The Lung Brothers

Hanging out at the extreme end of the long tail ...

Monday, January 31, 2005

Monday Rant Part: II

Spanish food is good. I mean really good. Even in the most modest of Iberian households they think about their food and choose the raw materials with great love and care, first looking at quality and then price. Healthy and delicious olive oil is used to cook or season practically everything on the table, and their market vegetables although smaller and uglier than their genetically modified counterparts, do actually taste of something.

Sadly, the modern world being what it is, I doubt if this care and attention to a quality diet will last for more than another generation.

Unlike their Latin American cousins and contrary to popular belief, the Spanish don’t generally go for hot or spicy food. It’s viewed with suspicion as a way of covering up the poor quality of meat and vegetables. It’s incredible how wussy our local friends get whenever we go out for any kind of eastern food, their palettes never having acquired the healthy, leathery texture of the seasoned curry muncher.

Now, the exception proving the rule, there is one popular Spanish dish that I just don’t understand at all. Disgusting, insipid gruel unfit for a dockland slop house. I refer to cold white asparagus served with……wait for it….mayonnaise. Now, taste apart, lets look into this succulent starter in the context of a full sensory experience.

The porcelain plate arrives adorned with half a dozen thick stems of asparagus with a fine blob of creamy mayonnaise on top. White on white on white, an appetising sight if you happen to be a colour-blind, anaemic albino. You then sink your knife into the aqueous vegetable and release a large puddle of water into which the mayonnaise falls and immediately clots. If the asparagus is firm enough to be skewered by a fork, you might actually get it into your mouth on the first try instead of letting it fall back onto the puddly plate causing a splash that makes it look like someone just jacked off onto your tie.

Then after chewing this mass of sloppy fibre for five minutes, your mouth desperately trying to emulsify all that mayonnaise, you manage to swallow without gagging.


Jesus, if only you’d ordered the jellyfish with yogurt like I told you.



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