h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I used to get given something called "Diptindapan"; which i really did think was the proper name for this delicacy. Slice of white bread dipped in the pan of dripping that my Gran's bacon had been fried in. That got smothered in ketchup or Branston too.

My mum for a Sunday treat sometimes bought tinned cream & we would have bread & jam & cream butties. Beautifully messy!

zdt

We did that with the fat that steak had been fried in. We called it a 'dip butty'.

Yuck.

The worst I got served was fried bologna. Or pretty much anything my mother cooked.

Of course, dad did like to eat pickled pig's feet, so he probably would've liked a grease sandwich.

If you order "biscuits and gravy" in the States, you get biscuits (American biscuits, rolls made from a smiliar batter to pancakes), which I have no aversion to, smothered in a gloopy mess of bacon grease mixed with flour.

I still have a packet of Quaker 'Redeye Gravy Flavor Instant Grits' that I once bought as a souvenir.

Biscuits are pretty much the same mixture as we use for Scones. I guess they're not a million miles away from the idea of 'dumplings' which we sometimes (not often enough, though) serve in soups or stews.

The pronunciation of 'scone' - long o 'skon' or short o 'skohn' varies from place to place, but with no geographic consistency. It's a matter of furious debate.

The scones were on the grassy path at the back of the class.

Short!!!

zdt

Well, quite.

I had a very pretentious headmaster who used to say:
"Boys must not misbehave on the pahths to the bahths"

The Bahstard!

I'm not a really big fan of scones, no matter how you pronounce it (I've always pronounced it with a short "0", and enjoy it when the baristas correct my pronounciation). Dumplings, on the other hand, are good stuff.

I really, really, really hate grits.

What in god's teeth are grits??? In europe grit is something we sprinkle on the roads when it's icy. And chickens need it for laying eggs, they need soluble grit, usually oyster shell, & non soluble grit which is just...grit. Teeny weeny sharp rocks.

You are not seriously saying Usanians eat grit?Won't be very good for their zen ca-ca's i should think.

zdt

Grits are made from ground-up corm meal; the result is a sort of porridge. They say it resembles farina or polenta, but I like both of those.

Really nasty grits are made from hominy.

Here's a Wiki link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grits

*Grits* are quite different from *grit*. I'm sure grit is much less disgusting.

*Red Eye Gravy???

*Squirrels???

*Hushpuppies???

Ye gods; it gets worse!

I see us Brits are responsible for naming the evil stuff.In Malawi, the staple food is "Nsima"; which is by the sound of it pretty much the same as polenta, resembles solid wallpaper paste & tastes pretty much like it. But they fed the husky bits to animals, it was acknowledged that it had bugger all nutritional value, was hard to digest but possibly swelled up in the stomach & made for animals to trick them into thinking they weren't hungry.

Sounds vile, count me out!

zdt

Hush puppies and polenta are VERY good!! I make polenta all the time, with pasta sauce or with salsa. Hush puppies are good with a bit of honey. They're usually deep-fried, so I don't make 'em at home (haven't got a deep fryrer), but they can apparently be made quite easily. When I was a kid, my parents used to go to a seafood restaurant chain, and my sister and I would always get hush puppies and French fries for dinner. Yummo!

While hush puppies and polenta are delicious, red-eye gravy is the nastiest shit in the world. Bleargh! When I used to cook fish, I always battered it in either cold coffee and corn meal, or corn meal and stale beer. That would've gone spectacularly well with hush puppies.

Now I'm gonna have to get me some of those soon. Thankfully I think I know of a local place that makes 'em- there's a greasy fish joint up on the border between the city and Evanston that used to make a mean hush puppy!

Fish with coffee?!!! Mind you...the fascist poet d'Annunzio invented 'La Cucina Moderna' which included such delights as sausage in coffee sprinkled with eau de cologne.

Now I'm thinking of a sketch by the great Stanley Baxter, which only works if you know that Oxo is a UKanian brand of stock cube. An ad exec has his boss to dinner. Baxter plays all the parts. The sketch is based around their talking in phoney ad exec-speak. The wife (also played by Baxter, a famous female impersonator) is getting more and more exasperated. At one point the boss says:
"Mmmm - this is lovely. What's in it?"
And the wife says:
"Imagine the wild, sun-bleached savannah. In the distance - a cloud of dust. You hear a thundering. It gets louder. And louder - A herd of mighty cattle stampeding towards us...Now imagine all that raw power packed into a tiny cube of beefy goodness!!!"
And the boss says:
"You put Oxo cubes in *trifle*?!"

I knew what Oxo cubes were... but I still don't get the joke.

I know fish with coffee sounds gross... but a wee splash of cold coffee really makes a nice batter. It adds a sort of vague flavor, not a particularly strong one.

Never mind. It's more of a surreal disconnection than a joke. And it's funnier when Stanley Baxter does it.

i think you've got to be British to get it PC, don't worry about it!

Nobody has yet actually explained what Hush Puppies are. In UK they were a moccasin style shoe...

zdt

Here's a recipe: http://chitterlings.com/hush-puppies.html

They're made from corn meal batter, seasoned with garlic and onion and what have you, and deep fried into little balls of golden-brown yumminess.

So they're a bit like pakora or bhaaji really, except they are made with chick pea flour.

zdt

I cook okra (bhindi to you, Terri ) in cornmeal. mix fine cornmeal together with some salt, chilli and cajun-ish spices. Coat the okra with some beaten egg in a bowl. Toss it in the cornmeal. Bake on a tray in a hot oven (or deep fry).

That sounds fantastic! I'm a big fan of okra, if it's cooked right.

I don't actually have anything spectacular planned for the weekend menu. Hopefully, something will come along and inspire me.

But soon... the weather will take a definite turn for the cooler, and when it does, I'm going to have a go at making a pumpkin bisque.