[food] and now for something completely different

[kaberett]

1. I got to the end of this Graun article on how to make meringue before I clocked the title. (I am having an Erudite Discussion about Meringue on the book of faces, you see, or at least a discussion about whether or not they ought be chewy and how one goes about achieving effects various. It is a source of some frustration to me that Molecular Gastronomy, a copy of which deborah_c gave me for... a birthday Some Time Ago, mentions meringues only in the context of putting them in a bell jar you then PUMP ALL THE AIR OUT OF, because it is fascinating on a great many topics -- how to make pastry with chocolate! the physics of boiling dumplings until they rise to the surface! -- and mysteriously lacking in tedious detail on this one.)

2. I have decided that macaroni cheese is much improved by steaming a head of cauliflower over the top of the pasta water (chopped into florets & the stalk into chunks) and mixing it in. This is perhaps obvious but it had not previously occurred to me, and I am a Fan.

3. Smitten Kitchen posted a recipe for roasted sweet potatoes and chickpeas, and linked onward to an article about the perplexing USois use of "yam" and "sweet potato". I am enlightened. (I will promptly forget it again, no doubt, and discover it once more In The Future and be delightened again, but I can't quite see this as a downside.)

4. ... and a bonus, edited in post-facto because my mum just put it on facebook: Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's potato peel soup. YOU'RE WELCOME.

Comments

[ewt]

The weird thing is that I like gin, tonic water (as long as it doesn't have aspartame in it), and dark chocolate, all of which are bitter. It clearly isn't that I don't tolerate bitter tastes, so much as that some bitter things taste extraordinarily bitter to me.

[kaberett]

Super-tasting is totally a thing! At the risk of being Really Patronising, have you come across super-tasting? My (vague, handwavey) understanding is that it's super common for vegetal and specifically brassica bitter to set off the NO THAT IS POISON response in a way that lots of other foods don't.

[ewt]

I've come across it, but tend to avoid using the term when explaining my dietary preferences as I have had responses along the lines of "oh stop being such a snowflake" in the past.

[kaberett]

... well you won't get any of that round here, but understood.

[ewt]

Thank you. :-)