I start with the smelliest foods – I am wretching at the thought of these top two! –
2. Kusaya
Literally translated from Japanese as “That Stinks”, kusaya is another example of what happens when you let fish fermentation get out of hand. What makes this food unique is that fillets are cured in the same brine that may have been used over and over for more than 100 years. That’s a century of old fish guts congealing in a bottom of a barrel and flavouring your food.
1. Surstromming
The daddy of dreadful smelling food, surstromming is so awful that it has to be opened underwater to prevent the reek from spreading. The Swedish dish of fermented Baltic herring contains just enough salt to stop it rotting, but not enough to stop it developing one of the worst smells on earth.
Then my mind went to the most expensive – is it caviar or saffron? Well it seems that prices vary so the top 15 are here
And I did track down some meals/drinks with pure gold in them (tasteless and pointless!)
Bananas are berries, but strawberries are not.
Roman soldiers were partly paid in salt – hence the word salary.
I was taught at law school that a peppercorn rent was a really cheap one. I wonder if this is true at peppercorns were once really valuable.
Kopi luwak is made from coffee beans plucked from civets’ feces. This is bad news for civets. It’s the world’s most expensive coffee, and it’s made from poop. … Their digestive enzymes change the structure of proteins in the coffee beans, which removes some of the acidity to make a smoother cup of coffee
About saffron
About caviar
About Jack fruit
Expensive fruit –
Melons are the most expensive species of any fruit in the world. A pair of Yubari Melan was auctioned in 2014 for $26,000. This melon grows in Hokkaido Island near Sapporo and is a hybrid variety of other sweet melons.
Paul Hollywood ate a Japanese white strawberry that cost £350! Yes just the one!
The world’s undisputed favourite fruit is the banana. In 2017, 21.54 billion tons of bananas were traded across the world, worth $14.45 billion.
A bluefin tuna has been sold for three quarters of a million dollars in Tokyo – a price almost double last year’s record sale.
Mānuka honey is known for being earthier, richer, and more viscous than many other honeys. In its purest form, it can cost up to $99 per 100 grams. That’s more than 100 times the price of normal honey. The mānuka plant is very rare and only native to New Zealand.
Nuts. Yes I know I am! But if you have space plant some nut trees. Ok it might take a while, but at upto £30/kg it has to be worth the wait. How many kilo could you get from a tree? In order the most valuable first. Macadema; Pine; Almonds; Chestnuts; Cashew; Walnuts; Brazil; Pecan; Pistachio; Hazel.
And a peanut is not a nut but a legume!
10 foods from the Americas and thus not eaten in Europe until at least the 17th century.
The guidelines are 50g per person’s. That its about enough to fit in the neck of a lemonade bottle!
And the Cornish pasty – I get the history, but why particularly Cornwall? And then this The Cornish Pasty Association – Protecting the Cornish Pasty. The Association has gained European protected (PGI) status for the Cornish Pasty, which means that only pasties made in Cornwall, to a traditional recipe and manner can legally be called Cornish pasties. Now we have left the European Union there is nothing to stop anyone copying and selling? And so to other British foods that were protected by PGI.
Wow – there are 65! I think I might have had a dozen? Maybe a bucket list?