It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of
wisdom, it was the age of foolishness…
So said
Charles Dickens, in A Tale of Two Cities. Substitute "food" for
"times" and you have the key to this post. I thought it might be fun
to take a quick look at the food highs and lows of this past year for the
writer-chefs of Mystery Lovers' Kitchen—and you!
Pop quiz
(no grades!):
B. Or, if
there are too many memorable examples to pick from, what food did you try for
the first time in 2012?
C. What's
the worst thing you ate this past year, the one thing you will never, ever try
again and will warn all your friends and relatives to stay away from?
We at MLK
would love to hear about your culinary experiences, both good and bad.
I'll start
off. Here are my examples:
A. Yes, too many to count, so I'll skip ahead to
B. Samphire. Say what?
I'd never seen or heard of it until it showed up in a dish of steamed
mussels I had in a pub in Dublin.
Samphire (also known as sea fennel) is an herb or vegetable that grows
on muddy, sandy flats (marsh samphire) near the sea or on rocky seaside cliffs
(rock samphire, which grows in such places as the White Cliffs of Dover, where
Shakespeare mentioned it). It tastes a bit like asparagus but with a salty
flavor, and it adds crunch to dishes.
(And I love the name.)
C. Durian.
This was something I'd heard of but never met face to face. I came upon it at a trendy Thai restaurant
called Pok Pok in Brooklyn. It is a
large thorny fruit that stinks, so why do people eat it? Well, as one of my tablemates at the
restaurant said, "it smells like **** but it tastes like
heaven." At Pok Pok it was served
in a dessert, in the form of a custard on sweet sticky rice. The **** odor was noticeable, at least at
first taste; the "heaven" part might be a bit exaggerated, although
it was pleasant enough, or at least, not awful. Anyway, I'm not
going back for more, but I'm happy to check durian on my bucket list.
