompson recipe. Whether or not anyone has ever died following any other Anthony Worrall Thompson recipe, we have not yet been able to ascertain. I myself have my suspicions about his calves liver and artichoke rosti. Go Taste It On The Mountain A couple of weeks ago I visited Catalonia in Spain - but it was not one of the great food-eating holidays of my life, given the prevalence of nasty resort food and terrible tourist tapas. I’m sure the proud people of Catalonia have many great edible things to offer the world, but I’m equally sure that they don’t waste them on the sort of unappreciative people drawn to plague the Costa Brava. (I was there as part of an organised event - you wouldn’t otherwise find me anywhere near a Mediterranean resort hotel. I am a snob, you know.) I did eventually manage to uncover some local delicacies - but I had to travel some distance from the beach to get to them. I spent an afternoon in Montserrat, a stunning jagged mountain peak that the monks retreated to a thousand years ago in order to get closer to God and further away from the horrors of civilisation, like dunnies and plagues and late-night phone-in shows. Of course, God is a bit of a tourist attraction, so Montserrat is now home to a small town replete with gift shops and cafés. And as the old Northern saying goes, where there’s monks, there’s hand-made small-batch gourmet food products. Quite why monks have such a proclivity for making wines and spirits and cheeses, I’m not sure - except, of course, that they have bugger all else to do. The monks of Montserrat do make booze - Licor del Montserrat, a green spirit infused with ‘local mountain herbs’ including thyme, juniper and lavender, and the slightly less local cinnamon, clove and coriander - but I didn’t try any. You see, Montserrat also boasts its own chocolate, and one of the flavours available is Licor flavour - milk chocolate infused with the fragrant, dry and slightly spicy herbal booze. It’s a flavour that lingers in the mouth, and it’s one of the nicer flavours of floral chocolate I’ve ever tried. The other Montserrat ‘xocolata’ I tried was crema Catalana-flavoured. Crema Catalana is a local custard with a caramelised topping, similar to crème brûlée. It’s one of many local specialities that my hotel made very badly. The favoured white chocolate is rather better, albeit cloyingly milky, and a little like Caramac, which it resembles. It could probably use a little bitter burntness. Better than the chocolate was an unlikely offering sold on the street-side stalls. All the stalls are the same, selling fig wheels, ewe’s milk cheeses and codonyat (Catalan membrillo). They also all have little glass-panelled refrigerators containing tubs of lumpy white stuff that looked for all the world like cottage cheese. This is mató. I was suspicious about mató, since I wasn’t even sure what it might be, beyond ‘dairy’, and the man behind the stall didn’t speak enough English to be able to explain. Was it sweet? Was it sour? Was it fermented? There was only one way to find out. Mató is generally served with honey, which made me think it might be quite sour, but in fact it’s surprisingly sweet and deliciously creamy. It’s a little like natural yoghurt, but is to yoghurt as clotted cream is to cream - richer, sweeter and more beautifully indulgent. So what’s the honey for, when the mató tastes so good as it comes? Well, once you add the honey it becomes that little bit more divine. It’s like a little cloud cake direct from heaven. It should come as no surprise to know that mató is also often made in the monasteries, but by nuns, rather oddly. I can only imagine a bus-load of nuns turned up at the monastery one day to see if the monks wanted to come out to play, and the monks were so busy picking herbs and making booze that the nuns got bored and decided to spend their time making cheese, as any self-respecting nun would. And thank God for that.