One item and one item only!

Hey oh

Well, first thing first, thnx for the rsp for the Herring Cassarol MMMMmmmmmm;)

As to the question at hand, I know an answer, and I don't at the same time. It is a tale of being lost in a forien city on a day that was around 140 or so Ferenheit. At a time there was a general shortage of soft drinks. And what soft drinds that were findable were frozzen solid and usually popped out the bottles tops. In a 5 street intersection of a residential area of the city, right near an old well (a hudered feet deep, and 20 feet across and bricked straight down to a water worn limestone like floor. The essence of age that was paletable) there was a home. This home had a 2 element stove, a bar sink, and two tables with two chairs each. There was a door on either side of this room, opening to opposite streets. The proprieter of this little eatery spoke no english. We mimed our hunger. We mimed our thirst. He grinned the big grin of a man that just made a good sale, and out came the cast iron fry pan.

I do not to this day know what it was he made us. I can describe it thusly. It was a bar, about the length of a hot dog, flat and recrangular. The outside was a beautyful dark brown when cooked. The interior was a flouresent yellow, I believe it was saffron coloured. The meat itself was mild and salty. The texture was stringy in the way that snow crab legs are stringy. He served this on a toasted bun, with lettuce and tomatoe.

Between being lost, hungery, thirsty, and unbelievably hot, this little respit and lunch and cold water was the most spectacular moment of the day. This was when I was 8, I am 35 now and this little moment is still a shining light to my minds eye.

For me it was 30 years ago, in a restaurant called Chouette, that no longer exists; a hot appetizer made by Jean-Claude Tindillier. It consisted of an artichoke bottom medallion covered in a sort of crab meat bearnaise sauce.

The richness of the sauce coupled with the slightly earthy artichoke, the tender firmness of the artichoke, with the heady French Tarragon herbed sauce was so good, that you literally looked around this 5-star classic French restaurant to see if anybody was looking, and up came the plate, and out came the tongue, and the dishwasher's job was made just a bit easier that night!

doc

I'm a barbecue guy. My favorite flavor is a certain dry rubbed slow smoked spare rib with a mustard barbecue sauce. A little low brow perhaps, but soooooo good.

Phil

Wow...one huh.....ok.
my fraise du bois jam with a warm croissant and Euro butter.....tied (i know i know) with the salmon colored raspberry jam. It is sweet/tart with a berry punch that goes on and on....the flakey crispy soft chewy croissant and drippy butter just are icing on the cake.
I've lived in the South and BBQ could have been easily up there, blue crabs, fresh shrimp, or any of the phenominal veg/fruit on the market.....I thrill to berlotti beans, wax poetry on haricot verte, go bonkers over chanterelles and fingerlings.....one huh.....cylindrical beets and Goatsbeard chevre with a sherry dressing, scones with devonshire cream and jam, boudin from Boudin King, .....one huh.....aged gouda (5 years please) or Mont D'or (the French version)......torchon with brioche and cherries....searred foie with bitter greens and fruit.....roasted chicken with mashed potatoes.....sungold tomatoes.....fresh any kind of pie.....one, just one?
Life is just too short for one.
Happy holidays.....guess I don't follow rules well :D

For me it would have to be freshly smoked cisco from lake michigan still warm from the smokehouse WOW!!! It was so tender and flavorful , I could have eaten 5 pounds . That was 35 years ago and I still go to CHARLIES SMOKEHOUSE in GILLS ROCK , DOOR CO. WI. To relive the experience time and time again. :chef:

This is a tough one. I have often started to write something, then a million other things pop into my head, and I get disgusted with trying to pick just one and delete my post. But, now, as I have come back to this thread once again, I think of my first bite of hot smoked salmon, the summer I lived in Alaska. Me and two buddies drove up to Alaska the Summer of '89', the summer of the oil spill. I was 19 and hoping to get a job on the clean up and have the experience of a lifetime. I ended up working in a restaurant in Valdez, but that is a different story. One of my buddy's dad lived up there, and had spent a few years there going to school.When we got to Glenallen (sp?) to spend a few days before heading to Valdez we met up with one of Bill's old teachers. He invited us over. As luck had it when we arrived he was just pulling sides of hot smoked salmon out of the little smokehouse he had in back and offered us some. I had never tasted anything so luxurious!!! That King Salmon had only been out of the water minutes before it was cleaned, brined and eventually smoked. The way the flavors and textures exploded in my mouth was a revelation!!! The sweet, fatty salmon, playing against the brine and the rich smoke (I believe he said he used alderwood, but Im not sure) was heaven. As we left he gave us each a 3-4 pound hunk to take with us. Mine was gone with a day or 2. To this day, that is the standard by which I judge all smoked salmon. Unfortunately for me, as I have yet to come across another that even comes close.

Wow, this is a tough one! However, I gravitate in Chrose's direction: rillettes du porc. It has the richness and meatiness I always prefer, but also echoes of my culinary heritage (schmaltz). Give me a good schmear of rillettes on a good piece of authentic baguette and I'm a happy woman. (The rillettes served at a cafe in Paris in springtime with my husband next to me and I'm REALLY happy.) :bounce:

Only one... life is so cruel :cool: Well, i'd like to talk about my penchant for pastry and custard combinations, but instead I cast my mind back to some of my earliest food memories:

Kebabs of lamb dressed with lemon, thyme and salt, eaten by a 7yo on a beach in Greece. One of those flavour combinations that really seems perfect -- lemon and salt, salt and thyme, lemon and thyme, salt and lamb, thyme and lamb, (lemon and lamb... the odd one out?). A range of earthy notes, plus the greasiness of the lamb cut by the zing of the lemon and salt.

Since the day I joined this forum I remember chrose composing odes to the duck leg confit. :)

Only one?

Summer in Santorini, I swim in a remote beach , some fishermen are fixing their nets and I approach them for some chat. They cut an urchin, dip it in the sea to clean it from dirt and ask me to taste the eggs.

What a shock! So far, this has been the most exquisite experience for my taste bulbs.

demi glaze,lamb shanks and roasted garlic
need i say more

Fois Gras. :) But that was too easy for me. Everyone knows I'm easy. All you gotta do to please me is add duck fat!

I remember fresh Mangos the size of small cantaloupes plucked from a dwarf tree. That's pretty ultimate.

one and one item only!

i have had a number of exotic dishes (noooo, not sauteed bugs or
whatever) and the one i end up drooling over is claypot pork belly.

pork belly, as many of you know, is where bacon comes from. take
a block of raw, uncured pork belly, place in clay pot. add some chinese
black vinegar, dark soy sauce, brown sugar, garlic, and five spice powder.
braise over low heat for a couple of hours until cooked through.

here is what you get: slightly sour background from the vinegar, saltiness
from the dark soy, and sweetness from the brown sugar in balanced
proportions ... three different textures from the pork belly: the soft
chewiness of the pork skin, the stringy but tender pork meat (like pulled
pork from a carolina bbq), and exquisitely smooth, melt in your mouth
feel of the bacon fat.

oooooooooooh, baby ... it's a pork fat kinda thing!!

one and only??

+++++ although i am not much of a tea drinker, i find drinking some strong
oolong tea while eating the pork fat thing the antidote for getting sick from eating excess grease and fat. interestingly enough i find the body reacts differently to different kinds of fat. take some bacon and fry it until crisp (don't burn it!). eat the bacon and you feel OK. if you were to eat the grease that rendered into the pan, your body won't feel all that good. it is as if the fat that runs off is different than the fat remaining with the meat. don't ask for an explanation. just try it and see for yourself!.

Roast rib of beef cooked just rare, from my master butcher on the high street.

Just the right amount of fat to lean.

Roasted on its own with nothing added ony salt and pepper.

OOOOHHHHHH its making my mouth water just thinking about it.

Precisely why when I post similar questions, I open it to a total of three.

For me it's a good crawfish boil (hence the username).

Why?
I absolutely love Louisana Cajun Crawfish. Not a drop of anything edible goes to waste. I once received 15 pounds as a gift, ate them everyday for a week and a half (three hours per sitting - no joke) and never got sick of them.

LOL!

Why three hours per sitting? It doesn't take that long to pinch the tails and suck the heads you say?

Because I savor every single drop of anything edible and prefer to enjoy the flavor as long as possible. I found that by sucking the heads, it actually wastes much of the edible portion, leaving it inside the head. Those with the orange roe are saved for last to end the meal on a high note as they to me, are equivalent to a well aged wine opened at it's optimum time for the perfect complexity of flavors.

Here's the way I eat them, gently separate the tail from the head so that much of the roe remains with the tail. Gently separate the shell of the head/body so as to expose the upper torso insides, and not forgetting any of the lining along the inner part of the shell. Gently pull out the organs so that they remain in tact and savour all but the black sack and any "bone".

Next, the end of the tail, pull the shell off around it so as to keep the entire tail intact. Out of all parts that are edible, to me the tail (which most people eat) has the least amount of inherent flavor is is my least favorite - relatively speaking. Then, any leg parts which are large enough to retain any meat. Gently snap them in half to get that leg meat out in one piece.

Finally, the portion of the tail that was mostly inside the upper torso of the body, retaining surrounding roe and the most tender meat.... yuummmm.

Lastly, second only to the roe, the claw meat. Crack the center of the claw trying again to keep it in one piece. All this while trying not to let a single drop of precious juice go to waste. Big pink claws are saved for the final bite if they are deemed worthy enough to hold the title, otherwise they are consumed before the roe in order to save the best for last.

I know, sounds meticulous and time consuming. It is. But I guarantee you it is thoroughly enjoyed to the last drop. And most people agree that I take the appreciation of crawfish to an entirely whole new level. I have yet to meet anyone who savors them as much as I do.

I'll state my other two: abalone and siu yook (crispy skin pork) Cantonese fire roasted pork.

Divine.

Pete-
You remembered correctly- it was certainly smoked over alderwood. That's the only acceptable wood in the PNW and AK. You can order alder chips quite reasonably at
http://www.luhrjensen.com/

They also have lots of good smoker/BBQ items.

Mike

Ruling out the roast port and gravy with crackling that large men would kill small children for, made by my grandmother, is hard. So is schnapper smoked on the beach. Alas, much that is magnificent must quietly disolve from memory at the recollection of a ....mud crab.

The restaurant was next door to the Versace Hotel in Queensland, Australia. But the prices bore no resemblance. We had spent the afternoon in the Crown Towers swimming pool, and hot pool. A fellow came in, quite upsetting our solitary enjoyment. Don't talk to him I warned my husband, he looks like a chatterer. We retreated to the hot pool, he followed. It was probably the most enjoyable couple of hours I have spent in a long long time. And since. He was a most amazing man. A joy, a gift, a natural speaker. So much for my instant opinion.

At some time during that time I said I would like to try Morton Bay Bugs. No, no, he cried. They are not the best at this time, you must eat mud crab at this time of the year. So I did.

After the tidying of the bodies, we lauched forth to the resto. Plain place. They had an enormous tank with the various sea creatures toodling around. I was asked to pick one. But my feet were suddenly cold and I told them to pick. Our table was sited to look straight down into the water, and the fishes were swimming around. My crab arrived, ambulated by a very sweet young man who who started the cracking off for me. The crab was draped over a large plate with its appendages spilling over.

I started off somewhat diffidently with this monster, but it didn't take long to become abanded to the thrill of the feast. It was undoubtedly the finest meat I have ever eaten. The tenderness strangley firm, the sweetness evident in the most haunting way, the smell of the sea from meat and shell a confirmation of its fresh excellence. I explored every leg, and had fun moving the shell to make meat obtrude and vanish. Anatomical circus. I was very very mean, I gave my husband a mere taste and scoffed the lot myself. I can be magnificently selfish at times.

The sweet young man turned up now and then to see how I was doing, since I was clearly a novice, and sent me off cracking and eating yet again.

There is no doubt that that was the most marvelous meal I have ever had.

I have eaten so many unusual things - but here is my favorite

Suet Pudding - My grandmother used to make this once a year just after Christmas dinner was over and cleaned up, she would sneak into the kitchen and start preparing this wonderful pudding in an old double boiler on the stove. The smell of sweet raisins, permiated the house and we always accompanied the pudding with homemade vanilla ice cream with some sort of a rum syrup over the whole thing - one never got as much as one wanted - there were to many of us and only one of her.

My daughter makes our Christmas pud. in October. The recipe from Thelma, her Great Aunt. Thel got it from the Australian Womans Weekly in about '75, so it is not an old recipe. We get more involved with the Brandy than they did, but it seems very successful each year. It might be of interest to someone.