The Snobby Food Critic Reviews Toblerone Almond Tart

I tremble at the indiscretion of the cake makers as I appear here today to review a food you would be more familiar with oh peasant readership. Toblerones frozen almond tart, a new ice-cream cake that from its packaging promises you quality which it just presumes the Tobelerone brand will instill into peoples sensibilities (look closely at the Toblerone brand logo, the mountains and you will find a camouflaged bear in there, a surprise dear peasant I know!) Voila it tastes like a wet sock, with crumbs of chocolate left over from a Medieval Knights feast, it tastes old and vile, like something you shouldn’t eat and you regret it immediately afterwards.

After spending the hours of daylight that dwindle like quicksand in an affluent canter to reach the trashy supermarket you probably regularly visit, the hours of my privileged and precious life as a food critic with my delicate taste buds fanned by two beautiful croissants, suddenly disturbed by an old friend struck ill, I agree to take his place, to forfeit my pleasures and put my boots to live and eat in the squalor you are accustomed to. Instead of eating the so called cake in the normal joys of my 5 star hotel or even in an allotted dining room,where your kind are not permitted, I debase myself and eat it in a peasant's gym, to absorb the correct atmosphere, yes yes I am a true professional where few are left in this profession, with that lout Gordon Ramsey and those of his ilk, with cow lips trying to pretend to be elegant gourmet men.

Anyway, this croak of crow's vomit that I have to ingest into my poor body, made frail by the arduous trip, unaccompanied by my chauffeur, retails at 5 euro, but was 2.50 euro at time of purchase in Tesco. The box deceives too, for it makes it seem a lot bigger than it is, as usually the instructions are strife with misnomers, it says as if factual, serves 6-8 people, when it should read to be more accurate, serves 2-3 people, unless by 6-8 people you mean 6-8 Sri Lankan models.

According to Bakeryinfo.co.uk " The base of the cake is covered with a layer of rich chocolate cream and smooth milk chocolate mousse, coated with chunks of Toblerone and then covered with a milk chocolate topping." They should be arrested for such lies and misinformation,the base of the cake was a runny yellowy colour and taste exactly as that I'd imagine sick would taste like. Apparently Toblerone reinterpreted the Swedish almond tarta, as we look closely at the image above you will see the brand logo of the company Daim, other than that they look identical. Interestingly Tobelrone and Daim are both under the umbrella company Kraft Foods. Kraft Foods in 2009 bought out the confectionary company Cadbury’s for a not too measly sum of 10.2 billion English pounds. Multi-national global corporations go Fuck Yourself you cannot cook, to garnish my thoughts with some of your vulgarities, stick to the homemade desserts if you want to control the quality , not some abominable wet sock stored in a warehouse and then packaged in boxes printed in California by a group of artists on acid that resemble nothing of what is insides it.

One comment on the cake from a forum was “purchased for our coffee shop disappointingly bland strongest flavour is chocolate, no sign of toblerone at all!” which matches my sentiments of dissatisfaction. Me thinks they use the brand to dupe people into buying into its frozen larvae nest, well I will now return to a proper restaurant where I belong to dine and articulate the finer things in life. If any of you are in Stockholm, feel free to join me for a drink afterwards!

For those watching their calories, here is a chart of the potential obstacles in the cake.

Servings: per 50 mg

Calories 220 Sodium 55 mg
Total Fat 13 g Potassium 0 mg
Saturated 6 g Total Carbs 22 g
Polyunsaturated 0 g Dietary Fiber 1 g
Monounsaturated 0 g Sugars 17 g
Trans 0 g Protein 5 g
Cholesterol 0 mg
Vitamin A 0% Calcium 0%
Vitamin C 0% Iron 0%
*Percent Daily Values are based on a 2,000 calorie diet. Your daily values may be higher or lower depending on your calorie needs.

Chilli Pepper Eating Contest

We visited this years world's largest Chili Eating Contest in Bangkok, where contestants from all over the world come, to get a few licks and maybe a bit of tongue closer to the world's championship title. Earle Jones from Nevada, spoke to us and explained that it takes weeks of practice before you can even consider putting your name down on the list of entries. We got one of our own staff to enter, but he baled out after a pathetic twenty two seconds, realizing his stomach was hurting a little too much and he didn't want to wind up in a Bangkok hospital, where they are notorious for borrowing your organ. The guys face at 1.02 minutes in is priceless!

Nirvana and Pj Harvey Producer Writes Food Blog.

This is Steve Albini, he has played in the legendary Big Black (above) , Rapeman and his most recent band is Shellac. While he has also produced everyone from Nirvana to PJ Harvey. So when I first heard Steve had a new blog out, I instantly thought, oh rants about the music industry, about digital methods of recording or the scum of capitalism,but no I was wrong! His blog is unexpectedly free of music anecdotes. His blog is about food that he cooks for his wive Heather.

After foraging over old articles and interviews with Steve Albini I found that he is indeed passionate about cooking. Here are some quotes about his thoughts on cooking and food:

• For less than the cost of a Big Mac, fries and a Coke, you can buy a loaf of fresh bread and some good cheese or roast beef, which you will enjoy much more.

• Many rock musicians are excellent cooks, I've found, and those that are prefer to eat their own cooking in the studio. I encourage this behavior as I also enjoy the benefits of fresh food.

• when cooking I really want Heather or whomever I’m feeding to like what I make, while in the band we’re pretty much exclusively concerned with pleasing ourselves. A lot of musicians are good cooks, and a lot of cooks are musicians, but I think that may just be a result of the creative impulse finding several means of expression. Probably an equivalent number are visual artists, woodworkers or compulsive liars.

• The woman I am currently crazy about was a vegetarian for a year until I started dating her. As is the case with most vegetarians, she had never eaten properly prepared meat, only commercially packaged or otherwise abused flesh.

He goes on a very entertaining rant about tomotoe paste on his blog

I’ve never been much of a fan of tomato paste as a base for pasta sauce. It tends to remind me of the heavy, wet red gravy served at suburban Mama Mia! Free Giant Garlic Bread! Meatballs As Big As Your Head! All You Can Eat Calamari! Half Price Pitchers On Mondays! Try Our Zucchini Poppers! Famous Tiramisu! Italian Restaurant! I cannot abide restaurants of this type. They debase our palates and insult our ancestors with watery matter piled in mountainous heaps and buried under granulated Kraft Foods “Parmesan.” Screw this school lunch bullshit and get it the fuck away from me. Tomato paste is where that debasement and insult starts.

If you want more of this, visit his blog at http://mariobatalivoice.blogspot.com/

World's Most Unhealthy Lasagna Has 71,000 Calories

Separate, lasagna and burgers are delicious in their own ways. But what happens when you combine the two favorites together? Well the guys from Epic Meal Time, a website devoted to creating (and then eating!) crazy, fatty food concoctions, wanted to find out. Enter fast food lasagna, made primarily with 45 burgers, liquor, cheese, and bacon.

The entire lasagna has 5,463 grams of fat and 71,488 calories. Oh, and by the way, that's without the onion rings they use to top it with! See the ingredient breakdown and how the epic meal was prepared in the video below.

What's inside:

• Jack Daniels homemade meat sauce (558 g fat, 8,053 calories)
• 15 McDonald's Big Macs and 1 liter of Big Mac sauce (660 g fat, 10,245 calories)
• 15 Wendy's Baconators (885 g fat, 14,100 calories)
• 15 A&W Teen Burgers (390 g fat, 7,500 calories)
• Bacon for layering (1,500 g fat, 16,000 calories)
• Cheese for layering (165 g fat, 8,500 calories)

Armadillo: Causing Leprosy? Don't Eat Armadillo!

We now have reason to believe that armadillo burgers or steaks are not the best option next time you peek across the face of an unsuspecting menu. A team of researchers from the Global Health Institute and Louisiana State University have done a study where they outline the connection of 33 wild armadillos known to have leprosy, and 50  human patients with leprosy. The results concluded with the discovery of a new strain of M. leprae, the 3I, which was found in 28 armadillos and 22 patients. The strain of leprosy was the same in both the humans and the armadillo. This was reified by the fact that 8 of the patients recalled having contact with armadillos, 2 in particular had ate armadillo meat.

Our conclusion is that armadillos carry a bacteria that can cause leprosy so don't eat armadillos and also Courtney Cox is cuter than an armadillo! One butcher near an area which supported a bountiful of armadillo and who regularly claimed to fellow citizens of the goodness contained in armadillo meat was interviewed about this research. In the interview such things were mentioned as the bad sanitation of eating armadillo if the possibility of contracting leprosy is a real threat, he replied to such inquiries with "I may or may not have said something resembling words but if words you be looking for then I am not a man to know what you mean', he could not tell us anymore than that? As confused as this man seemed, it should not be a surprise that he had no formal education and the cleavers looked like they were a third hand to him.

Avoid Armadillo meat, and next on the agenda is passion-fruit cheesecake, see you same time next week! You've all been wonderful. Goodnight ladies and gentlemen.

Some Irish Cuisine

With the big day coming up tomorrow and many of you already starting your celebrations we thought it would be nice to feature some traditional Irish food recipes. Each of these videos have been hand picked for their demonstrations on constructing Irish cuisine, but also for their embedded stereotyping that we have grown to love and particularly live out through our drunken behaviour every Paddy's day.

First up is a recipe for Irish stew. As you lap up this demonstration remember to leave plenty of room for the "Irishy" music that lingers throughout.

Next up we have the classic bacon and cabbage dish, that to this day continues to keep Irish sodium counts well above the EU average. A regular favourite of the elderly and one of those meals that keeps so well that many of its consumers have difficulty discarding, even if the cabbage and the bacon have merged into some strange gut wrenching mush. A possible insight into the iron stomached pensioners that still wander the streets.

Next up we have Conan O'Brien and Martha Stewart giving some much needed attention to the hangover soaking Irish breakfast. For many of you this is a ritual that is closely associated with getting fucked up the night previous. Either way it tastes amazing and the stomach pains that generally follow are an exquisite reminder of the meal that you have just enjoyed. 

With this breakfast blood bath exposed it is time for us to start preparing for the big day with a bottle of vodka and a block of cheese. X

Two Pieces of Candy

I was in Milan to review a bubble sofa by Versace and also an a short get away with my girlfriend when it happened. It all started when I stumbled across a candy store among the jarring, endless pit of none eatery stores.  Candy is not something a food critic usually reviews or would even enter the innermost of my consciousness. The cute window dressing immediately pawed the sentiments of my heart, into a kind of nostalgia that  stood there a while and took some puffs on my quiff.

I went in looking for something nice for my girlfriend, and then I spotted it, two pieces of candy, this candy leapt at my heart. ‘Oh belle belle belle’ I thought as I got closer to it. In the clamour of the shop, I rose from the other customers, trying to tie my jaw down with some Armani suit string that was loose. It blew me away; here is a video of my review of two pieces of candy. Images may cause an epileptic fit, so please lower the resolution of your  screen and your biological aural frequency. 

Chocolate’s Molecules have Familial Ties to Heroin.

After going on a binge of chocolate for the past 24 hours, no sleep, plenty of racing thoughts and feelings of euphoria, I had a few hallucinations of our Lady Mary singing the lyrics of Amish Paradise:

There's no time for sin and vice

Living in an Amish paradise

We don't fight, we all play nice

Living in an Amish paradise

I wondered why it made me feel like this. So I got on the first bus to Cambridge University to interview professor John Kaufman, on what makes chocolate so damn drug-like.

He has this to say:

'Well young man I continue to explore in my spare time the roles of chocolate molecules in resistance to pathogens and response to vaccines, now listen closely young man, get those damn radios out of your ears- my long-term plans include whole genome studies in chocolate, development of chocolates as a system with a smooth transition between field and laboratory for study of natural pathogens in a natural host, and work on other candies. Out of all this I can go on a side trek though their molecular history and tell you they are directly related to heroin, via the acetyl triggers which are hidden in cocoa beans yet are there if you look close enough. The name heroin comes from 'heroisch', the German word for hero. Heroin was originally sold as a painkiller in the 19th century, by the chemical company Bayer, until doctors realised its highly addictive quality. Now what is chocolate ? Highly addictive.  The links are so strong I followed this up; a friend lead me to study behaviour patterns in native Indians that consumed a lot of chocolate in their diet. What did I find? This Native Indian’s had such trippy recreations, their immunity allows chocolate to be that bit more poignant.'

I asked the Professor what his  favourite chocolate bar was, he blushed :

'Well I’m not sure if I should say this, it is rather embarrassing, but sometime down the lab when I need a break away from my work, I make a mix where the molecular structure of the chocolate is more heroin then chocolate and well it makes for quite a splendid creation.'

After telling him he was off the record, I went home confused, am I junky if I eat lots of chocolate? Is there a chocolate rehab?  Would the Owl pay for it? I rang a doctor and he sent me out a leaflet, I had to fill out a form, with an astonishing amount of questions, the first question was:

Do you ever feel that you love chocolate more than either yourself or your intimate partner or both?

I recall my ex girlfriend, that exact day, the exact emotion, my desponded replay to her, ‘you never talk to me anymore’ my reply written in tough vowel snappings ‘ Bitch eating all my fucking chocolate and not even cleaning your lips of the whore juice, fucking bitch!’ I hit her with the side of my arm, it was a tap, but it was enough to crash her to the ground, I was ashamed, I loathed myself and there was an offer on Penguin bars, 98 penguin bars for 3 euro, I had them all, I bade in them. Had a bath, poured them until the water was mud brown, I cried into the chocolate, felt it siphoning into my nose, face pores, beyond my eyes, into a kind of darkness, a chocolate invasion of all my sense, I felt myself falling, falling beneath a deep sea of chocolate, I was writhing in the sensual agony, CHOCOLATE CHOCOLATEEEEEE was the code written in all the signals out and inputting my brain.

Now I knew how Gater felt, when he proclaimed his dark, beguiling anti-epiphany:

There is a darkness inside of me it wants to get out, it wants to walk around, it wants some walking around money it wants to buy some shoes it it wants to walk up to the people and say Gater don’t play no Shit!

I am now left contemplating my life, or what little left of it there is. Should I go on or not?

Negro Cake: Tackling racism in a dessert

I came in on a second hand jet with a lady friend (my new jet was in for repairs, the onboard Jacuzzi was kaput). I wanted a challenge, some danger with my meal. I wanted people to think of me not only as the greatest food critic since Gilbert Steinbeck but also a man of the people and liberation. I wanted to confront a racist restaurant and tackle their bigoted perceptions as well review their food as I was born to do.

So I arrive in Arizona on the clock of time, chalked three, a State so racist that it banned Martin Luther King Day and more recently created unconstitutional laws against Mexicans, anti-immigration laws of which Obama sued them for creating such a monstrosity on human rights. 

I chose the restaurant at random; little would they know who I am anyway, with their cultural poles stagnating in bile and puss.

Driving down a dirt track, I arrive at a series of buildings that could account for township. I see a faded red sign blinkering that says ‘restaurant’ yes the restaurant is called restaurant.

The waiter, or owner possibly, greets me with a sigh of relief ‘I taugh you were a foreigner or something but you got that undeniable god’s skin on yee...’ when I replied with ‘I am a foreigner’ he let out a guffaw drenched in diarrhoea, I imagined the particles of gooey brown shit coming together to form the noise of his chortle. He patted my arm in as strange way as almost to accoutre my skin with his testimony and then ordered me to a table at the very back of the restaurant under an insufferable lack of light, I felt like a flower wilting, photosynthesis failing, limbs derailed in all directions. 

I rested my arms on the table trying not to keel over. He served me up a steak without even giving me a choice of what to eat, ‘the best in Arizona, you’ll like it, gives a nice glow to god’s skin’.

I am glad I left my lady friend at the hotel, this was no place for her prettiness, only nastiness can lie here, I see some mosquitoes chilling near the kitchen door, which is a blanket hammered in with some nails. I wonder why they don’t have an actual wooden, practical door, maybe a blanket door is more practical in this climate, and anyway my concern is the food and fighting racism not to get distracted by blanket door origins. The steak is mild, not bad, as the steak goes into the dark of my mouth and down without any pretty arbitrary.  For I feel that knowing the man is racist that I cannot enjoy it.

Next comes desert, ‘some negro cake’ he offers smiling, this reminded me of the infamous ‘drunk negro cookies’.

I jump up snap his arm back, I feel like Malcolm X rising up from the ashes of racism, except if Malcolm X was white, and was brought up in aristocratic family rather than a slum in Omaha. 

Nevertheless I was impassioned, ‘Do you hear that?’ I looked into his trembling eyes ‘Wha-what?’ That’s Michael-fucking Jackson playing in your restaurant, a black man’s music is flowing through the air’, his rebuttal was met by my firm arms thrusting him against the wall ‘So you serve this filthy dessert in the name of bigoted racism yet you play the music of a black soul, so you’re a hypocrite.  ‘Now look here mista, I ain’t no hippo-christ, or whatever word you be using, Michael is white, you sir are a mad man...why are you attacking one of your own?’  I knocked him out in a rage. After that vindication of a knockout blow: Food Critic who fights racism ONE racist ZERO.  I went back to my lady friend and we got funky with some Michael Jackson songs. We celebrated with a proper dessert some forest gateau, yummmmmm!

Food Critics.avi

Whilst sifting through various fans, friends and followers myredhotphilosophy came across this little short. It is a work in progress and the first part of an up and coming comedy series called Food Critics. Check out Kleregy White's interview with Jeremiah Manderlay a reknowned food critic praised for his in depth analyses and over the top dissection and intersection of all things food and much much more. The delightful, but at times flippant, Charles Pianti also makes an appearance...