Lets try this one
Huh, I should have thought about the old For the Record… I’ll have to check out some books I have too. Last time I did I posted the Koskan, which was found out in about 30 minutes. XD
Have I finally found one that has stumped some people ?
RAWR armoured cars…
The British Mk. I HC (high capacity) Black Pudding stuffer… This was little used as it was determined to be in violation of the Conventions of War concerning biological weapons. :mrgreen:
Actually, that’s a good one, mr. Leccy! 
I forgot about this thread, until I got a reminder in the mail and when I sauntered over I discovered this wondrous vehicle which was, at first sight, based on the AEC chassis, but had a mix of MkI and MkII features and had what looked like a flamethrower in a small turret on top.
Well turns out my gut feeling was right, the mystery vehicle is none other than the AEC “Basilisk”, a prototype made by the Associated Equipment Company by mounting a Lagonda flamethrower on the slightly modified chassis of their AEC Mark I Armoured Car.
Although successful, the project was discontinued when it was decided to not include flamethrowers in armoured car regiments.
Again, thank you for this unusual and little known vehicle.
My vehicle might be a bit late, I have to dredge my database which is on the removable HDD.
Yes indeed I thought it would get at least identified as an AEC creation then work on from there. Started looking through loads of my old books for odd things to post.
Nowt wrong wi t black pud,
Though I have enjoyed many a delicacy offered by the U.K. (I do love Haggis, and am okay with Steak&Kidney Pie) )and Although all of my U.K. friends absolutely love it, I was never able to summon sufficient courage to try Black Pudding. 
They ruin black pud by ‘cooking’ it for breakfast - fried black pud - why? it ruins the taste and texture (its already cooked).
Steak and Kidney pud (AKA Babies Heads in the British Army) surpasses steak and kidney pie
The crunchiness of fried B.P. put me off of it, just didn’t sound natural. My friends up North seem to love it that way though. I also enjoyed Root soup, even make it here in Septicland, goes really well with a tough, savage bread.
Anything containing anything vaguely resembling even marginally edible food - and I include in this even lentils and swedes - surpasses anything with kidney, from any animal, in it.
Whereas lamb’s fry (liver) and gravy cooked properly by those few people who can cook it properly is a delight, especially with crispy bacon and crunchy potato pieces and or crispy bubble and squeak.
Lamb’s fry and gravy with bacon and onion was a great breakfast (well, part of a breakfast including toast and various toppings; plenty of butter and no margarine; fried, poached and boiled eggs; bacon; baked beans; bubble and squeak; breakfast cereals; tepid cow’s milk with globules of fat in it, which is why I haven’t drunk milk for half a century; mutton chops, unidentifiable mutton, other mutton, more mutton, and also mutton; back in the 1960s around 6.45 a.m. on below zero mornings when I worked in the shearing sheds.
No comparison with army breakfasts a couple of years later, apparently cooked by the enemy.
Difference was that army cooks were often unsackable fat slobs with no interest in food, or hygiene. Shearer’s cooks were paid by the rest of the team on performance and cost. If they didn’t perform and their costs were too high for whatever they produced, they were sacked.
Never been able to cook lamb’s fry successfully myself.
Never wanted to cook kidney of any sort, as it’s vile.
Crunchy fried BP, salami, and similar fat laden comestibles are crunchy delights, because they’re bloody crunchy! And taste good.
Next you’ll be moaning that pork crackling doesn’t sound natural. Of course it doesn’t, because it doesn’t make any noise when the pig is wearing it. It also tastes like pig shit when the pig is wearing it, because that is what pigs like to coat future crackling in, in the misplaced hope that we won’t wash the shit off; skin them; and turn their overcoats into yummy crackling. This is why we humans are a top predator, and pigs aren’t.
You might as well complain about a beef steak not mooing when it’s on the plate (unless you’re given to exceptionally rare steaks in extraordinarily large serves, as in “Just knock the horns off it; run it over the fire; and slap it on the plate.”).
My greatest complaint with B.P. is that it’s much too akin to a fried scab. I might like it if it were lightly fried, or even batter fried, but the carbonized slabs of scab I encountered in Auld Reeky just didn’t appeal. I like cracklin’s, though they are often just a part of some other dish, Grits being most common. I have mixed thoughts about Pork Rinds, when done properly they are quite tasty though when not, more as you’ve described. Pigs or People, which is smarter, Hmm lets discuss that question over a Ham sandwich Now that I’ve returned to the frosty Northlands I will miss Southern cooking, but my Doctor will be happier (Not reason enough for me) I like Steak to be medium/well done, but bloody rare is good as well sometimes. (now I’m hungry, time for lunch) 
“akin to a fried scab”???
Since when has anybody here tasted that!
Seriously, a lot or north country cooking and tastes. I’m certain, are inherited from their Northumbrian/Pictish/Viking roots. Viking food was VILE, and I don’t think Pictish food could be described as any better, considering the relish for which the Picts as a people took on this aspect of Viking civilization.
Culinarally speaking, British tastes in food are very ‘underdeveloped’ compared with their French cousins and masters of all things cooking.
But give me British food any day of the week.
A French family once told me, when travelling in rural France, always take your own packed lunch. Stopping at a roadside ‘baconsanny’ cafe can be an expensive experience, and the food served up to you can be straight from the fields behind the cafe as well. No compunction shown in fleecing unwary travellers of their loot, and passing it off as ‘gourmet’.
Oh, give me deep fried and batterd fish over bloody sishi anyday. Ones life is too short to be eternally hungry and peckish. food should be PLAIN and plenty of it, then no excuses can be heard about the price through the roof for the ‘dining experience’.
I don’t eat out to ‘experience’ anything but a full stomach that doesn’t ‘repeat’ on me for the rest of the day.
British food for ever.
Hello Clarkson.
I agree with you completely and whole-heartedly when it comes to your last three sentences!
I agree with the entire piece, except the reference to French rural roadside cuisine. I could take you to any number of Auberge or Taverne, where you could eat three courses including wine or coffee for around 10 Euros. The food would be wholesome home cooked quality and filling. Sadly, nothing like this exists in the U.K.
Now I suppose that we ought to get back to the quiz!
Yeppers Clarkson, Fried Scab, at least that’s what came to mind when my Friends had some for breakfast. I would rather eat an off brand bargain cheap Hot Dog. However, that being said, I enjoy the feast of fresh Fish offered by the Scots, entirely satisfying. Mmmm.
How did this thread get on to food ? Apropos the nature to Viking food, and its possible influence on the cuisine of North Britain (including Ireland), they certainly had some odd tastes. I suppose it was a matter of what was available - there is little edible that locally-based humans have not eaten at some stage. Many Viking archaisms - ranging from language to food - survive in outlying successors of the Viking culture, in places like the Faroes, and notably in modern Iceland. I recently heard of a Christmas dish, still prepared in Iceland, for which the recipe might read as follows -
Take one or more raw flat fish - skate or small ray are pretty usual.
Place in a deep dish (galvanized iron buckets are commonly used).
Seal to exclude all contact with external air.
Leave in safe location (not too cool), so that the fish ferments in its own “juices” for three-four weeks.
Open the dish, pat the fish dry, and grill, fry or barbecue in accordance with taste.
Serve with something equally disgusting.
The result is supposed to taste like chicken or, according to others, like fried French cheese. It is said to smell pretty disgusting (like some of my favourite French cheeses) but to taste good.
Apparently, some of the older generation in Iceland are worried that this dish may die out, as many of the younger generation of post-Vikings, for some reason, are unenthusiastic about eating it. However, it appears that, if a young person is introduced to it early in life, they will (may?) develop the taste.
Don’t think I’ll be trying it soon …Yours from the Whale Road, JR.
No different to the British practice of hanging game meats (pheasant, hare, deer etc) for a week to a month until they start to decompose and, allegedly, become really sweet and tender.
I suppose we could be discussing something about WWII so, in a clever segue, the Japanese tendency at times to eat their enemies, and their own, wasn’t replicated by Western armies, primarily because:
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Despite Japanese food scales being considerably lower than Western ones, Western logistics were rather better than Japan’s and didn’t result in large numbers of troops being denied food and forced to consider eating their own dead or nearly dead, as in the Buna Gona Sanananda defensive perimeter in late 1942. This was compounded by the Japanese logistics approach of expecting troops to supply a large part of their requirements by living off the land - i.e. plundering local resources - after expending their initial scale of full rations. This was doomed to failure in places like Papua New Guinea where the locals were engaged in subsistence farming at best, and compounded at Buna etc by the Allies cutting off sea borne supplies to the defenders.
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Similarly in the Kokoda retreat when frequently starving Japanese troops occasionally ate their Australian enemies.
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Quite distinctly, the separate practice of eating the liver or other part of an enemy to satisfy primitive beliefs about gaining strength from this practice, one of the primary practitioners being the deplorable Colonel Tsujii in various parts of Japan’s southern occupied territories.
Fascinating (off) topic. While the general objective may be similar, a major difference between hanging, say, pheasants and the Icelandic fish thing is that the former involves aerobic decomposition, while the latter is anerobic. The fish ferment in their own juices in the absence (after the first few days) of any significant quantity of oxygen. Thus, anerobic bacteria and internally generated chemicals such as ammonia take the lead, producing a different form of decomposition. Not that this is inherently less disgusting than what can happen if a pheasant is hanged too long. I quite like pheasant in season, but have to admit that I have had a few cases of “Downton Tummy” in my time. The difference between aerobic and anerobic decomposition should, perhaps, be borne in mind by people considering whether they want to be buried in sealed or unsealed coffins/caskets on the basis that sealed caskets (usually of metal, and more expensive) will help “preserve” the corpse. In her grimly hilarious book, “The American Way of Death”, Jessica Mitford (the Commie one) records an instance of a gentleman who sued his funeral director over this. Not that he was dead himself, of course. However, he allowed the undertaker to sell him a package including comprehensive embalming and interment in a sealed, bronze coffin (a “casket with a gasket”) on the basis that his beloved late mother would be “eternally preserved” by this system. For some reason, the customer chose to have his mother’s coffin removed from her vault (overground, another expensive addition) when he noticed lots of enthusiastic bugs circulating around it. When the casket was opened, well, let us just say that the contents looked like something straight out of a Stephen King novel - “Pet Semetary” comes to mind. As Mitford pointed out, anerobic decomposition trumps aerobic decomposition any time. In any case, rot is rot.
Which leads in a way to the subject of human cannibalism. Understandable that many Japanese soldiers were forced to resort to this. The injunction to soldiers to “live off the land” is ancient, and was practiced with enthusiasm (though not always with success) by Napoleon among others in the modern period. Doing this in the hostile conditions in places like New Guinea should obviously have been a stretch. Regarding “ritual” consumption of selected parts of the enemy’s flesh - this is (or was) a practice common in Melanesia. A problem was that, because this was human-on-human consumption, it exposed the consumers more directly to the communication of diseases to which humans are more directly prone. Studies suggest that the (former?) practice of Papuan tribesmen of eating the brains of their enemies for “spiritual” purposes increased the occurrence of dementia and prion-based diseases among the consumers. Not sure about livers, but there must be something, given that we are talking about a major organ as vital to mammalian survival as the brain. I am not familiar with the case of Colonel Tsujii but, if he did contract a nasty disease, I suspect it could not have happened to a nicer guy … Yours from Whispering Glades, JR.