moi621 (imported) wrote: Wed Jun 10, 2009 4:45 pm And when are they going to figure out how to eat kudzu?

Fired kudzu, kudzu soup, maybe cream style.

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Ask and ye shall receive//www.amazon.com/Kudzu-Cuisine-Juanitta-B ... 1880308231

"Product Description: Kudzu Cuisine is a unique cookery - using kudzu vine in each recipe in the book. There are dozens of vivid color photographs of kudzu vine and dishes prepared with it. It is written in a conversational, easy to read style, with stories about kudzu entwined within the recipes for a change of reading pace."

Transward

I can stuff squid and make a spaghetti sauce out of it. Good stuff.

bobover3 (imported) wrote: Tue Jun 09, 2009 7:54 pm Kidding aside, I've heard that the flavor is affected by what someone has been eating. Is there any truth to this, or is it just an old husband's tale?

I could definitely attest to this being true. There's a certain muscle-building supplement I can't remember the name to that has an extreme effect on the taste... oh god absolutely horrible.

It makes sense when you think about it, though. What you eat affects the way pee, sweat, spit etc. smell (and presumably taste, haha), so why not cum too?

The things that you notice affecting the smell of your pee (haha asparagus) or saliva (onions, garlic, etc.) also are going to affect cum.

But as for the things we consume with an actual nutritional value...

Everyone should try making Zuni Cafe's roast chicken.

http://smittenkitchen.com/2008/12/zuni- ... ead-salad/

It's a bit hard to find a chicken small enough, but oh god so worth it.

And next time you're at a sushi restaurant, see if there's a jellyfish salad on their menu. It's great, crunchy and mm. Though I think jellyfish prepared like this is actually Chinese, so my sushi place may just be an oddity and it could be harder to find than I realise.

I'm going to look into kasha, it sounds interesting.

TeraNata, thanks for your wisdom about things that affect the taste of ... bodily effluents. I've wondered about that for so long, and now I've learned something truly important.

Read the recipe for Zuni Chicken and it sounds luscious. I'm eager to try it. They're right about big birds being drier and less flavorful. It's hard to remember now that chicken used to be a treat, not just a ubiquitous source of bland protein. I've read that the age of the chicken matters. Now, chickens are slaughtered when they reach their maximum weight, but they don't reach their peak of flavor for another month or more. Today's factory farms would see the wait as avoidable cost. So much of our food has been engineered for size and appearance, without concern for flavor, nutrition, or health. The bland pale substance often served as "chicken" is an example.

I notice that Zuni makes use of drippings. Traditional Jewish cooking used chicken fat rather than butter in many recipes. Sammy's Romanian, a deliberately retro Lower East Side restaurant which is a NYC institution, puts a pitcher of chicken fat on every table. Few people use it, despite the urgings of the cardiologists in the room, but it has a rich complex flavor lacking in the vegetable oils most restaurants use.

Two old-world European favorites you can still get at Sammy's are "unborn eggs" and "scholet eggs." Unborn eggs are very small eggs that have been coaxed from hens by stroking their abdomens before the eggs reach full size. Scholet eggs are sealed inside an airtight container and baked in low heat for up to 24 hours. They become small, brown, and wrinkled, but have an incomparably full and intense flavor.

I've never tasted jellyfish, but now that you've suggested it, I will at my first opportunity.

Kasha is indispensable. To show you how central it is to the culture of Eastern Europe, fat people in Russia are often called "kasha pots."

Here are a couple more foods which most people haven't tried, but which are supposed to be good. Something called a runza is very popular in Nebraska and possible in neighboring states. I think it's rather like a pork pasty, but I have never tasted or even seen a runza. Haven't been in Nebraska very much.

Another is a type of fungus called huitlacoche. This is the same fungus which is commonly called corn smut--has ruined many corn crops. However, it is considered a delicacy in Mexico. You can order it from various places on the internet, but I haven't, because it is somewhat expensive. Maybe somebody here has tried it in a gourmet Mexican restaurant. Huitlacoche may have been one of the foods used in dishes made from human meat, which the Spaniards reported was sometimes available in Aztec markets.

A third thing I've always wanted to try is conch. Very popular in Florida, and supposedly similar in flavor to abalone. Never been to Florida. This one is probably also available on order from the internet.

Intrigued by the runza, I found this description in Wikipedia -

"A runza (also called a bierock, fleischkuche or Kraut Pirok) is a yeast dough bread pocket with a filling consisting of beef, pork, cabbage or sauerkraut, onions, and seasonings. They are baked in various shapes such as a half-moon, rectangle, round (bun), square, or triangle. In Nebraska, the runza is usually baked in a rectangular shape. The bierocks of Kansas, on the other hand, are generally baked in the shape of a bun."

A runza is the same as a pirogi, a staple East European food. Also known as a kugel in Yiddish. They're good baked and served with sour cream. They're also put in soups.

Read about huitlacoche, and not sure I'd want it. The USDA allowed farmers in Pennsylvania and Florida to infect their corn as an experiment, but a US market has yet to be found. In 1989, the James Beard Foundation tried to rename it the "Mexican Truffle," but failed to popularize it.

Another oddity I tried and failed to eat is the rock crab. I ordered this in a NY Chinatown restaurant. (That means Chinese-Chinese food, not Chinese-American.) They served it with a nutcracker and a small hammer, but those weren't enough to penetrate the thick shell. It's not called a rock crab for nothing. The shell was perhaps a quarter inch thick, and truly hard as any rock. After a half hour trying in vain to get at the meat - watched by amused Chinese - I had to give up and leave without tasting a bite. I asked the waiter for advice, but he spoke little English, and just gestured at the tools. Eating rock crab is for me the Everest of dining. If anyone out there has big muscles and power tools, I'll meet you in Chinatown.

Culinary classic -

Perhaps the most entertaining article about eating was published by the New York Times in 1975. Craig Claiborne, the Times's food critic, won a raffle. The first prize was dinner for two at any restaurant in the world, with any selection of dishes, paid for by American Express. Claiborne took Pierre Franey, a famous chef, to a storied Paris restaurant, and had a meal that had been planned for months with the help of the restaurant. The bill, including wines, was $4,000 (it would be many times that today). The meal was a feast, including some of the finest and rarest products of French cuisine. Claiborne's article was printed on the front page of the Times and caused a world-wide sensation. Most people were indignant at the excess. Even the pope denounced the meal! Claiborne's article has been anthologized in several books, but on the web it's only available at the Times, which charges $3.95 for access. If you can spare the money, this is an unparalleled description of a meal - no, a sumptuous Dionysian engorgement. Reading about it may be better than having been there. To get the article, go to

http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract. ... 178AD95F41 8785F9

Soon after, Russell Baker, also in the Times, published a brilliant parody of Claiborne's article. Read it at

http://studentweb.hunter.cuny.edu/~murr ... dbeans.htm

You can also go to www.runza.com