DANDY IN ASPIC

And speaking of hippo foot jelly, as we were, this image just surfaced from the depths of the interwebs:

It’s lamb rather than hippo, but as I often say, I think that losing our taste for aspic has been a huge detriment to western civilization.  But who listens to me?  Of course when you think of jelly you think of Bompas and Parr, who used to be known as jellymongers, but are now described as “the leading expert in multi-sensory experience design.”

I read this on a leaflet accompanying an exhibition in the crypt of St Johns, Bethnal Green, titled The Scent of Other Worlds, sculptures by Lucy Hardcastle, smells by Design in Scent, and the whole thing sponsored by Virgin, designed to give you a sniff of what other planets in the universe might smell like. Mars was my favorite:

There was no jelly at the opening party but there were cosmopolitans that came in plastic pouches, like space cocktails, I suppose.  And when I got back home, I found that his image had surfaced too.  

There’s more that one way to jelly your lamb.

FUN WITH MEAT - ENGLISH STYLE

What I ate on my travels.

Some barbecued venison in Essex:

Some barbecued lamb in Gloucestershire:

A might pile of miscellaneous meats at the Anatolia restaurant in Hackney:

And a pile of kebab meat from a place in West Hampstead called, I kid you not, Lezziz Express, which turns out not to be an outpost of lesbian separatism, but a halal joint.  The yoghurt sauce was hiding a multitude of sins.  And I was left thinking I should have ordered the chips and cheese: ah well, there'll be another time.

MUTTON UNDRESSED

My attention has been drawn, as I’m sure yours has too, to the latest Chinese food scandal.  The Chinese police broke a crime ring that passed off a million dollars worth of “rat and small mammal meat” as mutton.  These small mammals included fox and mink.

Now, this is clearly very bad and wrong: if I’m going to eat rat (and I probably would in the interests of research) then I’d like to know about it, though I suspect an awful lot of people have eaten rat over the centuries, it being a delicacy in certain parts of China, and a great deal of it got eaten during the Battle of Stalingrad.  And I suppose, if nothing else, most of it has been free range. 

Mink, I suppose, would probably be farmed: if you’re breeding them for their fur, why not sell their meat too?  And fox?  The received wisdom on fox, is surely, per Oscar Wilde, that it’s “the inedible,” though I did read a report a few years back that a butcher in England was selling fox specially imported from Scandinavia.  I seem to recall that people found it tough.

However, the big question I’m left asking is, by what incredible process did the Chinese get their small rodents to taste like lamb?  We know that unusual meat is always supposed to “taste like chicken.”  The answer, according to news reports, is that “additives” were used.  Now, those must be some powerful, desirable and I’d say potentially magical additives.  Never mind selling rat, mink and fox, why not just sell the additives?  Of course you wouldn’t call them additives, obviously, you’d call it “Lamb in a Pack” or “Lamby Flavor Enhancer.”  I’d buy it buy it in bulk.