Gourmet Food
Gourmet food is expensive, delicious food that combines price, scarcity, cruelty, and/or a hint of disgusting. People who eat it are better than you.
Just The Facts
- Much of what is now considered Gourmet food was once considered peasant food.
- Some foods are considered Gourmet because they are rare, despite tasting like assholes dipped in vomit.
- You can make almost any food Gourmet by torturing it before you kill it.
Cracked on Gourmet Food
This is Wikipedia's definition for Gourmet:
"Gourmet (pronounced /�¡��r��me�ª/) is a cultural ideal associated with the culinary arts of fine food and drink, or haute cuisine, which is characterised by elaborate preparations and presentations of large meals of small, often quite rich courses.
The term and its associated practices are usually used positively to describe people of refined taste and passion. For some, it holds a negative connotation of elitism or snobbery."
What they left out is that much of Gourmet food requires a level of cruelty or assholishness that puts you on par with Hitler in terms of flagrant disregard for suffering. Ironically, much of what we consider gourmet is actually French in origin, which we guess meshes quite well with the "elitism orsnobbery".
Babies taste delicious, but only if they suffer before you kill them.
Not all Gourmet food requires cruelty, though. Rareness and fucktardedly intense flavors also factor in much of the time.
Examples of Gourmet Food
Below is a list of Gourmet foods (or ingredients inn some cases). It should give you an idea of how synonymous "Gourmet" is with "retarded" and sometimes "dickish".
Foie Gras
Synonymous with French food, Foie Gras is an over-sized goose or duck liver used for all kinds of food, from garnish to pate. It follows the first rule of gourmet food in that it requires you to be an completely heartless asshole to make it/enjoy it.
Sure, some people don't know what it is, and certainly we don't want to imply that just because you find out something tasty suffered before it reached your plate, you should stop eating it (burgers once mooed, but fuck 'em), but good God, they shove a tube down the bird's throat and force feed them fatty, rich grain and...
Wait a second, that doesn't sound so bad. Sounds like being force fed pork rinds and beer, which pretty much all of us can get behind.
Truffles
What looks like a turd, smells vaguely of dirt, and is one of the most expensive foods on earth? People go clownshit for these things. They only grow in certain parts of the world, on the roots of certain types of trees (oaks and ash). They used to be sniffed out by pigs, but at $5000 a pound, shit got expensive when porky decided to eat the fuckers instead of just pointing it out. So now they use dogs.
Truffles are from a group of fungus called Tubers, not to be mistaken for potatoes and other less expensive non-fungus tubers, because some people don't think a name can be used to describe more than one thing.
Quail's eggs
Quails eggs are, well, eggs of a quail, which is a small game bird. They are a rare case where the gourmet food is not too terribly rare, or requiring of great suffering to create. We assume they just call the quails fat and stupid to make up for this. They are often soft boiled and served with other foods, and become a perfect blend of snob and pub when made into Scotch eggs.
Garcon, another glass of Bud please.
Shark's Fin
Hey, look! A tried and true asshole ingredient! While everything listed so far, including the tiny eggs, have a unique flavor that puts them in high demand, shark fins taste like... pretty much anything you cook them with. Seriously, harvesting them for the Chinese (it goes well with tiger dick, we hear) is a major cause of shark depopulation. While that may sound like a good thing (less terror monsters in the ocean), it isn't. For starters, the ocean has way more terrifying shit that sharks in it, and when you start knocking off apex predators, you wind up with much more terrifying population explosions.
Sure, the texture can be imitated with bean curd and other stuff like gelatin, but believe us when we say, people love this shit, because they know it makes them an asshole.
Bird's Nest
Hey, guess what? The Chinese have another species they consider a delicacy! Oh, not the bird itself, its their sweet, sweet nests. Made out of snot. No shit; they are made out of the mucusy saliva of the aptly named, edible nest swiftlet. Guess why? Because of the texture. Roughly the same texture you can get from shark fins, or, you know, Jell-O.
Oh, yeah, and just in case you were afraid that this was simply disgusting and not at all barbaric, they are actually wiping out the birds because they want to eat their nest snot.
Brie
If you have never tried Brie before, it's hard to imagine why anyone would like it. It smells and tastes kind of musty, the outside is called the "rind" (mmmm.... tasty sounding, no? No.) and is largely mold, and the cheese itself has a texture vaguely similar to snot. It is best eaten at room temperature, and it's softness makes it good for eating on crackers. It is the rich-folk version of Easy Cheese, but without the can.
Lobster
Delightfully called "Lobstah" by the people in their native land (Maine), these arer giant sea bugs that feed on the scraps and shit that filter to the bottom of the ocean. Like most things that taste delicious from the sea, what they eat is awful. But who cares? Boil those fuckers alive (rule one of gourmet food, be an asshole) then rip them apart and eat them with all the dignity of a drunk in a strip club. If you can afford it, you apparently deserve it.
Matsutake
Another mushroom, and this one also grown on the roots of trees. Not quite as retardedly sought after as truffles, matsutake still costs about $2000 a pound, so we wouldn't exactly call them a retarded cousin or anything. they are like the dorky girl with the huge rack that you still can't score with; not the best, but still out of your league.
Kobe Beef/Mishima Beef
You are looking at the remnants of cows that lived a life that we can only dream. Sure, it ends in slaughter and being consumed by someone who can afford a $1000 hamburger, but you spend your days eating, being fed beer, and getting massages with sake.
Caviar
Why is it that we will eat eggs with toast, on a McMuffin, or stuffed with cheese, but when people mention fish eggs, most of us go "Ewww....?" Because they are fucking fish eggs. This is another delicacy that becomes fun because a rare species gets butchered for it. The "best" only comes from 100 year old sturgeons. That's right, the best caviar in the world comes from a fucking fish that managed to live through two world wars, and even outlived Teddy Roosevelt. Then some prick comes along, gaffs her, splits her open for her unborn children, then hevaes her carcass back off the boat. [citation needed]
I have had most things on this list except the birds nest and a few others but the kobe beef of the highest quality doesnt taste too much different to very high quality herraford beef. Personaly i would prefer the herraford. They are actualy crossing kobe and herraford at the moment here in ireland and i hear the results are excellent. Dont judge me as a snob please
Replysigh, canned corned beef is getting there
ReplyNothing wrong with a bit o' Brie : )
ReplySeems pretty insane to see brie on a list beside foie gras and shark's fin soup when I can get a big wedge of it for $6 at Kroger's grocery. Sure, there's probably fancier more expensive versions of it but there's also fancy, expensive aged cheddar.
ReplyI am french and defend the french entries! (no need to justify, i'm sure someone has done so before me in TL;DR-ly manner)
Reply(American cheese taste like processed, fluorescent yellow-colored paper, and is also mold like ALL cheeses)
Well your cheese usually smells rotten, is full of mold, and tastes like someone shat on their foot before shoving it in your mouth. And yes mold is a part of every cheese, but it's mainly french style cheese that has an over abundance of mold in it. Your cuisine should be based entirely on your pastries and desserts, nothing else. Also your french how do you get off saying you can defend anything?
Actually processed cheese is hardly mold. It doesn't have much to do with real cheese.
At one point, when my dad was in his 20s, studying in Paris, he spent a week or so living off of brie and crackers. He didn't mind too much until he realized that doing this gives your crap the consistency of granite.
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesSounds nice.
This comment was funnier than the article.
Ya... That's not so much to do with the brie, more the lack of anything else.
I had some of that brie s**t on a wedding. Ain't that bad, but you end up wishing they had regular cheese.
ReplyBy "regular" cheese, I assume you mean the plasticy, fluorescent-yellow, processed stuff? While I am not completely sure whether there is even an ounce of organic material in processed cheese, I can assure you that it is far less regular than brie.
ive had everything on there except for birds nest and matstuake. but i think the reason birds nest is so sought after is because people believe its the ultimate aphrodisiac. everything else was delicious, except for the shark fin which i had in a soup with mushrooms- it tasted like... mushrooms.. and dirt.
ReplyYou covered the sadistic and gross food. Any chance at a follow up on the peasant food?
ReplyI doubt it- all of that tastes good and lots of it is vegetarian. It wouldn't be funny without the inhumane treatment of animals.
Also lobster was peasant food. Prisoners in the 18th century weren't allowed to be fed too much lobster in a week because it was seen as inhumane - to the prisoners.
What, no Veal? Veal has become the undisputed poster boy for "cruelty to animals in the name of fine-dining & deliciousness" these days, and this bitchfest doesn't even give it the time of day! Weak.
Replyi hate homosexuals.
These days a lot of veal is rose veal, which isn't kept in crates, and is just younger, tenderer beef. Like lamb as opposed to mutton.
It seems like with modern technology, hydroponics, and farming methodology, things like sharks, rare mushrooms, tigers, and whatever could be farmed for their food value, or as pets, zoo exhibits, scientific research animals, or any other value rare animals or foods may have. From what I know it's currently illegal to farm endangered species, which is sad since bringing reasonable quantities of endangered animals out of the wild and into a properly equipped farm where they can breed and live happily while eating local or imported plants, possibly under extra lighting or for other reasons. However at $1000 per lb. for tiger meat (vs. $1 per lb for pig meat) it seems like farming more animals than cows and pigs would dramatically increase global animal diversity while also allowing for a much tastier and diverse meat selection. I think one problem with this approach is that people are very far removed from the realities of meat farming with common american pets, and probably don't even really believe that animals die for meat and thus have a problem with taking a realistic and practical approach to animal husbandry. When a person makes a plan based on lies or false information, or even on incomplete information, that plan is likely to fail, and fail hard. When a person has uncensored and accurate information, even if that information contains unplesant things, their accurate information will lead to accurate planning. Leaving out unplesant things from the common knowledge will lead to all people's plans (the voters) not containing any provisions for handling the negative things, and currently most people's plans are mostly based on fiction and lies.
Reply Hide All See All 3 Repliesbut how can we control them if not through lies?
well have u tried to get two tigers to f**k in a man made enclosure recently? succesfully? cheaply? but yes the reason some species still exist is only because we eat them. (not alot of wild chickens roaming the woods)
cgmcelroy: that's largely because all the animals we recognise as livestock have been selectively bred for many, many generations. There were never broiler chickens or large white pigs running round wild, and in most cases the original wild ancestors are still about. Jungle fowl, for chickens.
Over all a very good topic and fun to read. Maybe you could have gone into detail about the peasant food aspect (prisoners were fed lobster and laws limited the number of times they could be served it because it was considered cruel) also could have mentioned some of the japanese dishes that are still alive when eaten but still a very good article
ReplyI deep fry my lobsters.
ReplyTwice
Also, Bird's Nest and Caviar are overrated.
I don't think that Quail's eggs are under this category. They are very cheap, come in big packages and they are usual eggs, just smaller, only difference from chicken ones is that they are f*****g delicious even when you just drink them like Stallone did in that movie.
Replythe article kinda starts off slow (the chart wasnt that good) but i really liked it by the end. the descriptions on the gourmet foods were very fun to read
Replyshark fins are actually mainly harvested by the japanese
Replythat may be, but it is a primarily Chinese dish:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shark_fin_soup
You left out veal.
ReplyI eat YouTube kittens. Of course I cook them with a blowtorch while they're alive and make them meow with pain inside a vase full of baby goat tears which I drink. Is that gourmet? Does it make me an asshole? Even if Gordon Ramsey has not pronounced himself about it??
ReplyYes. Did you not read the flowchart? You only need one of cruelty or Gordon Ramsay.