ILX FOOD FIGHT!!! Round One - Group B (prostate health formula)

Soft Cheeses, Curry, Salad, Pizza is the fuckin real deal here. Possibly all at the same time for UKers.

that's what i voted

asparagus is going to get steamrolled, huh.

;_;

Pasta, Asparagus, Salad, Olives

This is brutal! I love soft cheeses but I have a happy belly full of pasta right now, & I cannot escape that logic.

Having never been to the UK I think I don't really "get" curry as it's meant here. I like Thai green curries but I gather that's not what this is. But fuck it, asparagus is great! It makes your pee smell funny! There is power in that food!

Pizza is gonna run this poll obv. but I don't really care about it anymore, & I love olives. Olive pizza's my favorite! but only one can survive.

Pasta, Asparagus, Salad, Pizza

ahhhhhhhh FUCK i meant to vote for soft cheeses but got fucking distracted by an idiot aghrgrgrhj

Pasta, Curry, Risotto, Pizza.

After group A I thought this was going to be easy, but all four here were tough.

PASTA > soft cheeses: Here I can't get past the fact that I cook pasta all the time, it's such a convenient, flexible vehicle for all kinds of flavors, I'd be lost without it. In order to preserve my sanity I have to interpret soft cheeses narrowly be "brie and softer" -- so I lose chevre, the various double and triple cremes, ricotta, cottage cheese... if you say feta and cheddar and everything else non-gratable is in here too I'm in big trouble.

CURRY > asparagus: Asparagus will be much missed here. Had to define curry expansively to include Thai curries (pace Euler) in order to get a result.

PIZZA > olives: Not that hard, I guess, I really admire, enjoy, and consume pizza a lot. But olives are even more underrated than salad. I think I probably like the median olive better than the median pizza, actually, but I take the question to have _really good_ pizza in mind.

RISOTTO > salad: I eat much more salad than I do risotto. Salad is underrated. But in the end, a plate of each is in front of me, how can I lie? I eat the risotto. It's got lots of parmesan cheese in it, which I fortunately voted to keep in group A.

Pasta, Curry, Salad, Pizza

Salad vs. Risotto <- this was really hard for me. The best risotto is a thing of beauty, but then again I'm happy to eat salad every single day. You can't fuck with fresh rocket and really ripe tomatoes.

Curry vs. Asparagus

fffffffffffffffffuuuuuuuuuuu

Soft cheeses, curry, salad, pizza

Salad vs Risotto was v. hard until Nick reminded me tomatoes were salad. So bored of bad pizza and the boring canonicalness of it but c'mon good pizza is gonna whoop any olive you care to bring. Soft cheeses is v high up on my personal list. Bad curry is a lot better than bad pizza, as a rule.

Pasta, Asparagus, Risotto, Pizza

pasta vs soft cheeses was hard. The rest, not so much, though it sucks that salad is going against risotto.

Salad will never beat risotto!

Soft Cheeses, Curry, Salad, Pizza

I went soft cheeses over pasta, because I assume it's just a literal use of pasta (as in the doughy component that appears in other quite fine dishes like Linguine Alfredo or Lasagna).

I like making risotto when I am really stressed out. Just stand around & stir & drink some of the white wine I opened so I could make risotto.

I made risotto for my family when I visited though and I have to tell you, making it is 40x less fun when you don't get to drink wine during. Then it's just a chore.

I was assuming curry covered everything from Liverpool to Indonesia that was vaguely curried? Anyway, fuck an asparagus

Not gonna look at any of these posts, but just wanna say that I will shed a tear for olives

Soft Cheeses, Curry, Salad, Pizza. Can I really vote against my favourite foodstuff? Apparently so. Pizza vs Olives is as cruel a pairing as I could have shipped.

Soft Cheeses vs. Pasta -- my cheese palate isn't really educated, or I'd probably go the other way, but I'm voting pasta.

Curry vs. Asparagus -- ASPARAGUS. ASPARAGUS!!!!!

Salad vs. Risotto -- the broad category beats the more specific one in this case.

Olives vs. Pizza -- easy choice. Olives are one of the few foods I actively dislike.

This group has many of my absolute favourites in it :(

pasta curry salad pizza

soft cheese, asparagus, risotto, olives mmmmm

now thinking bout mascarpone asparagus risotto

I had (among many other things) marscapone asparagus fettucine today! Lovely, of course. It's like this poll trying to kill itself in my mouth.

it's actually quite funny that these polls have been started on the single day per year where I get to eat unlimited food of astounding variety without cost - and consequently have nothing but warm, fuzzy, bloated feelings towards food as a result - have genuinely eaten about half the things in the first four polls today

Curry is so far and away the best thing of the whole 8, it's just a crying shame it was up against asparagus which is probably the next best.

*remove 'consequently' or 'as a result' - there was unlimited booze as well :/

does "curry" mean any Indian-y dish?

Reading people's posts here, I feel that I've been deprived of genuinely, really really tasty food across my life. Maybe quasi-kosher and not being able to cook my own stuff yet comes into it.

It can if you want it to. xp

okay!

It's that kind of ambiguity that makes me mad at these polls.

pasta curry salad pizza

pizza is the equivalent of the beatles on this poll huh

Racking my brains here to think what I might vote for over pizza. Probably fish, possibly sandwiches.

probably kebab as well

I didn't want every single bracket option to be a specific food or dish.

pasta curry salad pizza

don't even know what indian food 'curry' refers to in this sorta context tbh, but I don't like asparagus and love indian food so I don't have to overthink it yet.

does "curry" mean any Indian-y dish?

― horseshoe, Saturday, July 24, 2010 5:52 PM (43 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

It can if you want it to.

― Grisly Addams (WmC), Saturday, July 24, 2010 5:54 PM (41 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

if it can be any sort of indian food i want it to be it is going to be unstoppable imo.

It could be THai or Jamaican curry too I guess.

omg paradigm shift

My mom used to just make chicken ala king & put McCormick curry powder in it, that was the "curry" I grew up with, but it was seriously like my favorite food as a kid. I like all curries, though. I want to try this:

http://madehealthier.com/images/2008/vermont_curry.jpg

Did you know the that every Friday, the Japanese Navy serves its members curry?

if it can be any sort of indian food i want it to be it is going to be unstoppable imo.

yeah seriously

Tandoori quail followed by meat dansaak with saag aloo and a keema naan, finished off with gulab jamun. Tell me that doesn't win.

gulab jamun is kind of gross, and i would vote for everything else in these polls before it, but otherwise otm.

Well I didn't mean ANY Indian-y dish -- is tandoori quail considered a curry?

no. i was thinking of any indian dish that's served in a sauce, basically.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v296/WilliamCrump63/foodfightbracket1.jpg

Tandoori is curry, surely? Where else does it go?

but it's dry! are you british?

Yes. Curries can be totally dry, you know, even without going near a tandoor.

Hoping this pizza doesn't have any rocket on it.

i don't know man; my understanding of curry is that it's equivalent to gravy/sauce. but i think the atlantic ocean has come between us.

xp

Nah, the sauce is just the masala which became a standing British invention/joke because we couldn't cope with the concept of dry curries in the 1960s. Most curries (80% maybe?) sold in Britain don't have sauce.

ok i def do not understand the concept of your british curries at all then

i feel like i am learning you way of life

Hey, we just ate what the Indians brought us. Literally, in the days of the Raj.

Hannah Glass' original cookbook had a curry recipe in it her son ate in India, and it was pretty dry (from memory) or at least didn't have an actual sauce. And that was what, mid 18th century?

Most curries (80% maybe?) sold in Britain don't have sauce.

Maybe I've led a sheltered life or I'm not getting what "sauce" means but are you sure?

i am totally confused at this point

Did you know the that every Friday, the Japanese Navy serves its members curry?

― Warum habt Ihr mich totgefüttert? (Abbott), Saturday, July 24, 2010 6:41 PM (58 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

curry is big in japan, very big

Well I'm thinking people think sauce is added, most wet curries are so because they have something like tomato in them that gives off water. A dansaak or a jalfrezi or a vindaloo or an aloo ghobi are dry.

when i was in Japan I ate curry rice almost every day - it was v tasty

i share horseshoe's confusion as well

honest to god I don't think I've ever bought or eaten a curry that didn't have sauce

tandoori meat just goes in the "kebab-like" category afaic

okay, aldo, but all those things are served wet

yeah, i would loosely group tandoori with kebab as well

i.e. the only sauced curries are the ones with masala in their name, and the vegetable stuff that comes with biryani. Even Kormas are essentially dry, the yoghurt is just to make the spice milder.

Even Kormas are essentially dry, the yoghurt is just to make the spice milder.

― Hey Jabulani! Pope of four four two. (aldo), Saturday, July 24, 2010 7:46 PM (23 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this is not really true! i make korma all the time; i feel like dry means something different to me than it does to you.

I see now my language is so different I don't know what I'm voting for any more.

I am not googling this at this time of night but I will bet one of my kids that the first 1000 curry recipes you searched for would be 95% plus sauce-related

I don't understand how yoghurt + spice doesn't constitute a sauce, but I have some vague intention of going to bed at sometime tonight so don't want to make it a thing and will just assume semantics blah blah.

and by semantics I mean actual definitions, and am afraid I'm going to wake up to find that aldo has taken custody of one of noodle vague's kids.

Pasta, Asparagus, Salad, Olives, though I like soft cheese and curry fine, I guess; just never much eat them (free cheese samples at the store don't count right?), and eat fettucine maybe, oh, four or five times a week, easy. Preferably with olives in it. And maybe a salad on the side -- or okay, that's actually a different meal, lunch (spinach salad with chopped rotiserrie chicken usually, with balsamic, olive oil, soy sauce, sunflower seeds.) Don't get the point of risotto; rice is too tiny as it is, as far as I'm concerned. Get any tinier and you basically have mush. Hated asparagus growing up, because I only ever had the soggy kind from a can. Once I had it grilled or roasted, and still almost crisp, with Hollandaise sauce, I was sold.

the point of risotto - like pasta, only smaller, also really awesome comfort food

pasta, asparagus, salad, pizza

Soft Cheeses, Curry, Salad, Pizza

brutal to eliminate pasta, but i don't eat that much of it, and cheese is such a miracle of human ingenuity and divine grace. and like avocados, i feel traumatized by having to vote down asparagus. but you know, it's just one vegetable (the best vegetable!) and curry is the bedrock of like 20% of the most delicious food in the world. or something.

salad & pizza are easy. even at the expense of olives.

cheese is indeed a miracle of human ingenuity and divine grace

Olives vs. Pizza
WTF THIS IS A SETUP
Green Olives is my #1 favourite pizza topping of all time, AND pizza is my #1 olive holder of all time. they should be allies! not forced to battle so early!!
Also, curry vs. asparagus? OUTRAGEOUS!

Curry (IPA: /ˈkʌri/) is a generic description used throughout European culture to describe a general variety of side dishes, best known in South Asian cuisines, especially Indian cuisine. The word curry is an anglicised version of the Tamil word kari (கறி ),[1] which is usually understood to mean "gravy" or "sauce" rather than "spices".

olives v. pizza is the easiest match ever for me - my least favorite thing versus my favorite thing kinda?

Ok, a sober attempt at what I was trying to say last night.

Sauces, and specifically gravies, are condiments separate to the dish itself. In some cases like mole it gets recombined for the final stages of cooking, but it's a definite addition and is created deliberately for that purpose.

Curries are stews, the liquid in them is part of the cooking process and has come out of the ingredients - excepting korma where the function of the yoghurt is to round out spices and make them mobile because the meat is sealed before you start the stew, ergo you get next to no cooking juices from it.

The main exception to this is the vegetable curry you get with a biryani. It's specifically called curry because the function is to act as a sauce, hence why it is prepared and served separate to the biryani.

Does that make sense?

curry can be 'dry' i.e. no sauce, aloo gobi, bombay potato etc

This is the easiest round for me as each pairing has 1 thing I love and 1 thing I am either pretty indifferent to or don't like. The toughest part was soft cheeses vs pasta, but 90% of the cheese I eat is firm, so once I saw that hard cheeses are represented elsewhere I was happy not to vote for cheese here.

(Pasta, curry, risotto, pizza)

Pasta, Curry, Salad, Pizza

This poll has a lot of Italian favorites. Was that on purpose?

I'm a bit sad to vote against soft cheeses, but pasta is a staple of my people.

I assume that to the Britishers on here, curry means something very specific that I can't really grasp. Thai and Indian curries come to mind when I think about this, don't know if this is off-base. Also, asparagus makes your pee stink.

Salad vs. risotto, kind of a toss up for me, but I eat more salad.

I love olives, but pizza is a wonder food and besides, you can always put olives on it.

Also, asparagus makes your pee stink.

That's one of its selling points!

"Curry" to me means "curry sauce," as used in Indian or Thai cuisines.

Actually, I feel like the only time I ever see the word "curry" on a menu is at Thai restaurants (red curry, green curry, massaman curry, panang curry, etc.).

Soft Cheeses, Curry, Salad, Olives

Pasta almost feels necessary, a way to carry other flavours. Soft cheese - Brie, Camembert, Camberzola - is a real pleasure, even with the cheap stuff. I'd rather a world where that pleasure was available, rather than a world without macaroni. fuck it, I quite happily have bolognaise sauce on toast, it doesn't NEED pasta. Also, Pasta dishes in italian restaurants are always an excuse to rep me off for something I could've done at home for 1/10th the price.

Curry. OK I'm being really simplistic and reading Curry as everything on the menu at the local Indian restaurant, alongside other asian cuisine foods such as Rendang and so on. Face-off of all of that against asparagus is totally unfair but Curry is quite obviously the winner.

Salad. Beautiful green leaves and other freshasfuck ingredients vs some boring rice with poncey stuff added to it in a misguided attempt to make it less boring? haha

Olives vs Pizza is hard, and almost seems like a false dichotomy. but I went for olives because they're almost always the best part of any dish they're in.

This defition of "curry" is really confusing to me... In here curry is just a spice mixture, and various Indian and other Asian dishes that include that spice are known by their own names. Grouping so many things under "curry" gives it an unfair advantage in a poll like this, like it's the Superman of foods or something.

it's the same in america and it's just as confusing for us

there is curry the spice, and curry the food - which is generally a sauce that food is cooked in, though the amount of sauce served with the food you eat will vary from dish to dish - i read "curry" as food involving curry sauce.

Fact: you can buy a curry poutine down the road from me

just sayin'

Fact: I had no idea what poutine was until it was explained in this thread

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Soft Cheeses v Pasta would be totally satisfactory final to me - no idea how to vote?

Would love to see asparagus sneak this.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

21 people actually voted for olives over pizza - wow

yeah sheesh I nommed olives and they're my fave kind of snack but you guys are um brave, brave warriors :')

soft cheeses didn't stand a chance in the finals anyway
later, soft cheeses

Pasta 88 > Soft Cheeses 56
Curry 112 > Asparagus 31
Salad 96 > Risotto 48
Pizza 123 > Olives 21

Biggest margin of victory this round goes to pizza.

damn pizza's just gonna cruise outta this group

this set of results is as it should be

soft cheezes was robbed. but robbed at least by something that isn't goddam french fries.

all so wrong

Based on these polls ILX prefers greasy foods and meat over almost any fruit or vegetable or vegetable dish. Makes me kinda worried about the collective health of ILXors...

EXCEPT SPINACH DAMNIT

Yeah, that's the one exception I'm happy about! Spinach for the victory!