Welcome
Ahoy there peruser of all things internet. Somehow you've stumbled upon this blog, and you're probably thinking "what the hell is this crap!?". Well at the moment it's a work in progress of an idea to merge food and movie reviews in some manner. Things may change over time, but don't expect a great deal of coherence in my reviews, I think Philip J Fry said it best.
"There. Now he's trapped in a book I wrote. A crummy world of plot holes and spelling errors."
Enjoy
(Trying a 'quick snack' review)
Shepherd's pie. That solid staple of a dinner that whilst being quite tasty, often gets put down as boring and unoriginal.
It's not so much that the food itself is bad, I mean with a little effort it's not hard to make a great shepherd's pie, it's more the expectation and desire of the meal is rather low. On paper it doesn't sound particularly exciting, but with the right chef it can be most enjoyable.
In this particular case the chef has done a superb job in crafting a homely meal that upon sampling, casts the mind back to years gone by, meals enjoyed in our youth by a slightly older more traditional chef (I think I'm pushing this metaphor a little to far now).
In the end, it makes for a very enjoyable meal, but it is after all still only a shepherd's pie and lacks some of the innovation we've seen in recent years by Pixar.
Yeah I said Pixar.
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Side order: A billion times better than either of the Cars movies, though that's not really saying much.
I'm going to preface this review by making it very clear. I have yet to have a trifle that I have fully enjoyed, whilst I realise this doesn't bode well for the rest of the review, you'll just have to bear with me.
As that episode of Friends taught us, just because you can mix together several delicious ingredients to make a trifle, does't mean you should.
If you're like me, in so much as you don't like trifle, when you do happen upon it at a dinner party or some event, you will most likely try your hardest to play with it, separating the layers, trying to reap some individual enjoyment from each of the separate ingredients rather than the thing as whole. More often than not you'll eat it top to bottom separately, an experience that rather nicely describes watching The Wedding Video (holy breaking extended metaphors batman!).
The cream: After an initial delay to get started, when you finally decide to dig in you can enjoy the best part, the lovely fresh cream. Familiar, yes, but still fresh, enjoyable and nicely aerated such that it's not too dense. Ah yes, the false sense of security/enjoyment that the cream yields almost makes the entire trifle experience worth while, but all good things must come to an end.
The jelly: "Oh god why, why was I so foolish to think I could enjoy this?" are your thoughts about a minute into the jelly. I don't quite understand jelly, it rarely tastes nice (hell, it rarely tastes of anything) and the texture is so off-putting that I can't really comprehend why people subject themselves to it. You continue to force spoon after spoon of this flavourless ooze down your gullet in the hope that whoever made this damn trifle decided to give a shit and make a nice custard.
The custard: To make instant custard, empty the
contents of the pack into a measuring jug, pour on boiling water up to the
425ml level, stir briskly with a fork to incorporate all the powder. "Fuck".
The sponge: After wading through an ocean of jelly and instant custard, you reach a point where the end is in sight, you can't tell if you're enjoying the sponge or whether it has become more acceptable because you know it'll be over soon. Deciding this isn't important you plough on, when all of a sudden you're treated with a slight tingling sensation, you vaguely remember the title of this post mentioning sherry, and despite the sponge being almost entirely water-logged, you are treated to an ending with a sweet sherry taste (albeit with soggy sponge hanging around to take the edge off).
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Side order: Robert Webb's dancing made this movie worth my time.
Quick! Name some simple foods/meals/snacks that almost anyone can assemble! Of course assuming you've already read the title of this post you know I'm just trying to prompt you to say cheese on toast. Fine we'll just get on with this.
Cheese on toast (or I guess a "grilled" cheese if you're american) is pretty fucking simple to make. At the worst you may end up slicing your finger off in an attempt to slice some cheese or bread. But in this fantastical age of Higgs Bosons and Quark-Gluon Plasmas, we now have pre-sliced bread and pre-sliced cheese.
In fact, assuming one can operate a grill or some other kind of heat source, even a child of 10 could assemble something this simple.
(Please note, the author of this blog post does not condone children of 10 making cheese on toast. Or for that matter, writing screenplays for major hollywood movies.)
But this cheese on toast, this particular portion of cheese on toast, is comprised of the cheapest, thinnest, nastiest supermarket own-branded "medium"-sliced bread possible. And you know what (yup, starting a sentence with 'and') bread is delicious, but compared to cheese? Fuck bread, because whilst this cheese on toast may have gone for the standard awful bread, the choice on cheese is sublime.
We're not even talking a nice mature cheddar here, we're talking a mixture of different cheeses, each picked to support the rather weak choice of bread. Sure, when you melt them together and bind them to the bread a lot of this potential for greatness is lost in the great cheesy amalgam, but you know what, it's fucking delicious.
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Side order: Oh dear that whole "crispy duck with plum sauce" line made me cringe horrendously.
You know what's awesome? That's right, pizza.
So of course after a long, hard day at work you decide to treat yourself to a nice delivery pizza from your favourite local pizza place. Now you've had their pizza before and each time it's been wonderful: rich flavoursome sauce, thick moist base, lashings of cheese and an assortment of delightfully complimenting meats and vegetables.
So naturally when the owner of your favourite local pizza place informs you that they have a new super special pineapple pizza, and that he personally recommends it. You think to yourself, you know what I trust this guy, and hey I like pineapple, sure I've never tried it on pizza but it's worked on other things. You tell him as much, and say that since he has made such great pizza before you trust him on this one. The compliment is graciously accepted and the order is made, at this point the owner tells you that he in fact only recently bought this place from the previous owner and that your pizza will be with you in about 30 minutes. Uh-oh.
 |
| Motherfucking pineapple |
Upon its arrival, in trepidation you open the pizza box. It looks almost the same. Sure it looks like a pizza, but something's not quite right...you take a slice and the pizza flops, causing the cheese-laden pineapple topping to fall to the floor, revealing a thin, brittle base. Upon reassembling the pizza, you taste it, the cheese is rather nice, unfortunately the sauce is pretty much just red and water, masquerading as the sauce you once loved. Furthermore this pineapple really doesn't seem to work, you remove some of the pineapple slices and taste them separately. "Delicious!", you exclaim to an empty room, you add the pineapple back to the pizza, take a bite but once again it just doesn't work.
You sit down, sigh, and proceed to finish the decidedly disappointing pineapple pizza.
It's just not the same as when the other guy was running the joint.
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Side order: What was up with that ending? My god that was awful.
