Weird things I have eaten recently

[corvi]

1. Pizza with bamboo shoots
   Not unpleasant, but not actually an improvement over cheese pizza, which seems like the minimum standard required of pizza toppings. Much better "only one place does this" pizzas I've had:
   • cashews and green chiles (Dirty Dave's in Olympia)
   • pickles and peas (Oregano's in Victoria)
   • apples and arugula (the late and much-mourned Al Forno in Olympia)
   Recommend bamboo pizza only for radical pizza-eating pandas and really dedicated pizza completists. Pizza completists probably aren't a thing, since you could always top a pizza with other smaller pizzas with their own toppings; I think Godel had something to say about that.


2. Pecan-flavoured sunflower seeds
   Nuts, flavoured to taste like ... different nuts. They are sort of piney/woody and vanilla-y. Quite nice, except for the random pieces of shell in the bag. It's not pecan shell; I think it's something else in the Carya genus without a good English translation.


3. Baobab juice
   Tastes like watermelon juice with tamarind in it. Nice flavour, but hard to drink an entire cup, it gets kind of chalky


4. Cactus burritos
   Always eat cactus burrito. Especially at Javier's in Portland.


5. the C U B E
   I recently attended a conference where the meal choices were:
   • Pan Roasted Steelhead (wild mushroom pesto, topped with shaved fennel and artichoke salad, creamy potato leek cassoulet).
   • Blackened Flank Steak (with a pan jus reduction, sauteed crimini mushrooms, shredded potato, green been and roasted corn cake)
   • Vegetarian option
   "Vegetarian option" turned out to be a cube made of about two dozen layers of thinly sliced pumpkin, provolone cheese, and spinach. Topped with mushroom sauce. I ... don't even know what to call that, and I guess neither did they.
   I like pumpkin. And cubes. I'm not sure this dish will ever again appear on this planet, and I was the only one who ordered it, so my recommendation or lack thereof is kind of moot. Wish I'd taken a photo.


6. Groundcherries
   I'm guessing this is for historical reasons, like maybe Canada, unlike the US, has never embargoed Colombia, so there's a history of importing Colombia fruit? Groundcherries are available in every grocery store in Victoria, even on lowest common denominator things like premade fruit trays. People eat them a lot. It's one of those things that makes you feel like you've somehow moved to a parallel reality; everyone treats as Totally Normal And Not At All Interesting a fruit you've never seen before.
   I do recommend groundcherries, for all the good it does. Either you can't buy them where you live, or I just said the equivalent of "hey, have you ever heard of "apples"? Maybe you should eat one."

Homework question: is there a particular pizza topping unique to your local pizza parlour?

Comments

[ivy]

Are groundcherries the same as these? I just tried those at Uwajimaya last week; those were one of my "I have no idea what these are!" purchases, and yes, they were great. [grin]

[corvi]

Yes! That is them!

I knew about them before moving to Canada, but only because we tried growing them one year. They're one of the tropical fruits that care more about "not freezing ever" than "temperatures being high," so they can theoretically be grown in the Northwest. Our garden was too shady, though, and they shook their spindly little photosynthetic fists at me as they died and demanded to know why I had brought them into this world of shade and woe.

[ivy]

Hah. I had tried to grow some in my garden in Maryland, but I also put them somewhere too shady. I got a couple of the little paper lanterns, but looking at them did not make me think "mmm, let me tear that open and see what's inside and eat it", so I never tried. I missed out!

Also, why are they called groundcherries, they're nothing like (and far superior to) cherries?

[corvi]

> Also, why are they called groundcherries, they're nothing like (and far superior to) cherries?

I'm not sure, but there's apparently something about this particular fruit that prompts people to name it via inexplicable metaphor; in Canada it is sometimes sold as "Cape Gooseberry." It has as little in common with gooseberries as with cherries.

[yam]

I had to google groundcherries, baffled that they could be all over Victoria but not here. But then I saw the picture and was all "Ohhhhh GOOSEBERRIES" and now I have learned there's some other supposedly realer kind of gooseberry which looks like a creepy hairy grape? MYSTERIES.

I suspect them of being more prevalent in BC than the rest of Canada because other than being delicious they're also a traditional chinese medicine thing.

[corvi]

Real Gooseberries were invented by a Hateful Deity and / or Hateful Anthropomorphic Personification Of Evolution. They are face-meltingly sour. You cook them into dessert with buckets of sugar. You do not leave a punnet of them out where young corvi, Amateur Berry Fiend, can find them and mistake them for excitingly tiny stripey grapes to be crammed into one's mouth by the fistful, and suffer trauma forever thereafter.

Though I have just learned from wikipedia that "gooseberry bush" is "19th century slang for pubic hair," which I find somewhat, er, concerning. I am not a doctor, but I sort of feel pubic hair should probably not be face-meltingly sour?

[shadesofmauve]

.Real Gooseberries were invented by a Hateful Deity and / or Hateful Anthropomorphic Personification Of Evolution.

I assume that's why they're named after geese, another personification of biological hate.

[eeyorerin]

The Cube sounds like a really bored chef's project, but also fascinating. If you had a square mold it wouldn't be hard to make, though...

[sistawendy]

I'm a purist about many things, including pizza. Give me vera pizza any day. Luckily, some is available just up Phinney Ridge from me at Cornuto.

Food cubes? Is that anything like time cubes?

[tylik]

[shadesofmauve]

That picture makes me very happy.

[randomdreams]

Cactus tacos are currently the hip thing locally.

one of the interesting things about New Zealand is that sometimes it felt like the chefs there had read a poorly translated book about pizza and decided it sounded pretty good. In Queenstown, I had a pizza that had turkey, cranberry sauce, chunks of potato, and corn. I quite liked it.

[corvi]

Mmmm, cactus taco.

You win the Most Baffling Pizza award, hands down.

[hpapillon]

There used to be a pizza place in Durham that did Weird Pizza but sadly I can't even remember what the place was called. I think spaghetti pizza and mashed potato pizza were on the menu. There may also have been alligator pizza?

England thinks corn is a fairly normal pizza topping, particularly if chicken is there also. I don't hate it but I don't see the point, it doesn't add anything to a pizza IMO, I don't even really notice it's there, the corn taste completely disappears.

Nearby grocery store is currently selling a macaroni and cheese (with bacon bits) pizza that was surprisingly tasty. They also offer a pizza with french fries on it, which I find fundamentally upsetting for some reason. My favorite grocery-store pizza, though, was the co-op's limited edition pastrami pizza. Mascarpone, pastrami, pickles, and a mustard drizzle.

[juli]

I totally ate that alligator pizza back in the late '90s when Durham was becoming a foodie city! Also rattlesnake and kangaroo, I believe. It was by the Wellspring sort of on the side of Durham that I think of as "near Duke Surplus" but not quite. That is a wonderful memory, thank you!