Kevin's Watch

Well, the thread title says it all really so I'll start by nominating a dessert I had in a restaurant a year or two ago that even a well known London food critic had fought shy off - a sweet curry ice-cream with rice pudding (curry and rice - geddit?). Served very artistically with numerous little flourishes, the dish was absolutely stunning in a completely new and unusual way.

Another dish in a Paris restaurant was an asiette of small tastings, all made from a single langoustine which utilised all of the parts including the head. The chef managed to pull a range of flavours and textures out of almost thin air to serve a surprise dish of the highest order.

Hmmmm, I tend not to eat odd things. I'm not very adventurous when it comes to my food...I like to eat stuff I know works.

--A

I learned some pretty good things from a S.A friend Av that weren't exactly mainstream! He taught me to fry bananas wrapped in bacon, fish baked with (again) bananas and steak marinaded in soy, golden syrup and garlic; not off the scale in weirdness but pretty out there in 70's England.

Avatar wrote:Hmmmm, I tend not to eat odd things. I'm not very adventurous when it comes to my food...I like to eat stuff I know works.

--A

Agreed.

The only way I eat bananas is partially green.

--A

Hmm ... my list is only weird depending on whom you ask.

10 years ago I learned raw fish is awesome, and now I can't get enough sushi.
Bitter beer is actually wonderful.
I like salt on my grapefruit and granny smith apples.
Habanero and serrano peppers are delicious in yogurt (mixed with berries).
Anchovies smell awful, but they're actually pretty darn good on pizza.
My wife thinks my love of goat cheese is weird.

Uni!!!

Menolly! Feels like I haven't seen you for ages.

--A

Oddest thing I ever ate that worked was the combination of sliced cucumbers with feta cheese and fresh mint flakes... pretty good! The second oddest thing (in my opinion) was a sauce pored on chicken breast made of chocolate, hot peppers, and cloves. Turned out to also be delicious!

Bacon and beer works, so does beer and chocolate, surprisingly.

--A

I once watched a show with Heston Blumenthal in which he let people create puddings combinig random stuff. It was interesting, but I thought, how random is it really? Wouldn't people either choose ingredients they knew would match or that were so far off that hey had to be at least interesting to eat?

I wanted to elimate human choice and make it completely random, so I "developed" something I called "taste roulette". I made the followeing excel spreadsheet:



There are four categories: aromatics, sweet, sour and savory, each with ten entries (from 0-9).

With the help of the command =RAND()*9999 I let excel generate a random number, in this case it was 4560. That means I have to create a dish using aromatic #4, sweet #5, sour #6 and savory #0. Here it would have been a combination of lemon gras, orange, sumach and bacon. Obviously there are weirder combinations possible.

Haha, that's pretty cool.

--A

Vader wrote:I once watched a show with Heston Blumenthal in which he let people create puddings combinig random stuff. It was interesting, but I thought, how random is it really? Wouldn't people either choose ingredients they knew would match or that were so far off that hey had to be at least interesting to eat?

I wanted to elimate human choice and make it completely random, so I "developed" something I called "taste roulette". I made the followeing excel spreadsheet:



There are four categories: aromatics, sweet, sour and savory, each with ten entries (from 0-9).

With the help of the command =RAND()*9999 I let excel generate a random number, in this case it was 4560. That means I have to create a dish using aromatic #4, sweet #5, sour #6 and savory #0. Here it would have been a combination of lemon gras, orange, sumach and bacon. Obviously there are weirder combinations possible.

Very creative, Vader! It sounds like the food you'd create from that combination would be both original and memorable.

I'd say that most of Column C would clash with most of Column E, but as noted above, I am not adventurous when it comes to such things.

There's a conversation going on in my WoW guild right now about avocado-flavored Oreo cookies, which are apparently a real thing. I'm still hoping it's a joke, or at least taking some comfort from the fact that my friends are agreeing that the idea is abominable.

Dunno about that, but as I've mentioned, the GF is vegan, and a lot of vegan recipes use avocado for binding or something. I've seen chocolate cake recipes that call for it among others.

(We agree it's an awful idea...she usually uses apple sauce.)

--A

Avocado in place of mayonnaise generally works pretty well, though.

Cuttlefish served in its own ink, with polenta. Quite yummy, once you vet past the plate looking like a bumblebee massacre.

first one that came to mind:
"fried ice cream"
someone wrapped it in thick dough, then fried the ball of ice-cream-filled-dough.
worked because: most of the ice cream was not, in fact, melted.
just a little around the edges... mmm.

a refreshing drink that was a mixture of plain yogurt, water, with a bit of salt and dried mint leaves.
(not how my American tastes are used to having mint)

avocado milkshake

vader- I like the "how random is it really?" impulse.
ummm, a few years ago, my family made a sort of... encounter chart for birthday cake types.
Now we are all required to roll a 2D10 to determine the fate of our cake each year.

Haha, that's cool.

Fried ice cream isn't weird to me...personally I crumb it in crushed almonds before deep frying...

--A

Linna Heartlistener wrote:first one that came to mind:
"fried ice cream"
someone wrapped it in thick dough, then fried the ball of ice-cream-filled-dough.
worked because: most of the ice cream was not, in fact, melted.
just a little around the edges... mmm.

Have seen advertisements for a baffling variety of fried foods that generally lead to me wondering why (and sometimes how) anyone would do such a thing - will admit that ice cream was on that list. Will also admit that your description sounds good.