Omigod no!

Rainey · Posted: Wed Jul 11, 2007 12:05 am Post subject: Omigod no!

Technically, this is a food post but I'm doing you all a favor by removing it to this section.

I'm driving along today and NPR does a story on Massimo Marcone who's a food scientist who's written this interesting book: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1552638820/ref=cap_pdp_dp_0/002-4822253-9936041
It sounds like something I might want to get around to reading sometime.

What's special about his career is that he goes in search of fabled gross foods and I was fine with his description of coffee whose special pedigree involves passing through the system of a civet. Really. At $600 a pound I'm not going out and putting my name on the list to get it (can take a year to work your way to the top of that list, apparently). But I was fine with that.

Then he got to an Italian specialty cheese called casu frazigu that's illegal to sell despite it's traditional role in some Italian weddings. That you have to read about yourselves if you dare:
http://vomitcomit.wordpress.com/2007/06/20/the-clicking-of-maggots/

Ladies and gentlemen, this is no huitlacoche that I'm ever going to try if I have the chance. Food should NOT make noises at you... Shocked

_________________
God writes a lot of comedy... the trouble is, he's stuck with so many bad actors who don't know how to play funny. -- Garrison Keillor

gingerpale · Joined: 23 Jan 2006 Posts: 1324

Looks harmless enough, doesn't it?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/50/IMGP0320.JPG/250px-IMGP0320.JPG

georgia · Joined: 16 May 2006 Posts: 456 Location: california

Rainey, I was listening to NPR today, too, and heard this program. Generally, I'm fine with nearly all weird foodie discoveries, etc. After all, I know what I will and won't eat. Everyone else can decide for themselves. But.............this program was a gagger if I ever heard one. And, yes, I did hear myself say out loud, "Omigod." Indeed.

msue · Joined: 18 Dec 2005 Posts: 368

If you want to be totally disgusted (which I do NOT recommend), here is a link to more info about the coffee Rainey mentioned:

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/010525.html

I'm a confirmed java junky, but will never ever ever ever try this. Never ever.

Rainey · Posted: Wed Jul 11, 2007 5:33 am Post subject:

But, msue, he said it had nice "chocolate notes". I gotta say "chocolate" in the context of how this coffee gets elevated to its special place never sounded quite so... unnecessary.

Hooray for you, gingerpale. I tried to find a pic but I didn't. Kind of you to spare us the image of the cheese cut open, I must say. I wonder if that was someone's wedding.

PS In truth, Marcone said the lil buggers were a particuarly dairy variety that are very small. Don't know how that reconciles with a noise he could hear approaching the cheese. But I'll take his word for it and offer that reassurance.
_________________
God writes a lot of comedy... the trouble is, he's stuck with so many bad actors who don't know how to play funny. -- Garrison Keillor

Raven · Joined: 07 Apr 2006 Posts: 46 Location: Vermont, USA

On the coffee: MFK Fisher tells of coffee beans that have traveled through a tiger (sorry; I read this so long ago that I don't recall the book). I think tiger sounds much more glamorous than civet.

On another note, which seems appropriate to this setting: Not long ago, visiting someone on a hot day, I was offered my choice of cold drinks. "Lemonade," I said, expecting...well, lemonade. Instead I was offered one of those awful little juice boxes with a straw. I drank the contents just to be polite, then noticed the label: Paul Newman's Virgin Lemonade.

Virgin lemonade? What, pray tell, is non-virgin lemonade? Imagination races away, then falters and fails....

gingerpale · Joined: 23 Jan 2006 Posts: 1324

Raven, it is called "virgin lemonade" to imply a taste so tart and puckery that it would restore a young lady's maidenhood. (Now, let fly your imagination again!)

Erin · Posted: Wed Jul 11, 2007 3:05 pm Post subject:

I've heard tell of maggotty cheese before and am beyond grossed out. Maggots and worms are not my friends.

The coffee......yes working in the industry for as long as I did I have run across this. I had a boss a long time ago who brought his stash to the shop with the intention of making it using our equiptment. I put my foot down and made him take it out to his car.

Call me squimish, I will eat mold to my hearts content. Raw beef and fish, yum, yum, yum. Exotic game? Durian? Brain? Heck yes. But so help me god, if a worm or maggot enters the vicinity of my plate I am out the door.
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"It's watery....and yet there's a smack of ham."

"It's hot ham water."

Raven · Joined: 07 Apr 2006 Posts: 46 Location: Vermont, USA

Gingerpale, I'll let you know if it works.

charlsy · Joined: 08 Aug 2006 Posts: 136 Location: France, Bordeaux

This thread reminds me of the one we had last year about icky foods ! The ick factor being still so very different according to culture and country. Though the idea of a cheese whose tenants are just itching to burst out.... GROSS !!!! But my brother-in-law eats goat cheese so ripe
that it not only runs, but is about ready to run away on tiny maggotty "legs".

France's renowned Roquefort (our best known blue cheese) is really moldy cheese, and one of our most famous wines, Sauternes (a variety of sweet white wine), owes its special, sweet taste to what is called "noble rot", a parasitic mushroom that makes the grains in grappes rot and gives a concentrated sugar content. The grains are hand-harvested, one at a time according to the degree of rot, and the total production is very small, about 2500 liters a year. Do I need to add that Sauternes is not the cheapest wine around ? One 75cl bottle can go as far as 1550 euros...

I guess maggots are just so associated with putrescence and death that the idea of eating them is really too much. Yet in some countries people eat big fat lively larvae. As for coffee reclaimed from some dung heap, well those who like tripe eat the dung factory and lovers of kidneys delight in the urine-processing plant, so... In Spain they eat the testicules of corrida slaughtered bulls...

Food is such a diverse and strange experience !

Erin · Posted: Wed Jul 11, 2007 8:46 pm Post subject:

I guess I should add that I do love the mold. Roquefort happens to be a favorite of mine.

And now it's time to share; When I was three-ish, I was a connoisseur of dirt. I remember it as plain as day. Out in the backyard with my trusty wooden spoon savoring the dirt around the ferns, I looked at my next bite and there was the most discusting thing I have ever seen: an earthworm.
I never ate another mouthfull.
At 26, I was planting my garden when what did I find? A maggot! I screamed, ran into the house and made my husband dispose of it. I didn't get back there for a day.
_________________
"It's watery....and yet there's a smack of ham."

"It's hot ham water."

Acadiana · Joined: 20 Apr 2006 Posts: 41 Location: Washington DC

Wow - is it sad that I'm too scared to click the link and see what it is? LOL.

gingerpale · Joined: 23 Jan 2006 Posts: 1324

Don't be afraid Acadiana--it is just a photograph, not the video!

madameshawshank · Posted: Thu Jul 12, 2007 2:41 am Post subject:

Years back...an English chef..can't recall who...there he was in Italy as part of some food documentary...in the moutains with a small group of shepherds...as much as I can recall...'n there was THE cheese!

the cheese scene from The Odd Couple...I can hear Walter Matthau's voice as I read Oscar's lines Very Happy

I think the sandwiches were held under his armpit..

Oscar Madison: I'm in for a quarter.
Murray: Aren't you going to look at your cards first?
Oscar Madison: What for? I'm gonna bluff anyway. Who gets a Pepsi?
Murray: I get a Pepsi.
Oscar Madison: My friend Murray the policeman gets a warm Pepsi.
Roy: You still didn't fix the refrigerator. It's been two weeks now - no wonder it stinks in here.
Oscar Madison: Temper, temper. If I wanted nagging, I'd go back with my wife. I'm out. Who wants food?
Murray: What do you got?
Oscar Madison: I got, uh, brown sandwiches and, uh, green sandwiches. Which one do you want?
Murray: What's the green?
Oscar Madison: It's either very new cheese or very old meat.
Murray: I'll take the brown.
[Oscar hands Murray a sandwich which Murray starts wolfing down]
Roy: Are you crazy? You're not going to eat that, are you?
Murray: I'm hungry!
Roy: His refrigerator has been out of order for two weeks now. I saw milk standing in there that wasn't even in the bottle!
Oscar Madison: What are you, some kind of health nut? Eat, Murray, eat!
_________________
"I've never accepted the external appearance of things as the whole truth. The world is much more elaborate than the nerves of our eye can tell us." - James Gleeson

cigalechanta · Joined: 27 Dec 2004 Posts: 200 Location: cambridge, ma.

When I was little girl, I remember relatives visiting my grandparents from Canada to Massachusetts and the brought them that discusting cheese!!! It was in the truck of the car and I remember thinking, I'm in a horror film Smile

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Sharing food with another human being is an intimate act that should not be indulged in lightly
..................................MFK Fisher