[Sca-cooks] Crocodile was Magpies

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Mar 4, 2008, at 10:43 PM, Kimberly Vallance wrote:

> Well I like all tomatoes but fresh ones... dont like the gooey stuff

You mean the seeds and the gooey stuff around them? You can get rid of  
that, you know, and squeezing them out before chopping them is  
generally part of a classic tomato concasse garni (which is just an  
extra-careful dice cut used for garnishing, but because it's for  
garnishing, you don't want excess... fluids... spoiling the look of  
your food.

> ...ewww
> ewww ewww though I love snails and sushi and stuff... does that  
> redeem me?

It doesn't hurt, certainly.  I'm reminded of the Scots farmer in "The  
39 Steps", asking the main character, "Kin ye taek th' herrin'?"

> But Khli is fermented meat that is done in an odd fashion... saw it  
> on the
> travel channel Bizzar food.s

That would be this, huh?

http://www.travelchannel.com/TV_Shows/Bizarre_Foods/ci.Morocco.show?vgnextfmt=show

I confess I'm of two minds about this sort of thing. It's good that  
they're exposing people to interesting foods, but bad that they're  
setting themselves up as authorities on what is and what isn't  
"bizarre", and it's in their interest, in the entertainment field, to  
play up the bizarreness of foods that really aren't always very odd at  
all. Of course, you can always toss in the gratuitous word "fermented"  
if all else fails. [I'm in the SCA. I've done a Romanized persona for  
years, and I've had an abiding interest in Roman food. I've made  
garum. It's not bad, and I really, really despise hearing it described  
as fermented or, better yet, rotten. It's really not accurate, and  
it's generally used, I believe, solely to foster an attitude of  
xenophobia and superiority. See what those silly, freakish people eat/ 
ate!

Give me anything in Apicius over a lime Jello mold with little  
marshmallows and canned fruit, and that includes the enzymatically  
degraded/pickled mackerel juice.

So, I Googled khli, and got the Travel Channel Bizarre Foods link, and  
several other hits, all of which agreed that khli is marinated, spiced  
beef, dried and then preserved in fat to exclude air. Pretty much the  
same as they do with duck, goose, and pork in southwestern France when  
they make confit d'oie, or du canard, or rillons, any one of which is  
essential for a good cassoulet! Nobody but the Travel Channel site  
said it was fermented. I'm guessing this stuff is not too dissimilar  
to any of several European cured, semi-dried meat products such as  
bresaola, bundnerfleisch, and prosciutto (except that last one isn't  
beef).

Those lime Jello molds are much more scary than that! And so is  
balut... ;-)

Adamantius