Things you never knew you wanted to know.
Sep. 20th, 2004 12:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sarea
It's in the 50s here and really kind of gloomy and miserable. :( Not all of us can be in Maui like SOME people (it's jade_okelani -- everyone go after her with pitchforks).
On. Sat. I considered canceling my massage appt because it was the first day of my period and I felt like death warmed over. I wasn't sure if I could lie there silently when all I wanted to do was curl into a ball and moan ... but it turns out that the massage absolutely eased all the cramping! (I'm sure the Aleve helped as well.) Now I think I should do that every month. :D Either Liliya is easing up, or I'm becoming less of a wimp; it didn't hurt this time, only felt good. This sounds like something else, so I'll just stop right there.
Afterward I went and purchased two -- yes, two, witness my gluttony -- live crabs. It cost $10.50 for both of them. I have a horrific story for the slaughtering of the first crab, but I'm not going to tell it unless someone actually wants to hear it (I'd just as soon save myself the anguish), but the second one went really well. I'm totally getting the hang of this, folks -- come to me for all your crabicide needs. I ended up not steaming or boiling, but making stir-fry ginger and scallion crab.
Stir Fry - Ginger and Scallion Crab
2 Ready-to-cook whole-hard-shell crabs
8 Green onions
1 sm Red pepper
1 ginger root -- fresh Piece (about 4x1-inch)
3/4 c water
2 1/2 tb Chinese cooking rice wine -- (or sherry)
1 t sugar
1 t instant chicken -bouillon granules
2 ts soy sauce
2 ts cornstarch
2 tb vegetable oil
1/2 ts sesame oil
Rinse crabs with water. Gently pull away round hard shell on top. With small sharp knife gently cut away the gray spongy tissue and discard. Rinse crabs with water. Cut off claws and legs. Pound claws lightly with back of cleaver to break shell. Chop down center of crabs to cut body in half. Cut each half crosswise into 3 pieces.
Cut onions into 1-inch (2.5 cm) pieces. Remove seeds from pepper. Cut pepper into thin strips. Pare ginger root. Cut ginger into thin slices, then cut the slices into very thin strips. Combine 1/2 cup of the water, the sherry, sugar, bouillon and soy sauce. Combine remaining 1/4 cup water and the cornstarch. Blend well.
Heat vegetable and sesame oils in wok over medium heat. Stir- fry ginger in the oils for 1 minute. Add cut up crabs. Stir-fry for 1 minute. Add sherry mixture and pepper to crab. Stir-fry over high heat until liquid boils. Reduce heat to low. Simmer covered for 4 minutes (until crab turns red) . Uncover and stir in cornstarch mixture. Cook until sauce thickens. Add onions. Cook and stir for 1 minute.
I am very, very tempted to enterkirixchi's new fic contest, but I feel far too guilty about starting a new fic when I have so many unfinished. Plus I've never written a real Lucius/Narcissa story before and don't know that I'd be any good at it; I envision rotten tomatoes flying at my face. Anyway, I've promised myself that if I can finish at least one of the stories I'm currently working on (whether you have seen them or not), I'll let myself even think about it. (What this means, of course, is that Oct. 30 will arrive with no fic whatsoever. *SIGH*) Or if you've ever thought about writing Black family fic, you should definitely do so for this contest -- the winner gets a v. cool prize of an officially licensed Time Turner like the one Hermione wore in POA!
Speaking of gross -- okay, we weren't, but I didn't have a good way to ease into this next topic -- I became totally fascinated by worm cheese oncegianfared inflicted us all with the knowledge of its existence. So I had to find out more. And oh, did I ever. I'm cut-tagging this article about it from The Wall Street Journal -- please be forewarned that it is really gross. And fascinating. :D
Here was one of my favorite visuals, which will give you a hint of what you're getting into should you click the below link:
One neophyte experienced a strange crawling sensation on his skin that lasted for days. And some of the wiggling worms jump straight toward the eyes with ballistic precision. To protect the eyes, some Sardinians recommend holding a hand over the sandwich.
Sardinia's Worm-Filled Pecorinos Fly in the Face of Edible Reason
By YAROSLAV TROFIMOV
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
NUORO, Italy -- In the kitchen of his rustic farmstead atop Sardinia's Mount Lollove, Giovanni Antonio Costa smiles through missing front teeth. It's time for a clandestine treat.
After pouring a glass of strong homemade wine, he sprinkles thin Sardinian bread with tap water to make it easier to fold. Then he extracts from a creaky cupboard a brown lump the size of a human head and deposits it on the rough wooden table.
It's a cheese. And it's alive.
Drilled Cheese
The round of pecorino is filled with thousands of wriggling, transparent maggots, the larvae of flies. The 52-year-old Mr. Costa grins as he dips his fork in.
"We all go crazy for this stuff," he says. "But because it's prohibited, you can't buy it anywhere."
As the worms merrily jump up and down, cavorting all over the table, one of Mr. Costa's five brothers prepares a tasting by wrapping a morsel in the thin bread. "You don't have to look at them -- just put the thing in your mouth," he urges, chewing a mouthful of the stuff. He adds a piece of local folklore: "It's an aphrodisiac."
This moving delicacy is known as casu marzu, which is Sardinian for "rotten cheese." It first happened, like many culinary treats, accidentally. Flies laid eggs inside the cheese mass left outdoors to ripen. The eggs hatched into myriad maggots that promoted fermentation.
Mountain farmers produce sheep-milk cheese with worms in Northern Italy's Piedmont and Bergamo areas. But only on Sardinia has it acquired something of a cult following.
It is widely, but not openly, eaten. Italian health authorities consider cheese with worms damaged goods. Selling it or serving it can be punished with a hefty fine. That's why Mr. Costa offers his casu marzu in the family's private kitchen, rather than in the dining room of the inn his family also runs. Though the ban is enforced only sporadically, health inspectors try to ensure that Sardinia's casu marzu remains an illicit pleasure.
'Part of Our Culture'
The cheese costs $7 a pound and up -- compared with $3 to $4 for a normal pecorino -- and has to be procured through a kind of black market or through connections. The outlaw status adds to the cachet. Casu marzu appears as the centerpiece of social occasions such as weddings and birthdays.
"I tasted it last at a friend's bachelor party a few weeks ago," says Giuseppe Pirisi, a Nuoro agricultural specialist with an interest in Sardinian folklore. "It's not that we like the worms. In fact, I'm not going to pick a worm off the table and eat it -- quite the contrary. What we like is the cheese itself, as it's part of our culture."
The cheese itself tastes rotten. Enzymes produced by the maggots cause the cheese to ferment and its fats to decompose. The result is a viscous, pungent goo that burns the tongue and can affect other parts of the body. One neophyte experienced a strange crawling sensation on his skin that lasted for days. And some of the wiggling worms jump straight toward the eyes with ballistic precision. To protect the eyes, some Sardinians recommend holding a hand over the sandwich.
Though worms can be removed from casu marzu, many Sardinians don't see a reason to bother. "It would make me sick to see a worm in a cake or a sweet, but I don't mind when it's inside the cheese," Mr. Costa says.
In fact, the presence of live worms is often regarded as proof that the cheese remains good. A really bad cheese wouldn't support maggots, which would die and make the casu marzu truly toxic.
'Anomalous Process'
Skeptics say it's already toxic. "Casu marzu's anomalous process of fermentation and decomposition can bring in toxins and bacteria that are damaging to the health," warns Antonio Mauro Carboni, director of the animal-products agency in Sardinia's autonomous government.
But not all officials hold such strong opinions. "True, with flies, it's impossible to provide health guarantees," explains Luciano Salis, a chemist and a director at the antifraud office of Italy's Agriculture Ministry in Sardinia's capital city of Cagliari. "But as a Sardinian and a man, let me tell you, I have never heard of anyone falling ill after eating this stuff. Sometimes, it tastes real good."
Some of Sardinia's culinary stars agree. "I personally like casu marzu a lot," says Mauro Frau, chef of the La Fregola restaurant in Porto Rotondo, an exclusive resort favored by the international yacht set. "But if I were to try serving casu marzu to my customers here, they'd simply throw it into my face with disgust."
So might many ordinary Sardinians, especially women, who tend to be more finicky than men about live worms in their food. "I can't stand this thing when the worms are inside," says Mr. Costa's 80-year-old mother, Antiocha, as her sons are happily feasting on larvae. "When I was young, a lot of cheese would go rotten, so I'd just put it out in the sun and wait for the worms to get out before having a taste."
'The Deafening Tac-Tac-Tac'
Martina Cassitta, owner of the Monte Pino farmstead in northern Sardinia, also won't touch the larvae-filled cheese when any of her pecorino becomes rotten. She has a different method for getting rid of the worms, which she calls microbes because, like many Sardinian farmers, she believes the maggots come from the milk itself, not from flies.
Ms. Cassitta simply seals the cheese in a big paper bag and waits. "You can just hear the deafening tac-tac-tac as the microbes gasp for air and jump out of the cheese, hitting the paper," she says. She displays a piece of now-wormless casu marzu that looks as if it had been invaded by termites. "Once the noise ends, it's ready to be eaten."
Various attempts to make a similar-tasting cheese with chemical enzymes rather than worms are dismissed by cognoscenti as pale imitations. And some larger cheese makers produce their pecorino rot deliberately, aiming for the black market.
The illicit trade appears to be booming. On a recent day at Cagliari's bustling food market, a number of dairy vendors either had casu marzu hidden under the counter, or were ready to procure a round for the following day.
Mr. Costa believes that the way to solve the legal and health problems lies in simply abolishing the casu marzu prohibition. "We should be able to market rotten cheese if it's produced in controlled, sanitary conditions," he says. "So what that it's disgusting to some? Isn't beer just as disgusting during fermentation? Or the Gorgonzola cheese they make with mildew up north?"
This kind of talk angers people like Guido Gadola, owner of a cheese factory in the southern Sardinian town of Uta. "I don't think there is a lot of difference between rotten cheese and rotten meat," Mr. Gadola says. "OK, some people like it. But some people practice cannibalism, too."
fin
Also, I'm extremely envious ofhannah_kim, who gets to see blink-182 in December. And of weekend_soul, because she lives in a place that already has The Princess Diaries 6!!!
Woe, woe is me.
Edit: Aren't all the little usericon things cute?? It wasclanmalfoy who directed us to this page that has them. I don't know that I could do this every time, though. <g>
Here's my fave:sarea_okelani :D
jade_okelani -- everyone go after her with pitchforks).On. Sat. I considered canceling my massage appt because it was the first day of my period and I felt like death warmed over. I wasn't sure if I could lie there silently when all I wanted to do was curl into a ball and moan ... but it turns out that the massage absolutely eased all the cramping! (I'm sure the Aleve helped as well.) Now I think I should do that every month. :D Either Liliya is easing up, or I'm becoming less of a wimp; it didn't hurt this time, only felt good. This sounds like something else, so I'll just stop right there.
Afterward I went and purchased two -- yes, two, witness my gluttony -- live crabs. It cost $10.50 for both of them. I have a horrific story for the slaughtering of the first crab, but I'm not going to tell it unless someone actually wants to hear it (I'd just as soon save myself the anguish), but the second one went really well. I'm totally getting the hang of this, folks -- come to me for all your crabicide needs. I ended up not steaming or boiling, but making stir-fry ginger and scallion crab.
Stir Fry - Ginger and Scallion Crab
2 Ready-to-cook whole-hard-shell crabs
8 Green onions
1 sm Red pepper
1 ginger root -- fresh Piece (about 4x1-inch)
3/4 c water
2 1/2 tb Chinese cooking rice wine -- (or sherry)
1 t sugar
1 t instant chicken -bouillon granules
2 ts soy sauce
2 ts cornstarch
2 tb vegetable oil
1/2 ts sesame oil
Rinse crabs with water. Gently pull away round hard shell on top. With small sharp knife gently cut away the gray spongy tissue and discard. Rinse crabs with water. Cut off claws and legs. Pound claws lightly with back of cleaver to break shell. Chop down center of crabs to cut body in half. Cut each half crosswise into 3 pieces.
Cut onions into 1-inch (2.5 cm) pieces. Remove seeds from pepper. Cut pepper into thin strips. Pare ginger root. Cut ginger into thin slices, then cut the slices into very thin strips. Combine 1/2 cup of the water, the sherry, sugar, bouillon and soy sauce. Combine remaining 1/4 cup water and the cornstarch. Blend well.
Heat vegetable and sesame oils in wok over medium heat. Stir- fry ginger in the oils for 1 minute. Add cut up crabs. Stir-fry for 1 minute. Add sherry mixture and pepper to crab. Stir-fry over high heat until liquid boils. Reduce heat to low. Simmer covered for 4 minutes (until crab turns red) . Uncover and stir in cornstarch mixture. Cook until sauce thickens. Add onions. Cook and stir for 1 minute.
I am very, very tempted to enter
kirixchi's new fic contest, but I feel far too guilty about starting a new fic when I have so many unfinished. Plus I've never written a real Lucius/Narcissa story before and don't know that I'd be any good at it; I envision rotten tomatoes flying at my face. Anyway, I've promised myself that if I can finish at least one of the stories I'm currently working on (whether you have seen them or not), I'll let myself even think about it. (What this means, of course, is that Oct. 30 will arrive with no fic whatsoever. *SIGH*) Or if you've ever thought about writing Black family fic, you should definitely do so for this contest -- the winner gets a v. cool prize of an officially licensed Time Turner like the one Hermione wore in POA!Speaking of gross -- okay, we weren't, but I didn't have a good way to ease into this next topic -- I became totally fascinated by worm cheese once
gianfared inflicted us all with the knowledge of its existence. So I had to find out more. And oh, did I ever. I'm cut-tagging this article about it from The Wall Street Journal -- please be forewarned that it is really gross. And fascinating. :DHere was one of my favorite visuals, which will give you a hint of what you're getting into should you click the below link:
One neophyte experienced a strange crawling sensation on his skin that lasted for days. And some of the wiggling worms jump straight toward the eyes with ballistic precision. To protect the eyes, some Sardinians recommend holding a hand over the sandwich.
Sardinia's Worm-Filled Pecorinos Fly in the Face of Edible Reason
By YAROSLAV TROFIMOV
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
NUORO, Italy -- In the kitchen of his rustic farmstead atop Sardinia's Mount Lollove, Giovanni Antonio Costa smiles through missing front teeth. It's time for a clandestine treat.
After pouring a glass of strong homemade wine, he sprinkles thin Sardinian bread with tap water to make it easier to fold. Then he extracts from a creaky cupboard a brown lump the size of a human head and deposits it on the rough wooden table.
It's a cheese. And it's alive.
Drilled Cheese
The round of pecorino is filled with thousands of wriggling, transparent maggots, the larvae of flies. The 52-year-old Mr. Costa grins as he dips his fork in.
"We all go crazy for this stuff," he says. "But because it's prohibited, you can't buy it anywhere."
As the worms merrily jump up and down, cavorting all over the table, one of Mr. Costa's five brothers prepares a tasting by wrapping a morsel in the thin bread. "You don't have to look at them -- just put the thing in your mouth," he urges, chewing a mouthful of the stuff. He adds a piece of local folklore: "It's an aphrodisiac."
This moving delicacy is known as casu marzu, which is Sardinian for "rotten cheese." It first happened, like many culinary treats, accidentally. Flies laid eggs inside the cheese mass left outdoors to ripen. The eggs hatched into myriad maggots that promoted fermentation.
Mountain farmers produce sheep-milk cheese with worms in Northern Italy's Piedmont and Bergamo areas. But only on Sardinia has it acquired something of a cult following.
It is widely, but not openly, eaten. Italian health authorities consider cheese with worms damaged goods. Selling it or serving it can be punished with a hefty fine. That's why Mr. Costa offers his casu marzu in the family's private kitchen, rather than in the dining room of the inn his family also runs. Though the ban is enforced only sporadically, health inspectors try to ensure that Sardinia's casu marzu remains an illicit pleasure.
'Part of Our Culture'
The cheese costs $7 a pound and up -- compared with $3 to $4 for a normal pecorino -- and has to be procured through a kind of black market or through connections. The outlaw status adds to the cachet. Casu marzu appears as the centerpiece of social occasions such as weddings and birthdays.
"I tasted it last at a friend's bachelor party a few weeks ago," says Giuseppe Pirisi, a Nuoro agricultural specialist with an interest in Sardinian folklore. "It's not that we like the worms. In fact, I'm not going to pick a worm off the table and eat it -- quite the contrary. What we like is the cheese itself, as it's part of our culture."
The cheese itself tastes rotten. Enzymes produced by the maggots cause the cheese to ferment and its fats to decompose. The result is a viscous, pungent goo that burns the tongue and can affect other parts of the body. One neophyte experienced a strange crawling sensation on his skin that lasted for days. And some of the wiggling worms jump straight toward the eyes with ballistic precision. To protect the eyes, some Sardinians recommend holding a hand over the sandwich.
Though worms can be removed from casu marzu, many Sardinians don't see a reason to bother. "It would make me sick to see a worm in a cake or a sweet, but I don't mind when it's inside the cheese," Mr. Costa says.
In fact, the presence of live worms is often regarded as proof that the cheese remains good. A really bad cheese wouldn't support maggots, which would die and make the casu marzu truly toxic.
'Anomalous Process'
Skeptics say it's already toxic. "Casu marzu's anomalous process of fermentation and decomposition can bring in toxins and bacteria that are damaging to the health," warns Antonio Mauro Carboni, director of the animal-products agency in Sardinia's autonomous government.
But not all officials hold such strong opinions. "True, with flies, it's impossible to provide health guarantees," explains Luciano Salis, a chemist and a director at the antifraud office of Italy's Agriculture Ministry in Sardinia's capital city of Cagliari. "But as a Sardinian and a man, let me tell you, I have never heard of anyone falling ill after eating this stuff. Sometimes, it tastes real good."
Some of Sardinia's culinary stars agree. "I personally like casu marzu a lot," says Mauro Frau, chef of the La Fregola restaurant in Porto Rotondo, an exclusive resort favored by the international yacht set. "But if I were to try serving casu marzu to my customers here, they'd simply throw it into my face with disgust."
So might many ordinary Sardinians, especially women, who tend to be more finicky than men about live worms in their food. "I can't stand this thing when the worms are inside," says Mr. Costa's 80-year-old mother, Antiocha, as her sons are happily feasting on larvae. "When I was young, a lot of cheese would go rotten, so I'd just put it out in the sun and wait for the worms to get out before having a taste."
'The Deafening Tac-Tac-Tac'
Martina Cassitta, owner of the Monte Pino farmstead in northern Sardinia, also won't touch the larvae-filled cheese when any of her pecorino becomes rotten. She has a different method for getting rid of the worms, which she calls microbes because, like many Sardinian farmers, she believes the maggots come from the milk itself, not from flies.
Ms. Cassitta simply seals the cheese in a big paper bag and waits. "You can just hear the deafening tac-tac-tac as the microbes gasp for air and jump out of the cheese, hitting the paper," she says. She displays a piece of now-wormless casu marzu that looks as if it had been invaded by termites. "Once the noise ends, it's ready to be eaten."
Various attempts to make a similar-tasting cheese with chemical enzymes rather than worms are dismissed by cognoscenti as pale imitations. And some larger cheese makers produce their pecorino rot deliberately, aiming for the black market.
The illicit trade appears to be booming. On a recent day at Cagliari's bustling food market, a number of dairy vendors either had casu marzu hidden under the counter, or were ready to procure a round for the following day.
Mr. Costa believes that the way to solve the legal and health problems lies in simply abolishing the casu marzu prohibition. "We should be able to market rotten cheese if it's produced in controlled, sanitary conditions," he says. "So what that it's disgusting to some? Isn't beer just as disgusting during fermentation? Or the Gorgonzola cheese they make with mildew up north?"
This kind of talk angers people like Guido Gadola, owner of a cheese factory in the southern Sardinian town of Uta. "I don't think there is a lot of difference between rotten cheese and rotten meat," Mr. Gadola says. "OK, some people like it. But some people practice cannibalism, too."
fin
Also, I'm extremely envious of
hannah_kim, who gets to see blink-182 in December. And of weekend_soul, because she lives in a place that already has The Princess Diaries 6!!!Woe, woe is me.
Edit: Aren't all the little usericon things cute?? It was
clanmalfoy who directed us to this page that has them. I don't know that I could do this every time, though. <g>Here's my fave:
sarea_okelani :D
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-09-20 07:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-20 07:16 pm (UTC)Dude, I know!! Every time I think I've heard of/seen everything, some Sardinian comes along with their worm cheese and proves me wrong.
no subject
Date: 2004-09-20 07:16 pm (UTC)It's not the place in my icon.
Date: 2004-09-20 10:16 pm (UTC)Re: It's not the place in my icon.
Date: 2004-09-20 11:11 pm (UTC)Re: It's not the place in my icon.
Date: 2004-09-20 11:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-20 07:35 pm (UTC)Woohoo!
Date: 2004-09-20 07:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-20 07:54 pm (UTC)PS I also wanted to show off the new icon. *points* Not to say I think you look like a gumpy cat, but I felt it showed how you must be feeling about PD6.
/end rambling
no subject
Date: 2004-09-20 11:22 pm (UTC)Am I the only one who thinks that phrase contradicts itself, big time? *yuck!* Personally I found this disgusting (this coming from someone who was used to eat fried ants every August). I must admit, though, that my inner child finds the idea of a cheese that defends itself when about to be eaten most amusing.
no subject
Date: 2004-09-20 11:34 pm (UTC)I actually got the timeturner in the mail on Sunday (yep, /SUNDAY/ the guy mailed it Special D from Japan), and I can' supply pics if needed. It's /so/ cool :D
*hugs* :D
-Kiri, firmly convinced that you can write 1000 words in your sleep.
no subject
Date: 2004-09-21 12:03 am (UTC)Ha ha ha, I actually thought of you while buying it :D :D :D But alas I cannot tell you if it was any good or not, because I speed-read the whole thing in about an hour and now I cannot remember what happened.
And waah, now I really want some Tim Tams.