I love that they are finding things that he doesn't know. Also, they didn't seem to know that the uni in sushi is also just the gonads of the animal judging by their reaction. So plenty of room for more pretension. :) I actually enjoy this format quite a bit because they often find things that I don't know too.
The trick according to James Martin who trained as a chef in France (and also Joël Robuchon who made his reputation on mashed potato) is 50% fat - can be any combination of butter and cream that you like - and 50% spud... I tried Robuchon's once and couldn't eat more than one spoonful... my dinner guest at his restaurant gobbled up her portion and the rest of mine, too. Delicious, but very, very rich!
I'm not Dutch but mashed potatoes are probably some of my favorite things to eat. I love the texture of those in the video. The food team is definitely on point and deserves raises all around.
They should have a wheel of fortune kinda thing where they each individually get 3 random pretentious ingredients, and have to do a battle with a dish including those ingredients (each their own).
A mystery box when they have to use all the ingredients to make a randomly spun dish like breakfast lunch dinner or dessert and a random style like Mediterranean Italian Indian Japanese Etc
To play on that idea. 3 mystery boxes for a starter, main and dessert. And the lads pick a box at random and then a envelope with which dish they have to cook.
One thing that I wasn’t a fan of the mystery box is because they were told what was in it upon opening the box. I feel they should just immediately upon opening it start cooking. True improv.
I hope its not just me that looks forward to every single video Sorted puts out. And If I video hasn't been posted I will just rewatch their videos on repeat
I did my Samoan grandma proud by immediately spotting the sea urchin! I never thought to use urchin to serve with a tartar but now it's all I want to do bc that dish is gorgeous 😍
I do love all of these on-the-fence ingredients that depending on your use for it, could be pretentious or not, but i do have to say i kinda miss the first few episodes where there was an ingredient in every episode that was hands-down pretentious as soon as you saw it
Agree - a lot of the products in the last few pretentious videos have just been niche, or have incredibly involved production processes. Not complaining, I've enjoyed seeing these products, but "pretentious" doesn't feel like the right category. Show me black pepper laced with gold leaf after being sieved through a spider silk mesh, not a cheese from a dwindling breed of cow.
I think they’ve just changed their personal definitions of pretentious so much that it’s becoming extremely difficult to label any ingredient pretentious.
Totally, and I also think they used to call out the branding a bit more. To me the 2nd dish is pretentious BECAUSE they call it “land caviar” more than because of the food, ya know?
Mike has a great point. The cheese may not be pretentious itself considering it's rarity, but if you put it in a quesadilla, it becomes quite pretentious.
Came here to say this. It might not be the podolico variety but Caciocavallo's such a staple around the dinner table - and no southern-Italian Nonna's are paying £43/kg for it 😆
Sea urchin in scrambled eggs is such a nostalgic dish for me! My uncle is a fisherman in northern japan,and when I was little, my cousins and I would wake up super early to go out on the boat with him and he would make it for breakfast when we got back. I especially recommend eating it with thick slices of toasted milk bread🥰🥰
Ben: “I need to talk to you about the birds and the bees again” AGAIN? Again, Ben? That implies the existence of a first attempt. And I can only imagine how that went.
I'm with Baz on that last one: it *is* pretentious by nature of being an artisanal cheese from one small region that you would only really buy to say you've got it, but it *shouldn't* be pretentious because if it weren't becoming more and more difficult to produce, it would be a more common cheese, and it's quite good just as a cheese.
Don't think any of them are pretentious on their own - they all have their place and can evidently serve a purpose, and as far as I can tell, the price is generally fair based on the difficulty/labour/scarcity in gathering them. It's not like just taking an existing product and either branding it up to 1000% or just bunging in gold or truffle and using that to whack up the price tag. That being said, if you're getting them/using to show off rather than on their own merits, then I'd rate that as pretentious.
Fennel pollen is definitely marked up. So is tonburi. These aren't rare or fancy ingredients. Just made pretentious by so called connoisseurs who jack up the price of humble traditional dishes.
That’s true of most things. I’d prefer they account for why would the normals buy the product. As in “this is marketed to normal people, and Barry would buy it to show of… so it’s pretentious.”
Food like this really inspires you to think outside of your normal cooking habits, but ide have no idea where to get ingredients like that without these videos!
They replied to a comment like this in another recent video as well: some of them show up in the background here and there in other content, but a bunch of them also just don't enjoy being infront of the camera. And I'd say that's fair.
Must admit I thought the Tonburi was a escargot pearls/snail caviar at first though in a colour I hadn't seen before [You should give them some of that to try it's delicious]. I think Mike & Barry raised some important points there though. Is food ever really pretentious or is the the chefs/suppliers/copy writers that describe it in ways that makes it so!? At some points in their history many of the "pretentious" foods have been staples or even food gathered in hard times. But the rarity or difficulty in harvesting it in normal times pushes up the price making it a delicacy. Oysters used to be a filler or a poor mans food, same with snails & a lot of foraged plants & fungi.
And lobsters, too. There was a slave revolt at one point because they were tired of being forced to eat lobsters all the time. Most of these aren't pretentious, they're the cause of pretentiousness in others. If you have to tell a story about the ingredient rather than just eat it, THAT'S pretentious.
@@DijonFromage I'd mostly agree with the last statement. But some foods do need explaining as they are new or have become unfamiliar. Many young Europeans won't even think about eating offal these days. Yet it's inexpensive, nutritious & if you're going to kill an animal you should at least do it the honour of using all of it, it puts less strain on the environment. But I've found in the past I've had to hide offal in things like stews or pies before they'll even go near it. So some food does need explanation to coax folk to try it.
@@Getpojke "How to eat this" is different, though. Tellins someone how to eat a crab vs just handing them a giant armored spider and expecting them to figure it out is not the same as "This spice only grows in two square feet halfway up Mt. Everset and has to be harvested at the new moon with silver sickles by left handed Zimbabwean tapdancers". THAT'S pretentious.
@@DijonFromage Again I wholeheartedly agree. But as well as "How to eat this", you have "Did you know you could eat this", "Did you know this existed?" & "Maybe you should be eating this & why" is different. But yeah, many copy writers are so far up their own bottom that they see the food & you coming. Sadly many kids now haven't been given an education in food. I remember the wonderful Allegra Mcevedy doing the program "Economy Gastronomy". The chap that stuck out on that series bought a rotisserie chicken at least once a week. He only ever ate the breasts & threw the rest away - he actually said he didn't think you could eat the rest of it! This was a guy in his 30's. So in a crowded food market copy writers have to try & make their product stand out. Often as you say, taking it to elevated levels of stupidity.And that's sad as those trying to get a simple food story across get drowned out. Which is why I agree with you & like Sorted busting the pretentious ones. "This spice only grows in two square feet halfway up Mt. Everest and has to be harvested at the new moon with silver sickles by left handed Zimbabwean tap-dancers" is a work of poetical genius BTW. 😆
We used to sell cacciocavallo where I work, even had a smoked one It was amazing, like a mix of fresh mozzarella and fresh cheese curds from Quebec (where Im from) I miss it a lot Mike's description is spot on
Not to shill too hard for a company, but is why I love the Canadian store chain Bulk Barn. You can buy whatever quantity of an ingredient that you want, packaged in your own reusable containers that you’ve brought from home. It’s a great way to experiment with “pretentious ingredients”. I bought like $1 worth of pollen to see if I liked it, an absolutely minuscule amount, and I actually really hated it… I was really glad I didn’t spend $15 on a big jar at the supermarket 😂 I wish everywhere had bulk stores like this in every shopping centre!
I knew that was cacciocavallo right away! My grandfather used to make all the Italian cheeses when he moved to Canada and used to source his product to all the nearby restaurants! You should let Mike try aged cacciocavallo, it is arguably one of the strongest cheeses I have ever eaten!
Loved this pretentious, very Italian oriented, ingredients video 😂❤️ it made me laugh to think about the caciocavallo as pretentious as the caciocavallo is something very "rustic" here and we often eat it at village festivals. We do it "hanged", basically we hang it over burning coals and as it slowly melts we cut it and spread it on a slice of bread, it's the best thing ever!
Uni is the name for the internal, fleshy bits of sea urchin, usually served raw. Each sea urchin contains usually five individual lobes of uni, which fan out along the inside of the spiny shell. These are the gonads, or glands that produce the sea urchin’s sex cells and hormones. These sex cells are squeezed out into surrounding water, where they combine to create new sea urchins.
It's so interesting seeing how you talk about all the Italian products I grew up with, I will never consider them pretentious and yet you're here to change my mind!
I was just thinking, I would love to see an episode with you lads cooking either gluten free or FODMAP friendly meals. Being both myself I would love to see how you blokes tackle it
It would also be interesting to see how they would handle contamination in their kitchen and if they would remember to check for ingredients handled in a wheat/gluten environment
I love your Robuchon style mash. I've been a long time fan of your channel, doubt you'll see this, but it has made me start my journey from the southern United States, to England. On a culinary adventure. thank you so much to Mike, Barry, Chef Ben and Chef Charles
I live in Malta (tiny island just below Italy), and I remember growing up, going to the beach with my family, we'd dive for sea urchins (there where everywhere) and crack them open and eat them right there on the spot, fresh taste of the ocean! Sadly nowadays due to the ocean being much more polluted, they are much more scarce.
There's a really simple, stunning southern Italian pasta dish where you swirl tinned anchovy fillets through barely melted butter until they disintegrate and then toss that with the pasta. I could see the creamed uni working very well as a substitute for anchovy to level up the dish. Thought you'd probably have to either salt your pasta water less or use unsalted butter.
Love these videos because I get to try and figure out what they're looking at before it's revealed. Their views on whether or not the items are pretentious are fun to see as well.
43/kg is expensive for a cheese but doesn't cross the line. It's as expensive as a really old Parmigiano for example, or an expensive but not too much steak
That cheese looks out of this world!!! So many of these ingredients are things I'd love to have in a restaurant and wouldn't necessarily find them pretentious there, in a context where someone's prepared them who really knows what they're doing - but would be pretentious if someone whipped them out at home!
My mom is obsessed with all things fennel, so I bought her the fennel pollen as a little Christmas gift last year cuz of this video! She LOVES it. Hoards it like diamond dust 😆
Barry: “What’s that?” Mike: “That’s a lot of mayonnaise.” After the UK version of ‘The Office’, there’s this beautiful Workplace Sit-Com I like watching.
Video suggestion!! Get all the Easter themed food you can find from various chains (Tesco, Sainsbury's, Waitrose, M&S) and challenge the normals to cooking an extravagant/fine dining meal using only Easter food and cupboard ingredients. The posher the better!
Sea urchin is also used in Māori cuisine, we call it Kina. We have it on toast. The absolute best way to eat it, is to have it straight out of the ocean. You crack them open, give the first one to the fish around you, then eat your next one.
Sea urchins are often used basically in the same context as eggs in many coastal Chinese cuisines. The edible part, being reproductive organs, is basically equivalent to eggs, and therefore works great in fried rice
I love watching these, I always learn someting new....then I can go out with my friends and talk about pretentious ingredients and appear to be pretentious without ever having to buy the pretentious ingrediant.
when he mentioned the texture thing with the sea urchin and how it interacted with the tar tar it made me think about incorporating in other meats or meat substitutes it made me think of how it could be used to flavor something like a falafel or even a chicken nugget.... and now I can't stop thinking about how that could work.
The sea urchin thing sounds amazing to do a liquid base, you can use that for a soup or a risotto or velouté. Or as a base for a ramen, maybe instead or mix with the oils? Or a mashed potatoes as a garniture, or to season the batter for a fish in a fish and chips. So many ideas xD
I think that Italian urchin row paste would make a nice addition to a baked, savoury, dill mousse or soufflé paired with a rustic, crusty bread for slathering and dunking. It would be a step above the old spinach dip, for instance
I find it really interesting how the pretentiousness of an ingredient highly depends on where it comes from. If the tonburi was from a little artisanal shop in California, it would've been the most pretentious thing I've heard in a while (land caviar...cmon), but because is Japanese it instantly falls into the different culture/kinda weird category.
Fresh fennel pollen is quite common in India. We always had a guy with a cart outside school who sold fresh fennel pollen in bunches. There is so much nostalgia attached to it!
I knew we'd segue into bush tucker trials eventually and here we are with the Urchin willies. 🤣 I think I'd try everything and definitely like the tonburi. 😊 I don't think I'd be able to resist popping some googley eyes on the cheese. 🤣
That fennel-pollen-featured dish was outstanding. Very cheffy. Sea urchin gonads? Well, I certainly had some fishy bits in Japan, and sea urchin is lovely. And another really cheffy dish. Land caviar you say. Well I never. Weird, but the dish was absolutely beautiful. And cheffy. The cheese is very lovely if you can get it. I don’t think the ingredients themselves are pretentious, but home cooks who trot these things out certainly are.
Its nice to see a double feature of my region, Calabria, in this episode. I moved to Toscana but I ask my parents to send me some stuff from time to time.
i've never tasted that one, but i prefer seaweed caviar as a vegetarian alternative. that tastes like sea, so not even that much of a stretch. actually prefer that to fish caviar honestly
In south of France, you would only eat urchin when they're fresh on bread and butter. I would never buy or eat those in jars.. but we have a really nice product, called Poutargue, similar in taste, that you can also use to season you food. DELICIOUS! You would love it!
I’d like to see them adding these ingredients to more everyday meals .. Like they mentioned scrambled eggs I’d love to see does it really add or takeaway to it ..
Aniseed is actually very commonly used in India in various dishes, you can use it to make desserts too. And it helps in digestion. A little bowl of fennel seeds is offered after u finish ur meal in many restaurants in India.
While they were talking about the paste tasting slightly fishy etc, I immediately thought it must be sea urchin. Haven't had it in puree form before but sea urchins are fairly common in seafood places in Greece (and I imagine the rest of the Mediterranean), and that was a pretty accurate description of the taste.
I've only see fennel pollen used in the porchetta I've eaten in Marino, near Rome (definitely the best I've ever had in my life, I think there's a video about it on youtube) and it's definitely a bit of a pretentious ingredient! The sea urchin is very common in southern Italy, especially in Apulia, I've had it either raw or with spaghetti. It felt a bit extra for me, since I'm not frome there, but to the locals that were at the table with me it wasn't out of the ordinary at all. 😄 The caciocavallo is sick, if you have a barbecue try what is called caciocavallo impiccato. Basically you need to hang the entire "snowman" of cheese around 10 cm from the grill; shave the melting cheese bit by bit and slather it on bread or whatever you want to. It's heavenly! Also, there's an interesting video made by food insider about the whole production of the cheese. P.S. Ben, great pronunciation on the caciocavallo, but the meaning is a bit different from what you've said. Cacio is a generic word for cheese, while cavallo is horse. In this case the two cheeses, tied with only one string, are straddled on a tree branch, metal bar or whatever they use in their production. The literal translation would be cheese on a horse!
Fennel pollen is great. I have known Italian friends to 'smuggle' this precious foraged floral dust in their luggage. Great on fish, to finish pasta. But yes, fennel fronds and lemon zest would have a similar flavour profile. The uni paste is interesting - I have had amazing uni pasta and I can imagine using that also. I don't think that any of these ingredients are pretentious given their origins, but mostly out of my budget.
Never heard of the "Land Caviar". Learning something new every day. (And I think it's something that if it's not pretentious now, it will be in the future).
For the sea urchin gonads, I'd probably go with some kind of pasta. The description of the flavor sounds like it'd give a nice mussle-y vibe to a dish. Maybe throw a nice pan seared scallop on top for an extra premium treat.
I make pizza with that cheese (and several others mikes in) a few times a year. The pizza's are amazing but the left over cheese is a highlight for a few weeks. Room temp it's nice but warm brings a nutty taste that is amazing.
First I have to say I love all your videos, I think it would be awesome if you did a video or a series of videos that focuses on food allergies. I am allergic to garlic and onion for me it would be great to see maybe a battle where the guys have to choose a common food allergy and research alternatives and battle it out or have a different one every battle and do it that way.
@@symetryrtemys2101 I haven’t tried asafoetida I have heard of it but I’m not sure where I would get it. I use finely chopped celery to replace the onions, if you sauté them until they are translucent they are a pretty close match for onion texture.
@@irishredhead14 you can get asafoetida in “Indian” shops, amongst the spices. I often see it in a small yellow pot: you can always ask in the shop. Warning: it smells revolting before it is cooked! Good tip on the celery!
Mike being salty and never disappointing us: “A bit basic for someone who’s been on a cooking channel for 10 years.”
Right after suggesting Chicken Parm.
I find most chefs usually end up going back to basics and letting the ingredients speak for themself and going minimal, not more complex
@@endymallorn Well said 😂
@@zoe9190 Yes, I suppose that’s the case.
R pzzaaze e
@@endymallorn you should try pecffecto pizza and pizzeria they do remaining pizzas anď
Remember when pretentious ingredients could almost be called "Whats in Barry's cabinet"
I love that they are finding things that he doesn't know. Also, they didn't seem to know that the uni in sushi is also just the gonads of the animal judging by their reaction. So plenty of room for more pretension. :) I actually enjoy this format quite a bit because they often find things that I don't know too.
Yes lol!
“Where is the potato in that because that’s whipped butter.”
Being Dutch I of course love mashed potato. And now I need this recipe. 🤤🤤🤤
Drooling 🤤
@@SortedFood just drop it in a Meal Pack entitled: Anna needs to eat this. 😉
The trick according to James Martin who trained as a chef in France (and also Joël Robuchon who made his reputation on mashed potato) is 50% fat - can be any combination of butter and cream that you like - and 50% spud... I tried Robuchon's once and couldn't eat more than one spoonful... my dinner guest at his restaurant gobbled up her portion and the rest of mine, too. Delicious, but very, very rich!
I'm not Dutch but mashed potatoes are probably some of my favorite things to eat. I love the texture of those in the video. The food team is definitely on point and deserves raises all around.
Chef John of Food Wishes has a good restaurant style mashed potatoes recipe that's worth checking out.
They should have a wheel of fortune kinda thing where they each individually get 3 random pretentious ingredients, and have to do a battle with a dish including those ingredients (each their own).
OHH I like this so much.
Great idea!
It's like 1:30am here and making me wish I had garlic bread with this cheese is just evil.
Mmmmmm cheesy garlic bread - lush.
I really miss mystery box challenges. How about a threeway between normals for the win and improvisation badge or something?
Yeah and after they can do the mystery box!!!
A mystery box when they have to use all the ingredients to make a randomly spun dish like breakfast lunch dinner or dessert and a random style like Mediterranean Italian Indian Japanese Etc
To play on that idea. 3 mystery boxes for a starter, main and dessert. And the lads pick a box at random and then a envelope with which dish they have to cook.
I really miss big night in. It was a nice glimpse into their friendship as well as very entertaining and informative to watch.
One thing that I wasn’t a fan of the mystery box is because they were told what was in it upon opening the box. I feel they should just immediately upon opening it start cooking. True improv.
I'd love a blind tasting between veggies and herbs from Ben's allotment/foraging vs the same ones bought at the store!
Oh, yes please !😍👍
I would love to see a battle where the celebrated ingredient is cheese! The final ingredient sold me on the idea.
They did do an ultimate cheese battle 4 years ago
“We are such pretentious foodies.”
Good to hear that Baz has some self knowledge. 😉
He broke out the A-levels vocabulary in this one!
We’ve all known it since he said he had a Himalayan pink salt block at home.
I hope its not just me that looks forward to every single video Sorted puts out. And If I video hasn't been posted I will just rewatch their videos on repeat
“What’s the point of moving forward, we know it all”
Yes, let’s bring that clip back the next time you don’t win a badge 😂
U7777hht
Need some aloe vera gel to treat that burn😂🤣
I did my Samoan grandma proud by immediately spotting the sea urchin! I never thought to use urchin to serve with a tartar but now it's all I want to do bc that dish is gorgeous 😍
I do love all of these on-the-fence ingredients that depending on your use for it, could be pretentious or not, but i do have to say i kinda miss the first few episodes where there was an ingredient in every episode that was hands-down pretentious as soon as you saw it
Agree - a lot of the products in the last few pretentious videos have just been niche, or have incredibly involved production processes. Not complaining, I've enjoyed seeing these products, but "pretentious" doesn't feel like the right category. Show me black pepper laced with gold leaf after being sieved through a spider silk mesh, not a cheese from a dwindling breed of cow.
I think they’ve just changed their personal definitions of pretentious so much that it’s becoming extremely difficult to label any ingredient pretentious.
Totally, and I also think they used to call out the branding a bit more. To me the 2nd dish is pretentious BECAUSE they call it “land caviar” more than because of the food, ya know?
So that ludicrous essential oils chicken
We need a taste the premium, but its against homemade things. Mayo would be super interesting as to who would get it
Didnt they just do one 3 days ago? Mayo and other stuff i can't remember
@@PiggyQuacks they did a premium, but it was with all store bought stuff.
@@bobroxshard aaah you are right. Missed the word homemade. That would be interesting indeed!
Mike has a great point. The cheese may not be pretentious itself considering it's rarity, but if you put it in a quesadilla, it becomes quite pretentious.
can we just acknowledge how phenomenal the food looks today? fangirling a little over the food team!
0:42 i love sorted's decade-long commitment to the bit of not making their high-fives 😂
Someone should make a compilation video of every missed five
@@matreames that's very funny, I thought it looked vaguely familiar 😀
So glad to see Mike has moved on from mint choc chip cheese and enjoys the good stuff!
I was very surprised and pleased.
As a southern Italian, it's really interesting to me how other people can find caciocavallo podolico and sea urchins pretentious :)
What is the local price for a good caciocavallo posolico ? Probably half of what they payed.
I would LOVE to try that cheese!
Came here to say this. It might not be the podolico variety but Caciocavallo's such a staple around the dinner table - and no southern-Italian Nonna's are paying £43/kg for it 😆
@@professortrog7742, and then you pay for shipping to the UK.
They literally did *not* say either is pretentious. They said it's expensive.
Sea urchin in scrambled eggs is such a nostalgic dish for me! My uncle is a fisherman in northern japan,and when I was little, my cousins and I would wake up super early to go out on the boat with him and he would make it for breakfast when we got back. I especially recommend eating it with thick slices of toasted milk bread🥰🥰
The same Tonburi jar in Japan costs around 6 euros. That's quite the markup
Ben: “I need to talk to you about the birds and the bees again”
AGAIN? Again, Ben? That implies the existence of a first attempt. And I can only imagine how that went.
I'm with Baz on that last one: it *is* pretentious by nature of being an artisanal cheese from one small region that you would only really buy to say you've got it, but it *shouldn't* be pretentious because if it weren't becoming more and more difficult to produce, it would be a more common cheese, and it's quite good just as a cheese.
Don't think any of them are pretentious on their own - they all have their place and can evidently serve a purpose, and as far as I can tell, the price is generally fair based on the difficulty/labour/scarcity in gathering them. It's not like just taking an existing product and either branding it up to 1000% or just bunging in gold or truffle and using that to whack up the price tag.
That being said, if you're getting them/using to show off rather than on their own merits, then I'd rate that as pretentious.
I agree! I think it's the person and the presentation rather than the ingredient itself.
Fennel pollen is definitely marked up. So is tonburi. These aren't rare or fancy ingredients. Just made pretentious by so called connoisseurs who jack up the price of humble traditional dishes.
That’s true of most things. I’d prefer they account for why would the normals buy the product. As in “this is marketed to normal people, and Barry would buy it to show of… so it’s pretentious.”
Food like this really inspires you to think outside of your normal cooking habits, but ide have no idea where to get ingredients like that without these videos!
I want to meet the "food team." Oompa loompas? Culinary school interns? One dude wth a hot plate in a cupboard? 😉
They pop up often on our Instagram live streams :)
I don't know why but I love the idea of it being one dude in a cupboard with a hot plate cooking these fantastic meals
@@jarzz3601 So… Ben.
Fricken funny as hell!
They replied to a comment like this in another recent video as well: some of them show up in the background here and there in other content, but a bunch of them also just don't enjoy being infront of the camera. And I'd say that's fair.
Mike is so right on the cheese, I'd stick it in a grilled cheese tosti and be proud of it
You know the boys’ tastes and culinary expertise is evolving when Mike calls fennel pollen (of all things) NOT pretentious. 😂
You should try an Austrian/Swiss candy called Älplerschokolade (roughly translates to Alpine Chocolate) or Sig ☺️ it’s basically caramelised whey 🍫🧀
Must admit I thought the Tonburi was a escargot pearls/snail caviar at first though in a colour I hadn't seen before [You should give them some of that to try it's delicious].
I think Mike & Barry raised some important points there though. Is food ever really pretentious or is the the chefs/suppliers/copy writers that describe it in ways that makes it so!? At some points in their history many of the "pretentious" foods have been staples or even food gathered in hard times. But the rarity or difficulty in harvesting it in normal times pushes up the price making it a delicacy. Oysters used to be a filler or a poor mans food, same with snails & a lot of foraged plants & fungi.
And lobsters, too. There was a slave revolt at one point because they were tired of being forced to eat lobsters all the time.
Most of these aren't pretentious, they're the cause of pretentiousness in others. If you have to tell a story about the ingredient rather than just eat it, THAT'S pretentious.
@@DijonFromage I'd mostly agree with the last statement. But some foods do need explaining as they are new or have become unfamiliar. Many young Europeans won't even think about eating offal these days. Yet it's inexpensive, nutritious & if you're going to kill an animal you should at least do it the honour of using all of it, it puts less strain on the environment. But I've found in the past I've had to hide offal in things like stews or pies before they'll even go near it. So some food does need explanation to coax folk to try it.
@@Getpojke "How to eat this" is different, though. Tellins someone how to eat a crab vs just handing them a giant armored spider and expecting them to figure it out is not the same as "This spice only grows in two square feet halfway up Mt. Everset and has to be harvested at the new moon with silver sickles by left handed Zimbabwean tapdancers". THAT'S pretentious.
@@DijonFromage Again I wholeheartedly agree. But as well as "How to eat this", you have "Did you know you could eat this", "Did you know this existed?" & "Maybe you should be eating this & why" is different.
But yeah, many copy writers are so far up their own bottom that they see the food & you coming.
Sadly many kids now haven't been given an education in food. I remember the wonderful Allegra Mcevedy doing the program "Economy Gastronomy". The chap that stuck out on that series bought a rotisserie chicken at least once a week. He only ever ate the breasts & threw the rest away - he actually said he didn't think you could eat the rest of it! This was a guy in his 30's.
So in a crowded food market copy writers have to try & make their product stand out. Often as you say, taking it to elevated levels of stupidity.And that's sad as those trying to get a simple food story across get drowned out. Which is why I agree with you & like Sorted busting the pretentious ones.
"This spice only grows in two square feet halfway up Mt. Everest and has to be harvested at the new moon with silver sickles by left handed Zimbabwean tap-dancers" is a work of poetical genius BTW.
😆
Great video guys! Caciocavallo Podòlico is an absolute treat!
It really is huh? So delicious!
We used to sell cacciocavallo where I work, even had a smoked one
It was amazing, like a mix of fresh mozzarella and fresh cheese curds from Quebec (where Im from)
I miss it a lot
Mike's description is spot on
Perfect content for the train. Always a pleasure gents
Enjoy :)
Not to shill too hard for a company, but is why I love the Canadian store chain Bulk Barn. You can buy whatever quantity of an ingredient that you want, packaged in your own reusable containers that you’ve brought from home. It’s a great way to experiment with “pretentious ingredients”. I bought like $1 worth of pollen to see if I liked it, an absolutely minuscule amount, and I actually really hated it… I was really glad I didn’t spend $15 on a big jar at the supermarket 😂 I wish everywhere had bulk stores like this in every shopping centre!
I knew that was cacciocavallo right away! My grandfather used to make all the Italian cheeses when he moved to Canada and used to source his product to all the nearby restaurants! You should let Mike try aged cacciocavallo, it is arguably one of the strongest cheeses I have ever eaten!
"Caviart" seaweed pearls taste a lot like Caviar, have the same mouth pop, and are much more affordable.
Loved this pretentious, very Italian oriented, ingredients video 😂❤️ it made me laugh to think about the caciocavallo as pretentious as the caciocavallo is something very "rustic" here and we often eat it at village festivals. We do it "hanged", basically we hang it over burning coals and as it slowly melts we cut it and spread it on a slice of bread, it's the best thing ever!
Whenever I need a pick me up, I get it from you guys. You feel like old friends to me and your positive attitude is greatly appreciated!
Uni is the name for the internal, fleshy bits of sea urchin, usually served raw. Each sea urchin contains usually five individual lobes of uni, which fan out along the inside of the spiny shell. These are the gonads, or glands that produce the sea urchin’s sex cells and hormones. These sex cells are squeezed out into surrounding water, where they combine to create new sea urchins.
Thank you. This is the comment that I was looking for.
(I also genuinely mean that. Hearing them just call it the sea urchin gonads hurt my soul.)
It's so interesting seeing how you talk about all the Italian products I grew up with, I will never consider them pretentious and yet you're here to change my mind!
I was just thinking, I would love to see an episode with you lads cooking either gluten free or FODMAP friendly meals. Being both myself I would love to see how you blokes tackle it
It would also be interesting to see how they would handle contamination in their kitchen and if they would remember to check for ingredients handled in a wheat/gluten environment
@@aislingmurphy1822 it would have so many applications for a chef skill challenge I think, multiple badges could be awarded in one sitting
I love your Robuchon style mash. I've been a long time fan of your channel, doubt you'll see this, but it has made me start my journey from the southern United States, to England. On a culinary adventure. thank you so much to Mike, Barry, Chef Ben and Chef Charles
I live in Malta (tiny island just below Italy), and I remember growing up, going to the beach with my family, we'd dive for sea urchins (there where everywhere) and crack them open and eat them right there on the spot, fresh taste of the ocean! Sadly nowadays due to the ocean being much more polluted, they are much more scarce.
There's a really simple, stunning southern Italian pasta dish where you swirl tinned anchovy fillets through barely melted butter until they disintegrate and then toss that with the pasta. I could see the creamed uni working very well as a substitute for anchovy to level up the dish. Thought you'd probably have to either salt your pasta water less or use unsalted butter.
Taste Testing "Pretentious" Ingredients is one of my favorite series just seeing what Pretentious stuff you guys find is amazing
Love these videos because I get to try and figure out what they're looking at before it's revealed. Their views on whether or not the items are pretentious are fun to see as well.
Barry’s comment on the cheese at the end is the best response I have ever heard to “Is it Pretentious?”… “Yes, but it shouldn’t be!”
43/kg is expensive for a cheese but doesn't cross the line.
It's as expensive as a really old Parmigiano for example, or an expensive but not too much steak
That cheese looks out of this world!!!
So many of these ingredients are things I'd love to have in a restaurant and wouldn't necessarily find them pretentious there, in a context where someone's prepared them who really knows what they're doing - but would be pretentious if someone whipped them out at home!
My mom is obsessed with all things fennel, so I bought her the fennel pollen as a little Christmas gift last year cuz of this video! She LOVES it. Hoards it like diamond dust 😆
For the sea urchin, I thought about doing some truffle fries, with a sea-urchin mayonnaise dip.
Now that would absolutely be pretentious!
Barry: “What’s that?”
Mike: “That’s a lot of mayonnaise.”
After the UK version of ‘The Office’, there’s this beautiful Workplace Sit-Com I like watching.
Video suggestion!!
Get all the Easter themed food you can find from various chains (Tesco, Sainsbury's, Waitrose, M&S) and challenge the normals to cooking an extravagant/fine dining meal using only Easter food and cupboard ingredients. The posher the better!
Sea urchin is also used in Māori cuisine, we call it Kina. We have it on toast. The absolute best way to eat it, is to have it straight out of the ocean. You crack them open, give the first one to the fish around you, then eat your next one.
I love it when Barry gets floppy... I live for it!
Second product arrives
Me: "ah, it;s like a pureed sea urchin"
And then 10 seconds later Ben clarifies...what PART of a sea urchin it is...
🤣 Mike wasn't expecting that!
I appreciate the throwback music at the beginning to old school sorted
Sea urchins are often used basically in the same context as eggs in many coastal Chinese cuisines. The edible part, being reproductive organs, is basically equivalent to eggs, and therefore works great in fried rice
I love watching these, I always learn someting new....then I can go out with my friends and talk about pretentious ingredients and appear to be pretentious without ever having to buy the pretentious ingrediant.
This is one of my fave series along with trying premium ingredients 😍 xx
Love love love Sorted.
Battle Idea....The Ultimate Three course meal battle, with multiple batches up for grabs!!!!!!!!
LOVE IT!! I'm thinking Millionare's shortbread too! Three layers of awesomeness to customise!
Ben's hands while he describes flavors always makes me chuckle
when he mentioned the texture thing with the sea urchin and how it interacted with the tar tar it made me think about incorporating in other meats or meat substitutes it made me think of how it could be used to flavor something like a falafel or even a chicken nugget.... and now I can't stop thinking about how that could work.
Glad you finally did fennel pollen! I’ve been suggesting it for a while, and it’s one of my favorite ingredients.
The sea urchin thing sounds amazing to do a liquid base, you can use that for a soup or a risotto or velouté. Or as a base for a ramen, maybe instead or mix with the oils? Or a mashed potatoes as a garniture, or to season the batter for a fish in a fish and chips. So many ideas xD
"Lift une cloche!" is my new fav 😂😂
I think that Italian urchin row paste would make a nice addition to a baked, savoury, dill mousse or soufflé paired with a rustic, crusty bread for slathering and dunking. It would be a step above the old spinach dip, for instance
So glad to see these back, favourite sorted series :D
I find it really interesting how the pretentiousness of an ingredient highly depends on where it comes from.
If the tonburi was from a little artisanal shop in California, it would've been the most pretentious thing I've heard in a while (land caviar...cmon), but because is Japanese it instantly falls into the different culture/kinda weird category.
Fresh fennel pollen is quite common in India. We always had a guy with a cart outside school who sold fresh fennel pollen in bunches. There is so much nostalgia attached to it!
I knew we'd segue into bush tucker trials eventually and here we are with the Urchin willies. 🤣
I think I'd try everything and definitely like the tonburi. 😊 I don't think I'd be able to resist popping some googley eyes on the cheese. 🤣
The blooper was bloody brilliant 🤣🤣🤣
That fennel-pollen-featured dish was outstanding. Very cheffy. Sea urchin gonads? Well, I certainly had some fishy bits in Japan, and sea urchin is lovely. And another really cheffy dish. Land caviar you say. Well I never. Weird, but the dish was absolutely beautiful. And cheffy. The cheese is very lovely if you can get it. I don’t think the ingredients themselves are pretentious, but home cooks who trot these things out certainly are.
Its nice to see a double feature of my region, Calabria, in this episode. I moved to Toscana but I ask my parents to send me some stuff from time to time.
Yes 🙌 Pretentious ingredients is back! 🙌🙌🙌🙌. I’ve been waiting for this
The "land caviar " is really useful especially if you have to host a party when you know there are going to be people don't eat meat or fish.
i've never tasted that one, but i prefer seaweed caviar as a vegetarian alternative. that tastes like sea, so not even that much of a stretch. actually prefer that to fish caviar honestly
In south of France, you would only eat urchin when they're fresh on bread and butter. I would never buy or eat those in jars.. but we have a really nice product, called Poutargue, similar in taste, that you can also use to season you food. DELICIOUS! You would love it!
Everybody laughed when Mike called the Tonburi spinach eggs, but he really wasn’t wrong lol
Thank you very much for making this video italian :) I always love your reactions about food from my country
I’d like to see them adding these ingredients to more everyday meals ..
Like they mentioned scrambled eggs I’d love to see does it really add or takeaway to it ..
Right. Throw those eggs on the morning after leftover pad sew or in some ramen.
Always a good day when the sorted guys upload
Happy Wednesday!!! 😄
@@SortedFood thank you for your content. Always enjoyable.
Aniseed is actually very commonly used in India in various dishes, you can use it to make desserts too. And it helps in digestion. A little bowl of fennel seeds is offered after u finish ur meal in many restaurants in India.
Yay! I love it when we raid Baz’s cupboards!
I love the basic way that the fennel pollen is just caught as it arrives from offscreen
Top work guys as always! Love the regularity of the content… 👍
While they were talking about the paste tasting slightly fishy etc, I immediately thought it must be sea urchin. Haven't had it in puree form before but sea urchins are fairly common in seafood places in Greece (and I imagine the rest of the Mediterranean), and that was a pretty accurate description of the taste.
You guys should try Huitlacoche and Huauzonotle, mexican delicacies!
I've only see fennel pollen used in the porchetta I've eaten in Marino, near Rome (definitely the best I've ever had in my life, I think there's a video about it on youtube) and it's definitely a bit of a pretentious ingredient!
The sea urchin is very common in southern Italy, especially in Apulia, I've had it either raw or with spaghetti. It felt a bit extra for me, since I'm not frome there, but to the locals that were at the table with me it wasn't out of the ordinary at all. 😄
The caciocavallo is sick, if you have a barbecue try what is called caciocavallo impiccato. Basically you need to hang the entire "snowman" of cheese around 10 cm from the grill; shave the melting cheese bit by bit and slather it on bread or whatever you want to. It's heavenly! Also, there's an interesting video made by food insider about the whole production of the cheese.
P.S. Ben, great pronunciation on the caciocavallo, but the meaning is a bit different from what you've said. Cacio is a generic word for cheese, while cavallo is horse. In this case the two cheeses, tied with only one string, are straddled on a tree branch, metal bar or whatever they use in their production. The literal translation would be cheese on a horse!
Fennel pollen is great. I have known Italian friends to 'smuggle' this precious foraged floral dust in their luggage. Great on fish, to finish pasta. But yes, fennel fronds and lemon zest would have a similar flavour profile. The uni paste is interesting - I have had amazing uni pasta and I can imagine using that also. I don't think that any of these ingredients are pretentious given their origins, but mostly out of my budget.
I absolutely want a recipe for that mushroom dish. It looks INCREDIBLE.
Never heard of the "Land Caviar". Learning something new every day. (And I think it's something that if it's not pretentious now, it will be in the future).
Mike’s judgement of the donburi was spot on! I wish I’d seen a more traditional preparation, maybe they’d have appreciated it more?
2:34 it makes so happy that the struggle is real and not just me :) , by the way, whipped butter sounds delicious.
For the sea urchin gonads, I'd probably go with some kind of pasta. The description of the flavor sounds like it'd give a nice mussle-y vibe to a dish. Maybe throw a nice pan seared scallop on top for an extra premium treat.
That fennel pollen is going to make an ideal - albeit odd - Valentine's Day gift.
I make pizza with that cheese (and several others mikes in) a few times a year. The pizza's are amazing but the left over cheese is a highlight for a few weeks. Room temp it's nice but warm brings a nutty taste that is amazing.
First I have to say I love all your videos, I think it would be awesome if you did a video or a series of videos that focuses on food allergies. I am allergic to garlic and onion for me it would be great to see maybe a battle where the guys have to choose a common food allergy and research alternatives and battle it out or have a different one every battle and do it that way.
Can you eat asafoetida? That’s my garlic flavour alternative. Need something to replace the bulk of onion, though.
@@symetryrtemys2101 I haven’t tried asafoetida I have heard of it but I’m not sure where I would get it. I use finely chopped celery to replace the onions, if you sauté them until they are translucent they are a pretty close match for onion texture.
@@irishredhead14 you can get asafoetida in “Indian” shops, amongst the spices. I often see it in a small yellow pot: you can always ask in the shop. Warning: it smells revolting before it is cooked! Good tip on the celery!
@@symetryrtemys2101 ill defiantly go search for it! it will be nice to get a little bit of garlic flavor back in my life haha.
These episodes are one of my fav ❤❤❤
I would be interested in trying asafetida, when you can tell it has been used, how much difference it makes
It's actually really easy to use, and was a life-saver when I was following a FODMAP diet. A little bit goes a long way