the food bloggers' guide to the globe:
1) gnaw on a lamb rack or chop, cooked medium rare
Fat, meat everything, pick the lamb chop up in your fingers and nibble, gnaw, suck, lick your lips, lick your fingers, chew and nibble some more. Diet be damned, be sure not to miss out on my favourite part, the crispy, delicious fatty bits. When the fat glues itself between the ribs, or hides in a boney corner, tear it out and devour it with delight. As an extra treat serve up some fatty lamb chops with a plateful of chips [fries]. This was the first meaty meal I purposely chose to eat after ten years as a vegetarian. It was the thing I craved most during my wilderness years. If that's not a good enough reason for it to top my list of five things for you to eat before you die, I don't know what is. Just thinking about it induced a craving that was only satisfied by a lamb chop for lunch today.
2) eat Cornish clotted cream in Cornwall, England
You may think you have eaten Clotted Cream, but until you have eaten it fresh, in Cornwall, you haven't experienced it at its best. Throw your Californian sensibilities or healthy caution to the wind and book your air fare to Blighty right now. Cornwall, the county that forms the most South Western tip of Great Britain is surrounded by sea, is wild, beautiful and craggy on its North coast, sheltered and more serene to the South. Spectacular cliffs give way to miles of sandy beaches with waves fit for some pretty good surfing. It's a great place to visit on vacation. Foodwise, Cornwall is famous for its fish & chips, Rick Stein, Cornish pasties and, of course, clotted cream teas. Clotted cream is rich and yellow with a minimum 55% fat content. The surface is covered in thick buttery, knobbly clots. It's amazing stuff. Make sure to try it fresh one day, preferably in Cornwall.
3) ferment your own soda and drink it
When I was a teen I made a non-alcholic elderflow 'champagne' using, as far as I recall, elderflowers, sugar, water and lemon juice and a recipe from the hand-written notes of an elderly aunt. [Oh, how I wish I had those same notes today.] The mixture feremented, as if by magic, in the bottles and turned out to be a sparkling, refreshing, floral drink. I kind of amazed myself at the time because I'd always assumed until that point that fizz was something that a factory put in a can. This past Saturday, by strange chance, I got talking to a fellow customer at the farmers market who told me she had started experimenting with making her own naturally fermented sodas too. The conversation awakened this memory for me and I can feel the start of a future project taking shape. ["How To" found here.]
4) eat a fish you caught yourself
One county North of Cornwall lies Devon, which also has its fair share of coastline. When I was twelve years old, I spent a week there, at Exmouth Camp with my school. As far as my 28-year old memory of that holiday can afford me, I recall it was a week packed with fun. Not only did I learn to snorkle, water ski and sail, I also went line fishing, out at sea, for mackerel. Our boat came in with a record catch of 33 fish and we ate what we'd netted for supper. At that age I didn't even particularly care much for fish, but since not much tastes so good as an animal you have caught yourself [unless you are in Fiji where they overcook their fish], I'll never forget that simple but memorable meal.
5) eat your favourite results of a taste test
You'll learn to love your food more if you get to know it better. You would never simply specify "Get me a car, get me a camera or get me a computer" if you'd asked someone else to do your shopping for you. You would know exactly which car, which make of camera or which brand of computer that you wanted. And if you didn't, you would do some research to find out which best suits your needs. Food deserves the same attention to detail. Perform regular taste tests to get to really know your food. Simply grabbing the first avocado could become a thing of the past, when you start demanding a Hess, a Gwen or a Bacon variety instead. On Becks & Posh we've only shared taste tests for sparkling wines and garlic so far, but hope to make this self education more of a feature of our lives in future as we get to know our food better and better each day.
I am sharing this list with you today because I was tagged by two of my favourite bloggers, Bea and Helen for an event called The Food Bloggers' Guide to the Globe started by Melissa at The Traveler's Lunchbox. [Oh, how it pains me to spell traveller with only one l.] Melissa was inspired by this fairly extremely pedestrian list she found on a BBC website. It's not exactly challenging as you can tell by the fact that little old me has eaten 46/50 of the items listed, which is why, I think, that Melissa wanted to illustrate that us bloggers can come up with a much better list than that.
This is how the event works: Every food blogger who has been tagged or who is simply interested in taking part should detail "five things to eat before you die" in a blog post, before passing a tag on to to five more food bloggers. In this way Melissa hopes to have a large round up of world-wide foods everyone should try at least once in their lives. Hopefully it will be far more interesting than the list that started the event in the first place. Melissa is updating the list of participants in her original announcement post which is where you should also go if you want more details about entering guidelines.
At random - I am tagging the following five food bloggers to share, if they wish, their own five ideas for Melissa's mega-list:
Alaska Cooks
Squirrel Squad Squeeks
Something in Season
Gourmet Mango
The Culinary Chase
If you are a reader without a blog, you are encouraged to leave your own list, right here in my comments, I'd love to see everyone else's ideas. Thank you.
PS If you like this kind of thing you should also check out this post from Owen at Tomatilla which a while back rounded up food bloggers responses to a far more discerning impossible list published originally in The Observer.
five things to eat before you die,
(Click on Letter to Open/Close Index)
marin
east bay
wine country
davis
tahoe
baked
chocolate
dairy/eggs
drinks
markets
meat
new york
las vegas
los angeles
san diego
england
fiji
france
ireland
nibbles
staples
salads
sarnies
vegetables
pasta/grains
eggstras
fishes
meat
dough
desserts
cakes/cookies
sweets
feasts
english
drinking out
bubbles
white wine
red wine
pink wine
hard stuff
soft stuff
