The Displaced Nation

A home for international creatives

Tag Archives: It’s Food!

RETURN TRIP: Seven deadly dishes — global grub to die for

6 Comments Posted by on August 19, 2011

While our writers take off on what they hope will be enchanting August breaks, The Displaced Nation will occasionally be reissuing some posts that, for one reason or another, enchanted our readers. Enjoy these “return trips”!
Some months ago, The Displaced Nation explored the theme of Gothic tales — the idea that many of us return from our world travels with some horrific stories to tell. That’s assuming we return at all, of course. Displaced Nation writer Kate Allison contributed this piece on deadly dishes as part of our “It’s Food!” category. It’s one of our most popular posts to date.

A Briton abroad spends a surprising amount of time defending his native national cuisine. I remember going to a steak house in Connecticut where the waitress, upon taking our order and hearing our accents, said brightly, “From England, huh? I hear you don’t get anything good to eat over there. ” When she brought the filet mignon to the table, she did so with the pitying smile of one delivering alms to the starving.

British super-chefs like Gordon Ramsay and Jamie Oliver may be taking the US by storm, but still this delusion of bad food persists. To which I say: whatever the perceived faults of English cuisine, at least no one has to take out extra life insurance before eating Yorkshire pudding.

Yet there are quite a few delicacies from countries without this dismal food reputation, where a top-up premium might be useful before you take that first bite.

In ascending order of danger or toxicity:

7. Snake wine – Vietnam, Southeast Asian, Southern China.

An assortment of herbs, small snakes, and a large venomous snake are steeped for many months in a glass jar of rice wine, then consumed in small shots for medicinal purposes. Fortunately, the ethanol renders snake venom harmless.

6. Surströmming – Sweden.

Fermented Baltic herring. Stored in cans, where the fermentation continues, causing the cans to bulge. In 2006, Air France and British Airways banned surstromming from their flights because they said the cans were potentially explosive. According to a Japanese study, the smell of this Scandinavian rotten fish is the most putrid food smell in the world.

5. Fried tarantula – Cambodia.

Tarantulas, tossed in MSG, sugar, and salt, are fried with garlic until their legs are stiff and the abdomen contents less liquid. The flesh tastes a little like chicken or white fish, and the body is gooey inside. Certain breeds of tarantula have urticating hairs on their abdomen, which they use for self-defense. If the spiders are not prepared properly – i.e., if the offending hairs are not removed with a blow torch or similar – these hairs can cause pharyngeal irritation in the consumer.

4. Sannakji – Korea.

Small, live, wriggling octopus, seasoned with sesame and sesame oil. The suction cups are still active, so bits of tentacle may stick to your throat as you swallow, especially if you’ve had one too many drinks before dinner. The trick is to chew thoroughly so no piece is big enough to take hold of your tonsils. Some veteran sannakji eaters, however, enjoy the feel of longer pieces of writhing arm and are prepared to take the risk.

3. Stinkhead – Alaska

Heads of salmon, left to ferment in a hole in the ground for a few weeks. Traditionally, the fish was wrapped in long grasses and fermented in cool temperatures, but then someone discovered Baggies and plastic buckets, which increase the speed of the process. Unfortunately, they also increase the number of botulism cases.

2. Casu Marzu – Sardinia

Made by introducing the eggs of the cheese fly to whole Pecorino cheese (hard cheese made from sheep’s milk) and letting the cheese ferment to a stage of terminal decomposition. Locally, the cheese is considered dangerous to eat when the maggots are dead, so you eat them live and squirming. As the larvae can jump six inches in the air, it is advisable to cover your cheese sandwich with your hand while eating to prevent being smacked in the face by grubs. An alternative is to put the cheese in a paper bag to suffocate the maggots, then eat it straight away. The maggots will jump around in the bag for a while, making a sound, I imagine, not unlike that of popcorn in the microwave. Although the European Union outlawed this food for a while, it has since been classified as a “traditional” food and therefore exempt from EU food hygiene regulations.

1. Fugu (Puffer fish) – Japan

Considered to be the second most toxic vertebrate in the world, puffer fish is a delicacy in Japan, but preparation of the food is strictly controlled, with only specially trained chefs in licensed restaurants permitted to deal with the fish. Fugu contains tetrodotoxin, a poison about 1200 times stronger than cyanide, which is most highly concentrated in the fish’s liver — the tastiest part. Sadly, for gourmets who like to live life on the edge, fugu liver in restaurants was banned in Japan in 1984.

Question: What is the most adventurous dish you’ve ever eaten?

If you enjoyed this post, we invite you to subscribe for email delivery of The Displaced Dispatch, a round up of the week’s posts from The Displaced Nation. Sign up for The Displaced Dispatch by clicking here!

Pot Luck , , , , , , , , , , ,

Some enchanted drinking: Summer cocktails that send you round the world

17 Comments Posted by on August 9, 2011

After spending many a summer in England (summer, what summer?) and Japan (beyond brutal!), I now live in New York City, where summers can best be described as a hot mess.

As the dog days set in, I’ve been known to sing out: “Drinks, glorious drinks! Don’t care what they look like!”

Actually, that’s not quite true.

Well, the part about my singing aloud is true — we’re all barking mad in this city, especially around mid-August.

And the part about drinks being glorious is also true —  what could be more glorious than an icy cold drink that cuts through the moisture-laden air, offering the possibility that this steam bath may end one day.

(I’m talking about alcoholic drinks, of course — anyone of a puritanical frame of mind can slake their thirst at one of the city’s fancy new portable water fountains, connected to fire hydrants.)

But the part about not caring what my drinks look like — that’s simply not true. For me, the ultimate summer refreshment is a well-made, well-presented cocktail.

As Penelope Wisner writes in her introduction to Summer Cocktails: 50 Tantalizing Recipes,

Everything matters: the taste of the spirit, the taste of the ice, the temperature of the drink, and the look of the drink.

My drinking history, in brief

During my expat years, I would happily down a half pint of lager in the pub with my English friends, or drink Kirin beer and sake on outings with my Japanese office mates.

That all changed when I moved back to my homeland.

Maybe it’s in my cultural DNA. The cocktail — a mixed drink with two or more ingredients, one of which must be a spirit — is one of America’s more inspired culinary accomplishments.

Or could it be my actual DNA — one of my earliest memories is of asking my father if I could chew on the lemon peel he put in his night-time martini.

In any case, not long after I became a resident of New York City — home of speakeasies and the only city I know of with a cocktail to its name — I was driven to drinking…cocktails. Particularly during summers.

You see, I’ve never been one of the lucky ones who can escape to the Hamptons or the Jersey shore.

Instead of the sea, sun, sand, and sky, I’ve had to grapple with sweat, smog, dirt, and skyscrapers.

Now, I could have gone the conventional route and drowned my sorrows in a beer. But why do that when a cocktail is so much pleasanter, and can transport you to places you’d rather be in — places much more exotic than an overcrowded beach?

Cocktails are a trip

My hunt for the transcendent cocktail experience has yielded several noteworthy finds, among them:

1) The mojito at Victor’s Cafe on West 52nd St. A single sip transported me to 1950s Havana, where I found myself salsa dancing with a Ricky Ricardo-look-alike. (And that was before I’d sampled the roast suckling pig!)

2) The vodka martini in the Russian Vodka Room, also on West 52nd St. I thought I was in Moscow from the moment I entered this swanky establishment, greeted by the sight of a curved bar at which many natives are downing shots, and behind which are these enormous jars of flavor-infused vodkas. Once I’d tasted my martini, I was well on my way to an enriching cultural experience. Oh, so that’s how they get through daily life in Russia. It all comes down to homemade vodka and to music — sublime combination! (Misha Tsiganov, a prize-winning jazz pianist who studied in St. Petersburg, is the bar’s official piano player.)

3) The classic martini at Angel’s Share, a tiny gem of a bar in the East Village. This drink made me feel I was in Tokyo again, even though I wasn’t really a cocktail person there. The Japanese bartenders had the mix, shake and stir down to an art form — which is soooo Japanese. And no one is allowed to stand at the bar — ditto. But by the time I’d polished off my divinely-inspired drink, I’d left Japan far behind for heaven itself — an effect enhanced by a ceiling mural that appears to have been inspired by Botticelli’s playful cherubs.

4) The Negroni at The Smith on 3rd Avenue. The Negroni — one part gin, one part sweet vermouth and one part Campari — is said to have originated in Florence in 1919, the invention of one Count Camillo Negroni. The first time I sampled one at the bar at The Smith, I fancied I’d become E.M. Forster’s Lucy Honeychurch at the very moment when she witnesses a murder on the Florentine streets, and is about to faint. (Where is George Emerson when you need him?) You see, the Smith version is anything but aristocratic: it packs quite a punch.

Next up? I hope it will be the Mexican martini, which I read about it in the New York Times last month. Basically, it’s a margarita served in a martini glass, with olives on a spear.

The drink is said to have been introduced from Matamoros, Mexico, just across from Brownsville, Texas, when a bartender from Austin visited there and was served a margarita in a martini glass.

It has since become Austin’s signature drink. Being Texan, it’s twice as large as a regular drink, so customers are given the cocktail shaker and urged to pour the drink themselves.

I haven’t been to Austin — and would love to go (though preferably not in the summer). I reckon a Mexican martini may be just the ticket…

The only issue is, the drink hasn’t really made it out of Austin yet.

So if you happen to hear of any Austin expats working behind Manhattan bars (yes, that’s how they’d refer to themselves), be sure to inform me.

For now though would you kindly join me in a refrain of “Drinks, glorious drinks, wonderful drinks!”

QUESTION: Can you recommend some summer cocktails you think have the makings of a mini-escape?

If you enjoyed this post, we invite you to subscribe to The Displaced Dispatch, a weekly round up of posts from The Displaced Nation, plus some extras such as seasonal recipes and occasional book giveaways. Sign up for The Displaced Dispatch by clicking here!

Related posts:

, , , , , , , ,

DISPLACED Q: Which dish is the worst international traveler?

13 Comments Posted by on June 7, 2011

Although “Does it travel well?” is a question usually asked of wine, we think the same query should be demanded of food, and often.

Alice agrees with us.

Soup didn’t cross successfully from the sublime to Wonderland:

“There’s too much pepper in that soup!” Alice said to herself as well as she could for sneezing.

At least use the correct animal.

In his Telegraph article, “Elegy to English shepherd’s pie”, our Alice Award winner, Sebastian Doggart, bemoans American ineptitude when it comes to making this most English of lamb dishes.

Americans just don’t get it.

First problem, encountered even in supposedly English pubs here in New York, is that it’s usually made with beef.

Putting the wrong animal in a dish? For shame!

Perhaps food should follow the jet stream.

Bill Bryson, in his book The Lost Continent, describes an equally disappointing encounter with another dish that hadn’t traveled well from East to West: a Cornish pasty in Michigan:

It was awful. There wasn’t anything, wrong with it exactly—it was a genuine pasty, accurate in every detail—it was just that after more than a month of eating American junk food it tasted indescribably bland and insipid, like warmed cardboard.

Although he attributes its lackluster flavor to his tastebuds becoming accustomed to American cuisine, I beg to differ on this point. Some dishes simply don’t travel well, and the Cornish pasty is evidently one of them. No one should attempt to recreate it outside England’s borders.

Or perhaps direction doesn’t matter.

However, Mr. Bryson found that some foods didn’t travel successfully across the Atlantic in the opposite direction, either.

In Notes from a Small Island, he comments on British hamburger chain Wimpy in the 1970s, before McDonald’s ruled UK fast food :

“I confess a certain fondness for the old-style Wimpy’s with their odd sense of what constituted American food, as if they had compiled their recipes from a garbled telex.”

He has a point. You don’t find American McDonald’s serving Big Macs with a side of Heinz baked beans.

And lastly — if you can’t boil a kettle, don’t make the tea.

Here, I am going to jump up on my hobby horse and say emphatically, “If you don’t understand that tea must be made with boiling water –- that’s when the cooking thermometer reads 100 degrees Celsius, not Fahrenheit –- don’t even try.”  Leave the tea to the British and Indian experts and stick to coffee instead.

I’ve lost count of the times when restaurants have served me “tea” by plonking down a cup of barely hot water with a teabag, still in its paper wrapper, at the side.

Why, for goodness’ sake? I also ordered a sandwich, but wasn’t handed two slices of stale bread and a packet of ham and told to get on with it.

Once bitten

Alice could have warned us of these perils, naturally. Her culinary adventures in Wonderland made her cautious before she jumped through the looking-glass:

“How would you like to live in Looking-glass House, Kitty? I wonder if they’d give you milk in there? Perhaps Looking-glass milk isn’t good to drink.”

Out of the mouth of babes and Victorian child-heroines, indeed.

So tell us: What’s the worst-traveled food you’ve encountered?

If you enjoyed this post, we invite you to subscribe for email delivery of The Displaced Nation. That way, you won’t miss a single issue. SPECIAL OFFER: New subscribers receive a FREE copy of “A Royally Displaced Tea.”

Related posts:

Just for Laughs , , , ,

Seven deadly dishes — global grub to die for

12 Comments Posted by on May 3, 2011

A Briton abroad spends a surprising amount of time defending his native national cuisine. I remember going to a steak house in Connecticut where the waitress, upon taking our order and hearing our accents, said brightly, “From England, huh? I hear you don’t get anything good to eat over there. ”  When she brought the filet mignon to the table, she did so with the pitying smile of one delivering alms to the starving.

British super-chefs like Gordon Ramsay and Jamie Oliver may be taking the US by storm, but still this delusion of bad food persists. To which I say: whatever the perceived faults of English cuisine, at least no one has to take out extra life insurance before eating Yorkshire pudding.

Yet there are quite a few delicacies from countries without this dismal food reputation, where a top-up premium might be useful before you take that first bite.

In ascending order of danger or toxicity:

7.   Snake wine – Vietnam, Southeast Asian, Southern China.
An assortment of herbs, small snakes, and a large venomous snake are steeped for many months in a glass jar of rice wine, then consumed in small shots for medicinal purposes. Fortunately, the ethanol renders snake venom harmless.

6.   Surströmming – Sweden.
Fermented  Baltic herring. Stored in cans, where the fermentation continues, causing the cans to bulge. In 2006, Air France and British Airways banned surstromming from their flights because they said the cans were potentially explosive.  According to a Japanese study, the smell of this Scandinavian rotten fish is the most putrid food smell in the world.

5.   Fried tarantula – Cambodia.
Tarantulas, tossed in MSG, sugar, and salt, are fried with garlic  until their legs are stiff and the abdomen contents less liquid. The flesh tastes a little like chicken or white fish, and the body is gooey inside. Certain breeds of tarantula have urticating hairs on their abdomen, which they use for self-defense. If the spiders are not prepared properly – i.e., if the offending hairs are not removed with a blow torch or similar – these hairs can cause pharyngeal irritation in the consumer.

4.   Sannakji – Korea.
Small, live, wriggling octopus, seasoned with sesame and sesame oil. The suction cups are still active, so bits of tentacle may stick to your throat as you swallow, especially if you’ve had one too many drinks before dinner. The trick is to chew thoroughly so no piece is big enough to take hold of your tonsils. Some veteran sannakji eaters, however, enjoy the feel of longer pieces of writhing arm and are prepared to take the risk.

3.   Stinkhead – Alaska
Heads of salmon, left to ferment in a hole in the ground for a few weeks. Traditionally, the fish was wrapped in long grasses and fermented in cool temperatures, but then someone discovered Baggies and plastic buckets, which increase the speed of the process. Unfortunately, they also increase the number of botulism cases.

2.   Casu Marzu – Sardinia
Made by introducing the eggs of the cheese fly to whole Pecorino cheese (hard cheese made from sheep’s milk) and letting the cheese ferment to a stage of terminal decomposition. Locally, the cheese is considered dangerous to eat when the maggots are dead, so you eat them live and squirming. As the larvae can jump six inches in the air, it is advisable to cover your cheese sandwich with your hand while eating to prevent being smacked in the face by grubs. An alternative is to put the cheese in a paper bag to suffocate the maggots, then eat it straight away. The maggots will jump around in the bag for a while, making a sound, I imagine, not unlike that of popcorn in the microwave. Although the European Union outlawed this food for a while, it has since been classified as a “traditional” food and therefore exempt from EU food hygiene regulations.

1.   Fugu (Puffer fish) – Japan
Considered to be the second most toxic vertebrate in the world, puffer fish is a delicacy in Japan, but preparation of the food is strictly controlled, with only specially trained chefs in licensed restaurants permitted to deal with the fish. Fugu contains tetrodotoxin, a poison about 1200 times stronger than cyanide, which is most highly concentrated in the fish’s liver —  the tastiest part. Sadly, for gourmets who like to live life on the edge, fugu liver in restaurants was banned in Japan in 1984.

Question: What is the most adventurous dish you’ve ever eaten?

For tamer foods that won’t mean a trip to the emergency room, sign up to receive our posts by email and receive your free copy of “A Royally Displaced Tea,” with recipes for Victoria Sponge, Fruit Scones, Princess Pairs, Queen of Puddings and Tiffin. All English. All good.

If you enjoyed this post, we invite you to subscribe for email delivery of The Displaced Nation. That way, you won’t miss a single issue.

Just for Laughs , , , , , , , ,

Tiffin: A displaced word of many meanings, but this one is sweetest

Leave a comment Posted by on April 28, 2011

Special announcement from TDN: ML Awanohara and Kate Allison will be live-tweeting the Royal Wedding from a displaced perspective. Join us from 5:00 a.m. EST, using the hash tag: #DNRW Read more.

“Taj Mahal” by Arvind Balaraman / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Tiffin – a word imported to England in the times of colonial British India, when, as well as being Queen of England, Victoria held the title of Empress of India.

Unlike other Anglo-Indian imports, such as gin and tonic or kedgeree, tiffin has shades of definitions – lunch, afternoon snack, or any light meal. My favorite definition, however, is the one given to me by my cookery teacher when I was twelve, which I’m sharing with you in honor of the wedding tomorrow.

It requires very little cooking, and if you start now, you will have enough time to make another batch to replace the one you intended to take to the street party but absent-mindedly ate instead.

One batch is never enough.

*

Tiffin

You will need:

100g / 4oz / 1/2 cup butter

50g / 2oz / 8 tablespoons desiccated (shredded) coconut – optional

50g / 2oz /1/3 cup seedless raisins

2 tablespoons golden syrup (see below if you’re unfamiliar with or can’t obtain this ingredient)

2 tablespoons powdered drinking chocolate (sweetened cocoa)

200g / 8oz / 2 cups broken digestive biscuits. If you can’t get digestive biscuits, graham crackers or crunchy oatmeal cookies would work.

100g / 4oz /2/3 cup plain (semi-sweet) or milk chocolate, as you prefer.

A 9″ x 9” cake tin, greased with butter. (Exact dimensions aren’t critical for the success of this recipe.)

Method:

1. In a small pan, melt the butter and golden syrup over low heat, then remove from heat.

2. Add coconut, raisins, drinking chocolate, and broken biscuits.

3. Mix well, then transfer to the greased tin. Pack down firmly with the back of a large spoon.

4. Put about an inch of water in a saucepan and bring the water to simmering point.

5. Break the chocolate into pieces and put in a heat-proof bowl (e.g., Pyrex). Fit the bowl over the pan of water, keeping the water simmering gently. Stir until the chocolate is melted.

6. Pour melted chocolate over the biscuit mixture in tin, and spread evenly.

7. Refrigerate for a few hours until chocolate is hard, then cut into small squares.

8. Serve with hot tea — of course.

*

Golden syrup

Golden syrup is a favorite in Britain and Australia. It’s thicker and sweeter than corn syrup, lighter in color than treacle (molasses), and  I knew it best for drizzling on my morning porridge before going to school.

In America it’s either unobtainable or very expensive, but according to an article on eHow, you can make your own.

You will need:

Heavy saucepan

1/2 cup white sugar

2 tsp. water

1 tsp apple cider vinegar

2/3 cup light corn syrup

Wooden spoon

Glass or plastic container

Method:

1. Pour the sugar in the saucepan, spread evenly over the bottom of the pan.

2. Mix water and vinegar, and sprinkle over the sugar.

3. Cook the mixture over low heat for five minutes. DO NOT STIR!

4. Turn the heat up to medium, and cook for a further five minutes, without stirring. Remove pan when mixture is a golden color.

5. Add light corn syrup and let mixture sit for 3 minutes. When the bubbling has stopped, stir well with wooden spoon.

6. Allow syrup to cool, then pour into a heatproof glass or plastic container, such as a mason jar. Seal, and store at room temperature. It will keep for two or three months.

(Thanks to my good friend and regular commenter on Displaced Nation, Joanna M-M, for sending me the link to this.)

*

Enjoy!

Img “Taj Mahal” by Image: Arvind Balaraman / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

If you enjoyed this post, we invite you to subscribe for email delivery of The Displaced Nation. That way, you won’t miss a single issue.

, , , , ,

Expats in Moscow satisfy a hunger to learn

1 Comment Posted by on April 27, 2011

Special announcement from TDN: ML Awanohara and Kate Allison will be live-tweeting the Royal Wedding from a displaced perspective. Join us from 5:00 a.m. EST, using the hash tag: #DNRW

I well remember my first foray into an American supermarket. Dozens of brands of orange juice, offset by a dearth of blackcurrant Ribena.  Cheese in aerosol cans, breakfast pizza bagels…  As for the meat — well, thank goodness everything came shrink-wrapped so I could smuggle it home and investigate its cooking requirements in privacy. Anything was better than revealing my ignorance of American cuts of beef to Stop & Shop’s rather intimidating butcher. It made me want to attend cooking classes – not because I couldn’t cook,  but because unfamiliar ingredients and lack of vital ones limited my usual repertoire. I had to eat what Americans did.

All this confusion took place in a country where the language was approximately the same as at home. How much more difficult must this experience be, then, in a country whose language is strange to you?

Borsch and blini

Victoria Agabalyan understands this problem well. She is the founder and chief executive of Taste of Russia, the first English-language culinary school in Moscow, whose students are primarily foreign tourists and expats.

In order to understand what Europeans expected of cooking classes, she, like American TV chef and one-time expat Julia Child before her, attended culinary school in France.  Consequently, Taste of Russia focuses on teaching traditional cuisine from Russia and the former Soviet Union in a cozy atmosphere. Student Bonnie van der Velde says:

“I cooked borshch and drankini with mushrooms for my mom and her colleagues in the Netherlands, and they liked it very much.”

Although Agabalyan teaches some of the classes herself, she also invites chefs to conduct culinary workshops while she or the school’s administrator translates. She plans to open more schools in other cities in Russia.

Hidden bonus for expats

Similar to my own dealings with strange supermarkets,  expats in Moscow have problems finding their way round the grocery shelves, and attendance at Taste of Russia helps them get over this difficulty. Another student, Angeline Sandmann, says that on her first shopping trip in Moscow she bought sour cream instead of the intended yogurt.

But it could have been worse. Try spraying cheese on top of your ice cream sundae.

Source:  The Moscow Times

If you enjoyed this post, we invite you to subscribe for email delivery of The Displaced Nation. That way, you won’t miss a single issue.

Pot Luck , , , ,

Jamie Oliver, culinary expert — and now expat?

4 Comments Posted by on April 13, 2011

Try as I might, I can’t make out why Jamie Oliver has taken it upon himself to save my countrymen from themselves.

I understand he’s trying to start a food revolution. Not only that but I’m a supporter, having signed the online petition. After all, I lived in Japan for long enough to see that if a national diet is in essence health food, there are many fewer incidences of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease, and people live longer.

But why is Jamie Oliver, of all people, leading this campaign? That’s the part I haven’t been able to fathom. Before going to Japan, I lived in Britain, where Oliver was known as the “naked chef.” Call it a lack of imagination but somehow I never anticipated that the face of the Sainsbury’s grocery-store chain would someday transform himself into a food activist and arrive on my shores. What happened?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad Oliver has decided to export his food revolution. For me, his confrontation with the stony-faced lunch ladies at the school in Huntington, West Virginia — which has been called the unhealthiest city in America — goes down in the annals as reality TV at its finest.

(I’m still not convinced those ladies aren’t actors.)

And now that he’s back for a second season of his “food revolution” show, which premiered last night, I’m enjoying seeing him take on the members of the Los Angeles school board, next to whom the West Virginian women seem warm and welcoming. LA is the second-largest school district in the nation, serving over half a million processed meals every day.

I note that this time, Oliver brought his wife, Jools, and their four young children, to live with him in LA. Is he planning to become an expat? Stranger things have happened…

I can’t really explain why Oliver would choose to displace himself and his loved ones in the service of America’s overfed youth, but I can offer some half-baked ideas:

1) He doesn’t like being less well known than Gordon Ramsay.

Ramsay surpassed Oliver some time ago in terms of earnings and visibility. Indeed, last night’s show offered evidence of this in a scene involving Dino Perris, the owner of a fast-food drive through in Glassell Park, a working-class neighborhood in LA. Perris said he’d never heard of Jamie Oliver and thought he might be that “rude guy.”

The only thing wrong with this theory? Ramsay is best known for swearing a blue streak and Oliver for interacting with kids like the Pied Piper of Hamelin. Apples and oranges.

2) He is descended from missionary stock (hahaha).

In other words, it’s in his DNA to make converts beyond his own shores.

This theory, however, doesn’t hold water when you study Oliver’s family tree. Most of his people hailed from Cornwall and his great-great grandfather John Oliver was a Royal Navy seaman who did time in prison — not exactly the ingredients from which a food evangelist emerges.

3) He is escaping from Britain because his popularity is on the wane.

His fellow Brits have grown tired of seeing him running around in his green pea costume, so he is seeking a fresh audience.

At first this theory seems quite palatable. Most Americans probably don’t know this, but there was a backlash against Oliver’s “school dinners” program in the UK. It reached its peak when two mothers at a school in South Yorkshire started delivering junk food from local shops through the school fence, claiming that their youngsters didn’t want to eat the celebrity chef’s “overpriced lowfat rubbish.”

Still, I can’t believe that Oliver was ever put off by people who cooked up stunts that are, in effect, straight out of his manual. He loves nothing better than stirring the pot, and besides, he achieved what he wanted: the UK government established the School Food Trust, dedicated to improving the quality of food in the nation’s schools.

Okay, so I have no idea why he’s here. I might as well chime in with Jon Stewart, who, when Oliver appeared on his show last week, summed it up as follows:

You have come to this land you and you would like to help us become healthier, better people. Good luck with that.

And if Angelenos start throwing rotten tomatoes at him, I hope he has the good sense to move across the Pacific. Rumor has it that obesity rates among children in Asia are rising with the invasion of McDonalds, KFC, Pizza Hut, and so on.

If that doesn’t make him fed up, I don’t know what will.

Question: What do you think has made Jamie Oliver cross borders, and would you like to see him become an expat in the United States?

If you enjoyed this post, we invite you to subscribe for email delivery of The Displaced Nation. That way, you won’t miss a single issue.

, , , , , , , ,

Miracle Whip as the new Marmite? It would take an act of God…

5 Comments Posted by on March 29, 2011

News has just reached the Displaced Nation — via a dog-eared copy of the Village Voice dated March 7 — about a new commercial for Miracle Whip that is in fact a rip-off of Marmite’s “love it or hate it” ad campaign. (Marmite of course being the savory spread made from waste yeast from the brewing industry, on which millions of Brits are weaned at an early age.)

Like Marmite before it, Miracle Whip is asking: do you love the not-quite-mayonnaise or hate it?


Kraft, the citizens of the Displaced Nation would like you to know: we are aware of your craftiness and we think it’s pretty cheesy of you to produce such a blatant imitation of Unilever’s brilliant Marmite campaign.

We also think it’s too bad that your marketing people didn’t consult with any Brits who are living in the United States, or they’d have set you straight on where Marmite belongs in the pantheon of branded foods: i.e., far above Miracle Whip.

Take, for instance, Kate Allison, a member of the Displaced Nation team. She chose to call her personal blog Marmite & Fluff. Marmite stands for Kate’s British heritage, while Fluff represents the past fifteen years she has spent living in the United States.

Notably, Kate decided to elevate Durkee-Mower’s Marshmallow Fluff — not Kraft’s Miracle Whip — to the level of her beloved Marmite because she believes the Fluffernutter sandwich has the same iconic status for American children as Marmite on toast does for their counterparts in Britain.

Another example is Lucy Sisman, a British resident of Manhattan who edits WWWORD.com, a site for anyone who uses, abuses, loves and hates the English Language.

Lucy includes the Marmite jar in her recent post listing objects from her kitchen cupboard that belong to the leave-us-as-we-are-hall-of-fame for their genius packaging. (Traditionally, Marmite was supplied in an earthenware pot, on which its glass, and now plastic, jars are modeled.)

Hmmm….when was the last time any of us heard an American wax nostalgic about a Miracle Whip jar?

Of Kraft’s many food products, only the Oreo comes anywhere near to arousing the kinds of passions that Marmite does, if expat blogs are anything to go by. But one doesn’t sense that Oreo lovers sit up and take umbrage whenever Kraft introduces a new variety, such as mini Oreos, chocolate creme Oreos, golden Oreos… Not so with the Marmite minions. Kate, for instance, had this to say of some new-fangled Marmite combos:

I thought Marmite and Fluff sandwiches were bad. Now I’ve discovered you can buy Marmite chocolate. And champagne Marmite, anyone? Or Marmite with Marston’s Pedigree?

Besides Oreos, Americans abroad also say they miss Kraft’s macaroni-and-cheese mix — though a surprising number go on to say that their nostalgia dissipates with each successive bite.

Robyn Lee, a foodie who lived in Taiwan as a kid, described her first experience with Kraft’s mac-cheese in a post for Serious Eats last October:

The first time I tried the iconic American foodstuff was in middle school when I was living in Taipei, out of some desperate longing to eat something American. It was an exciting experience, until I ate it.

Compare this to what Kate says about her favorite yeast sludge: “Isn’t the point of Marmite that it overrides all other flavours?”

Love it, hate it, or find it insipid? Kraft should have included a third option when tweaking the Marmite ads for Miracle Whip.

Question: Does Marmite stand alone, or are there other branded foods that inspire intense nationalistic feelings, which in no way diminish upon becoming displaced? (On the contrary, absence can make the palate grow even fonder…)

If you enjoyed this post, we invite you to subscribe for email delivery of The Displaced Nation. That way, you won’t miss a single issue.

Just for Laughs , , , ,

Tonic water — from medicinal mixer to cocktail art form

2 Comments Posted by on March 25, 2011

Gin and tonic – as synonymous with expat life in the tropics as a nice cup of tea is with life in Britain, or as mint julep with the Kentucky Derby.

While specialty gins have raised a once-medicinal drink to the status of gourmet cocktail, tonic water has always been the inferior half of this partnership.

Not any more.

Fever-Tree, based in Shepton Mallet, England, produces Indian tonic water from only high-quality, natural ingredients, by

 blending fabulous botanical oils with spring water and the highest quality quinine from the fever tree

The company’s philosophy – that it’s pointless to drown an exquisite gin with mediocre tonic – is gaining ground with consumers, particularly those in Spain where there is already a rapidly growing market for premium gins.

Spain’s use of Fever-Tree’s tonic water doesn’t stop at the highball glass, however. According to the Financial Times, chef Ferran Adrià of the El Bulli restaurant near Roses even made a soup from it.

For expats in Spain who are upholding the tradition of early evening G&Ts, things can only get better.

If you enjoyed this post, we invite you to subscribe for email delivery of The Displaced Nation. That way, you won’t miss a single issue.

, , , ,

When in doubt, have a pint of Guinness

1 Comment Posted by on March 20, 2011

The Dunkirk spirit appears to be alive and well in Tokyo, according to an article by Nick Allen in the Telegraph.

Despite employers’ offers of repatriation and pleas from worried relatives in Britain, a small number of stalwart Britons are ignoring warnings of radioactive winds, and instead are drinking Guinness in the Mermaid pub.

One of them, Michael Summons, has elected to stay “because he loves the country,” while Martyn Terpilowski, a 34-year-old investment broker, says he feels it’s his duty not to leave.

His mother, however, disagrees. He should not put money before his health, she says.

It will probably be little comfort to her to know that, according to Ann Coulter’s blog:

“There is, however, burgeoning evidence that excess radiation operates as a sort of cancer vaccine.”

The exodus of expats from Japan, however, suggests that most people would prefer not to discover at first hand if Ms. Coulter’s theory is correct.

 

If you enjoyed this post, we invite you to subscribe for email delivery of The Displaced Nation. That way, you won’t miss a single issue.

Just for Laughs , , , ,

← Older posts

Newer posts →