Monday, July 05, 2010

Glandular Fever

English is a curious language. There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren’t invented in England or French fries in France. Sweetmeats is an old English word for what the Americans like to call ‘candy’ while sweetbreads are neither sweet, nor do they contain bread. The thymus of a calf, or  sweetbreads, is highly prized, I gather. Having thought of myself as a quite sophisticated foodie, I have recently begun to realise that what I really know about food could comfortably be inscribed on the back of a relatively modest shirt cuff. Differences between  'traditionnel'  and 'nouveau' have effortlessly passed me by. Eliciting gales of laughter, having disingenuously informed people here that I had never tried sweetbreads resulted in an 'OK, let's educate the boy' approach. Within five minutes, fried sweetbreads a la crème, flambé in Cognac with puffy pommes dauphines was placed in front of me.
Oh, what a fool I felt. It was, of course, screamingly, meltingly, outrageously good. I almost licked the plate clean. OK. I lied. I did. Feverishly.

4 comments:

  1. Gross. Sweetbreads, chitlins, kidneys, & brains.
    Definitely.Not. And you licked the plate! *shudder*

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  2. Stuff and nonsense. Tripe is the plat du jour - very fashionable. Look up "andouillette". BTW, there are forty-seven acronyms for 'tpd" from 'total permanent disablement' to 'Tampa Police department'. Put me out of my misery, please - what is HM on about?

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  3. That's what you get for eating whatever disgusting thing it was.

    And you appear to have a short memory (courtesy of eating stuff that isn't food possibly?) - 'TPD' is Time Piece Dependent is it not? It should probably have another 'D' for 'Disorder' since I'm certain someone, somewhere has this problem. But not you... since you are sans time piece at the moment...no?

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  4. I left my watches in Paris (I think) and don't feel disordered at all. Quite the reverse, in fact.
    Furthermore, I think you have a cheek being, well, transatlantic about French food, given that HM enjoys McSpotty's for Friday breakfast. Steak tartare isn't 'just raw meat' btw...

    ReplyDelete

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