EATS

Is it me, or are chefs today getting too carried away? It seems that every recipe I read, or every menu from a highbrow restaurant, has the most outrageous mélange of ingredients. It reminds me of those “bafflegab thesauruses”. You know what I mean, the sheets where there are three columns of words and you pick a word from each column and it makes a word that sounds like a serious word, but is really just meaningless nonsense, like “adjudicated organizational management”.

Anyway, maybe it’s because chefs are running out of ideas, or that we have finally reached the outer boundary of what can be done to normal food and we now have to create a new synthesis of ingredients to create anything new, like finding new elements on the periodic table. New elements aren’t found in nature, but are only man made; we have run out of the “normal” elements.

Here are a few examples of what I am talking about. Perhaps you will want to try one of these delicacies yourself!

Pickeled hens brains on a bed of baby beets with pepper encrusted asparagus and a sour kraut au’ ju. For dessert, a flaming ugly fruit sorbet with chocolate sauce and a sprinkling of Fijian coconut shells.

Yum! Or how about,

Manatee pancreas stuffed with rhubarb and tofu, glazed with iced chipotle and served with hominy grits and a side of California Sea Kelp.

Doesn’t that sound delish! Or, one more,

Toe of Sasquatch burnished with the scrapings from old copper pipes served with a side of squid tentacles ( in its own ink, of course ) with Fly Agaric mushrooms and some green stuff that was growing on the grout in the men’s room!

Hhhmm, I’m getting hungry just thinking about that! How about you?

Asian chefs are the worst for this sort of thing, so much so there is even a television show, Iron Chef, where a panel of expert chefs is given the craziest ingredients and one hour to come up with a mouth watering delight. In Asian cooking if it doesn’t look gross, taste worse and be nearly poisonous, it’s just not worth eating. They practically challenge each other to eat things like,

1000 year old sea turtle penises dipped in pond scum and left out to dry in the sun for month and then drenched in camel vomit.

Well, it’s nearly lunch time and after writing this I am famished. Think of these recipes when you are planning your next dinner party. Your guests will relish your cooking acumen. Bon appetite!