Or maybe I'm just bitter because now if I give vent to my often-given-vent desire for a salty chocolate ice cream, people will think I got it at second hand? Regardless, taking a totally obvious idea and making high-quality stuff with it is not worth a fawning article.
Even salty-sweet in the low-quality variety is tasty. Take, for example, the best of the mass-market candy bars, Hershey's Take 5. Pretzels. Chocolate. Salty + sweet = good.
Salty chocolate ice cream sounds really good.
Also, I would like to send a shout-out to potato chips that are "vinegar" flavored. Vinegar is a beautiful, beautiful thing.
Speaking of mass-market candy bars, what about that other Hershey's bar, the humble Payday? Try a PAYDAY Peanut Caramel Bar, with sweet caramel and tons of salty peanuts.
I've never had, or even heard of, the Take 5.
You should try the Take 5, but not the "Peanut Butter" variety (which is to the regular Take 5 as the Peanut Butter Twix is to the original Twix: inferior.)
Hell, peanut butter in and of itself is a great example of the goodness of salty-sweet.
Outstanding curmudgeonly ranty goodness! You've done a man's job, sir!
Quibble: It's this … credulousness. Ugh.
But...but...I thought that was the entire NYT schtick?
max
['Did I miss something?']
Ben, sweetie, you lost all credibility with me when you espoused rose petal ice cream and admitted a deep love of anise. You have terrible taste in desserts. Aside from that, you should have lots of faith in yourself and talk to girls.
Ben, you are such a fucking snob. It would be annoying if it weren't so damned cute.
"Also, I would like to send a shout-out to potato chips that are "vinegar" flavored. Vinegar is a beautiful, beautiful thing."
OMG, iu love vinegars. as a kid the only way i'd eat lettuce was with lots of red wine vinegar & oil dressing; i'd add way too much, and the best part was drinking the excess out of the bowl at the end. And now, when i'm hungry, i sometimes drink hot sauce straight from the bottle.
Offtopic: why do i only occasionally get sent to the Unffogged happy fun page after posting?
have these people never had salt taffy?
this sounds like the people who don't realize that bananas, peanut butter, and chocoalte all go together in a swell way.
Salt water taffy is straight up nasty.
Ben, you are such a fucking snob. It would be annoying if it weren't so damned cute.
I'm a snob for taking the NYT magazine to task for printing puff pieces about plain everyday dessert ideas coöpted by the elite chocolatiers of the world? Bah, I say!
9: no one really knows.
Au contraire, 12: The Kitty Knows.
How do sex workers enter into it?
Salt and vingear chips == sex
Chocolate covered pretzels == sex
Frozen chocolate covered potato chips == sex
Chubby Hubby ice cream with vanilla ice cream containing chocolate covered pretzels filled with peanut butter == the glorified body of the salt'n'sweet ideal
If only for scientific purposes, anyone going to Taiwan should sample the various sorts of pastries, candies and preserved fuit over there. The ones I remember are a sort of licorice-flavored prune (which I was told is eaten only by horrible old women engaged in mahjong and malicious gossip), and a sweetened, salted, unripe plum.
What we eat in Chinese restaurants is the elite, special-occasion food. Everyday food tends to be very frugal (typically rice, a little tofu, greens, and a very thin broth), and there's also a dark side (bamboo sprout + mayonnaise, or "you-tiao" = "grease stick" which is a kind of pastry.)
14: Sex workers enter into it with feigned enthusiasm!
15 -- what if we cover the sea salt & vinegar potato chips in dark chocolate?
17 -- awesome.
Salted caramel. Sounds like one of those molecular gastronomy goofs, like bacon-and-egg ice cream.
Well done, Mr. w-lfs-n. This is the stupidest pair of sentences I've read in the NY Times in a while. Payday is my favorite candy bar, and it's not exactly a hard-to-find delicacy.
One of the reasons I love to read the lifestyle sections of the NY Times is because they regularly produce things like this, providing me with the opportunity to be amazed and scandalized anew at the credulousness, etc. It's hard to find something that keeps these feelings fresh in this day and age.
The other reason is because sometimes I find a new place to buy food/clothing/home trinkets. I am not without sin.
Isn't it an utter commonplace that a little salt enhances sweetness in cookies/ice cream/etc.?
I wonder if those deep-fried candy bars Glaswegians eat feature this combination? I associate salt with deep-frying, but maybe not in that case
The best part of the article is that the caramels and recipes aren't even salty-tasting. So it's not like a chocolate-covered pretzel at all; even the recipe at the end only has a pinch of fleur de sel. It's basically just a less sugary, more complex sweet. Quite a lot of my grandmother's dessert recipes call for a pinch of salt.
Next I expect a breathless article about coffee in chocolate desserts. O, the salacious chocolate cake, now perfected in the French style by a single shot of café noir.
what if we cover the sea salt & vinegar potato chips in dark chocolate?
They had something like this at Whole Foods for a while, without the vinegar, though. They were perfect.
You should try the Take 5, but not the "Peanut Butter" variety (which is to the regular Take 5 as the Peanut Butter Twix is to the original Twix: inferior.)
WRONG. I am no longer your friend.
Salt water taffy is straight up nasty.
Wrong, but barely forgiveable, since a lot of people are this stupid and it leaves more for me.
Chubby Hubby ice cream with vanilla ice cream containing chocolate covered pretzels filled with peanut butter == the glorified body of the salt'n'sweet ideal.
Amen, and hallelujah. Thank god someone gets it.
My ex-boyfriend's grandfather had a vacation house on the salt fields of Brittany. Fleur de sel de Brétagne is really very good.
12: Looking down your nose at the pretensions of others is an evolved form of snobbery, yes. Don't worry, we all do it.
I'd be more impressed by this post if the article hadn't come out in last week's NYT Magazine.
26: Wrong to which part? m. leblanc gets it exactly right w.r.t. the Peanut Butter Take 5; that shit's just nasty. The Peanut Butter Twix, OTOH, is far superior to the original.
Looking down your nose at people who look down their noses at snobs is the real whoop-ass snobbery.
It makes sense, Michael, don't be a git.
Josh: I only saw it last night. What, you think I keep up with the NYTM?
I haven't seen a report on the pantsing yet. I am taking a keen interest in this pantsing.
One can outsnob a snob, and outsnobbing is snobbery; this much is obvious. It's arguable, but the phrasing DaveL employed made me read his comment to say that "a negative response to snobbery is inevitably snobbery." Perhaps you agree with this. I don't.
Of course, I now re-read the post to determine if this specific case is, in fact, snobbery, and it is, really, terrible, uncharitable snobbery. I totally regret 31.
What's most bizarre about that article is that the NYT ran an article on caramels-with-salt a couple of years ago, complete with recipes. Either they think people forget or they're hiring 12-year-olds as editors again.
Salt + sweet heaven: Freshly popped kettle corn at the Farmer's Market in Hollywood on a Sunday morning.
30: The pb Take5 is good. The pb Twix is fucking delicious.
34: Dinner's *tonight*, John. Be patient.
Of course, if you're still commenting on unfogged now, you probably won't get here in time for dinner.
Nooo! I will, I promise! I'll just drive fast. I logged on to try to find you and let you know. Mr. B. is arguing with the bank people to try to get some money into my account. Despair not! I'm sorry!
21: Pretty much everyone else in my family puts salt on their watermelon. Somehow, I wound up thinking that to be tres bizarre.
I can't wait it a minute longer, B. This is important to me.
Pretty much everyone else in my family puts salt on their watermelon.
Salt and pepper on tomatoes: same thing, it's a fruit.
max
['Salt and pepper on lemon slices. That'll fuckin' wake your ass up!']
PB Twix would be better if the chocolate were better, which is to say that they'd go from pretty neat to divine. For a while, they had Dark Chocolate Twix which were apparently covered with real chocolate instead of that weak-ass American processed crap that candy bars keep insisting is chocolate. Those were to die for. Ooooooh yeah. In any case PB Twix > Twix classic.
When I was young, what I loved were Whachamacallits. At the time, they were just that lovely peanut crunchy stuff covered in chocolate. And when I was 8 or so, they decided that this delicate simplicity needed to be fouled by adding crappy-ass american candy bar caramel to it. And thus it has been ever since, and I am still angry about it over two decades later.
But once upon a time, Whachamacallits were good times.
Also, I use about 50% to 75% more salt in my chocolate chip cookie recipies than the recipe calls for. A sweet, slightly salty cookie goes great with good quality chips.
Edy's Ice Cream parlors in SF Bay area (AFAIK closed years ago) sold my favorite sundae called a Tin Roof. Vanilla ice cream, salted peanuts, hot fudge sauce. Mmmm good.
45: Sounds like a Peanut Buster Parfait (from Dairy Queen). Also good times. Salted peanuts are critical.
Speaking of the Times Magazine: there is good stuff in there along with the tripe. This week's issue features an excellent story/opinion piece by Michael Pollan about regulation of agriculture as it conflicts with small-scale agriculture, as well as a funny essay (one which I didn't totally see the point of but still found charming) by Grégoire Bouilliere, about being conceived during an MMF threesome. Comes this close to mentioning intraejaculate sperm selection.
Clownae: I think internet bylaws require you to write that as 'thisclose.'
I thought that Bouilliere essay fell far short of being funny or even particularly interesting, but it wasn't terrible. Even this week's Sunday Styles section looks to be lacking in the truly egregious. Woe!
That Pollan article is good, Clownae, thanks for linking to it.
I had a Take 5 and, while it was kinda good, it was kinda good in the way that kinda bad things are kinda good.