A CANAL OF SALTY TEARS: THE #WORLDCUPOFCRISPS FINAL

It has gone by so fast, while also seeming to last a lifetime. The #WorldCupOfCrisps is nearly at an end, right as professional football returns. The service to humanity, not to mention futility, that Twitterati member Jake Wild-Hall has done here should always be remembered.

On to the conclusion of the tournament: a total shitshow. All the good crisps have gone, and we’re left with fucking Wotsits and plain fucking Hula Hoops.

Former Average Food Blog regular and now Twitter-famous poet Joshua stated that Wotsits provide the great philosophical conundrum of being simultaneously food and not food. I’ve got more scathing things to say.

Wotsits live off a basic fraud. Walkers convinced us all that a flavour unlike cheese should be accepted as cheese. A nation in thrall of the consumables mega-brand, we bowed to their better judgement. Wotsits eaters are sadists: they want you to watch as they disgustingly suck all the shitty fake cheese specks from their corrupt fingers.

A heavyweight of the aspirational snacks, Kettle Chips sea salt and balsamic vinegar, was on the end of a Brexit-scale defeat in its semi against Wotsits. The revolution has clearly bypassed the snacking bourgeoisie and placed itself in the hands of the proletarians, the pseudo-proletarians, and those who simply have really bad taste in crisps. Kettle Chips are not perfect, but they are greasy and crunchy and not largely consisting of air and orange. Only history can judge.

The sole possible ray of sunshine in Wotsits’ grand final appearance is the representation of a genre outside the dominant hegemony of potato-based snacks. A very muted godspeed to you, corn puffs.

Facing down the tragically leading light of corn puffery is Hula Hoops ready salted, which appears to have made it so far firstly on the basis of a weirdly romantic vision of marriage sealed with these bland potato rings landing on fingers already salted with the sweat of mild panic. For the record, I refuse to believe anyone has actually done this, even in this age of rampant attention-seeking. Cite this Merseyside couple all you want, but the snack was simply a stopgap for a ring in the workshop.

The second driving factor in the success of this snack only notable for its shape is recalled childhoods suggesting that everything was simpler when you could slowly bite Hula Hoops off your fingers without judgement. The reality was that childhood was a psychological horror show just like adulthood, only with less responsibility. There was still abundant judgement, just not about the worn snacks.

If roast beef or salt and vinegar Hula Hoops had made the final, fair enough. As it stands, what we’re left with, the People’s Champions no less, are two different kinds of nothing.

We could have had the Final of Antiheroes, pork scratchings v Mini Cheddars. We could have had the ultimate face-off of the oily aspirationals: Tyrells v Kettle. Pop Chips could have taken on Pom Bear for a bit of escapist fun we could all get behind. But no. This.

We are sad because it is nearly over, sad because direct democracy has been dealt yet another blow. We float effortlessly down a watercourse of tears, past rusting shopping trollies filled with the Golden Wonder we used to see in the world, pondering what might have been.

The #WorldCupofCrisps final will be screened live, free to air on Sky Sports Main Event HD.

WOTSITS: 4/10

HULA HOOPS READY SALTED: 5/10

CRISPS: THE STRUGGLE WITHIN – A #WorldCupOfCrisps blog

Wise folk often bang on about how the greatest battles we face are those with ourselves. As we reach the mid-tournament point in the World Cup of Crisps, this rings particularly true.

Of those crisps that have made it through to the latter stages of the tournament, there are two distinct genres of snack. These genres do not solely exist externally, but also at the very core of crisp fans’ souls.

Genre One  is the childhood favourite which we refuse to let go; the crisps hardwired to memories of tuck shop sojourns and covert detours to the newsagent on the way home from school, armed with pockets of copper acquired through any means necessary. These are terrible, joyful, formative times which dig deep.

As a result, Skips are still going very strong; so too Wotsits, Quavers, the original 10p classic Space Raiders pickled onion and two flavours of Monster Munch (including pickled onion). There is a 100% really real possibility that a pickled onion flavour crisp could take this whole thing.

Genre Two is the statement crisp, that statement specifically being I AM A MATURE, COMPLEX HUMAN BEING WITH REFINED TASTES, AND AM THUS DUE RESPECT (I ALSO PUT CRISPS IN BOWLS FROM TIME TO TIME). We’re talking Kettle Chips – lightly salted and sea salt and black pepper are both in the mix –  Sensations Thai sweet chili and Co-op sea salt and chardonnay vinegar.

I’m well unconventional, me.

It would be crass to describe what remains of the tournament as a war between chardonnay and pickled onion, but it would also be the entire, unadulterated possible truth.

I myself have had difficulty reconciling these two warring factions within. My voting has been impulsive and frenetic as I attempt to balance the inner child and the pathetic shell of adulthood.

Enlightenment may well be to realise that only one faction will prevail (inner child) and channeling your daily crisp-related meditation practice towards understanding the singularity within the dualism.

On the other hand, it may be to accept that these conflicts will always be present and manifest this realisation in voting wildly right until the end, lost in the moment of snack combat and prepared to accept whatever comes of yours and others’ desperate dives upon social media voting buttons.

Shed a salty tear for those we’ve lost in round 2

A small percentage of this blog’s ten readers may not be here for cod-spiritualistic nonsense. More fool you. Nonetheless, I will placate these wastrels with some broader #WorldCupOfCrisps-specific commentary.

In the second round of polling we have lost some big hitters: French Fries cheese and onion, prawn crackers, Brannigans roast beef and mustard, the last of the Taytos and the provocateur that is pork scratchings. There are plenty of third round competitors which don’t fit into the angle of this blog which I’ve conveniently ignored.

One highly controversial tournament qualifier (Mini Cheddars) is still polling numbers. Will the supervillain prevail? Tune in next time, or just go out and enjoy crisps innocently without the heavy, heavy weight of all this.

KULFI ICE

Ice lollies are a tricky genre of essentially average food to get right. The trick, generally, is to stay reasonably close to the fundamentals, of which the bedrock is a stick.

All ice lollies abide by this base, but beyond that, it’s chaos: icy ice lollies and ice creamy ice lollies and those that opt for the blend, with mixed success. You can stretch far beyond the average and fail, but you can also be far too average – see plain orange lollies. You can also succeed wildly by pushing the lolly game in directions that seem so inherently wrong, such as in the case of Slovenia’s finest, the Maxim Premium.

Kulfi Ice strikes one immediately as a product of a similar origin to the latter: the continental food store, either literally on ‘the continent’ or just down your UK city’s street. Victories and tragedies can be found in the freezers of such places.

Yet in a shock development, Kulfi Ice can in fact be sourced from a freezer in any medium-sized Tesco store and above. How the partnership coalesced is shrouded in mystery, but the fact that it did is a joy. For Kulfi Ice is a banger, make no mistake.

It has taken the model of the Mini Milk and pushed that particular ticket significantly. Firstly, it’s not so mini; this a satisfying snack of not-insignificant length and girth, offering the opportunity for at least a degree of savouring.

Then, it has the audacity to throw nuts into the mix, not as a crunchy outer coating put as a fundamental part of the thing itself. It’s a bold move which pays off in spades. Pistachios! Almonds! Nightmare times for the nut-allergic but for their devotees, wonderment. The flavours are mild but appreciable, created by masters deep in understanding of the need to stray beyond ‘cool thing on stick’, but not too far.

Another thing Kulfi Ice has got going for it is endearingly crap packaging graphic design. In a world where every second person claims to be a professional graphic designer, this is as refreshing as the lolly itself. It appears to feature clip art, as well an aggressive range of typefaces. ‘A true taste of the East’ claims the dubiously-aligned slogan. We’re not sure about that, but we’ll let them get away with it.

This may be the best thing presently on the aisles of Tesco PLC. Ice lolly aficionados take advantage, before the innate British fear of the foreign stops this low-level freezer revolution in its tracks before it’s truly begun.

KULFI ICE: 9/10

ALL CRISPS – A #WorldCupOfCrisps blog

We’ve covered crisps a lot in these parts, from Walker’s Deep Ridged to Parsnip and Manuka Honey Crisps, plus many in between and peripheral. Given our general subject matter, this is only natural.

Yet what poet and Twitter World Cup organisation addict Jake Wild-Hall has done is far beyond what any crisp enthusiast has previously attempted. The #WorldCupOfCrisps has begun – undoubtedly the boldest undertaking in ultimately meaningless Twitter polling ever.

Big decisions have been made from the start, not least that to not to use a qualification system of any sort. 176 crisps, covering all manner of genres within the craft, are in the running. Of course, some are more in the running than others.

Heroes and contenders are already emerging out of the melee. Solid members of the fried potato bourgeoise – Tyrells, Pringles and Sensations – have breezed through groups effortlessly, while more proletarian numbers such as Skips, Monster Munch and Wotsits have also signaled their intent. Mini Cheddars, the pariah state of the tournament dubbed “the Jaffa cakes of crisps”, have also started very strongly.

Kettle Chips have suffered shock defeats in all flavour incarnations so far. It remains to be seen whether Tsakiris Tripato, among the world’s greatest crisps but unfortunate to be resident in the crisp backwater that is Greece, is even included among the chosen 176. Even the Unofficial Media Partner of the tournament is not party to such details.

We now enter the zone of unnecessary puns: expect many crunch ties along the way, favourites to be fried, and many contentious issues that some might describe as hot potatoes. Crisp zealots will be very salty, but in the end, only one can have it in the bag.

May the best crisp win. Of course it won’t, but that’s not really the point is it? So, let us try to rise above the shock, anger and general drama of the piece. Let us state this, in the hope that it is something that we can all unite behind during this major tournament: crisps are the absolute shit.

ALL CRISPS: 9/10

MUD

Recently, we’ve all had a fair bit more time than usual to ponder our lives and the things that have been relatively important in them. Which got me to thinking about eating mud.

As a toddler, I loved to scoff a bit of mud. With a spatula.

As far as I can recall, the cutlery employed for the eating was as, if not more, important than the eating itself. It had to be a spatula, or I would point-blank refuse to eat mud. No-one would want their child to avoid doing a thing that could be used to lightly taunt them subsequently and into eternity, so spatulas were made readily available.

I ate mud performatively and persistently. “Gary’s eating mud again” would be the gleefully disgusted cry from my eldest sister as I made no attempt to hide my cuisine preferences from an incoming parent, as they with half-hearted disappointment withdrew the tool of my trade.

As for the eating experience, mud is everything you’d want it to be: grainy, loamy, and most crucially, earthy. Many foods are described as ‘earthy’. Compared to mud, it’s a highly dubious descriptor for anything. Mud is maximally earthy.

My tastes have moved on to the point where I have not re-tried mud to see if my tastes have moved on. I don’t even own a spatula. I am changed; unlikely for the better.

Did I enjoy eating mud in that toddling era, or did I simply eat mud sensing that in the future it might provide blog content? It’s extremely hard to say. Give it a try yourself – there’s loads of the stuff around.

MUD: 2/10 maybe, I can’t really remember

MUD WITH A SPATULA: 5/10

THE STUFF AT THE BACK OF YOUR KITCHEN CUPBOARD

Tinned fruit. Frankfurters in a jar. The ‘make your own sushi’ kit you got for a Secret Santa one time and never opened. Pink salt that looked vaguely intriguing that time queuing for the till at TK Maxx. A single bottle of Corona beer left over from a barbecue in ‘17.

Luckily the supermarket raiding in the early days of European pandemic purgatory never reached the point where these things became valid sustenance propositions out of necessity. But now rises a new risk: that they could become propositions out of boredom, or a need for distraction from acute existential angst.

The official Average Food Blog stance on this is to follow that instinct.

Frankfurter and tinned peach salad may prove to be a culinary sensation of the early post-Covid years. Perhaps the pink salt raises all food it touches to heady heights previously unknown? You won’t know unless you reach into those deep cupboardy recesses. It’s possible, albeit not likely, that you may even surprise yourself by being a sushi master; Sharon in HR proving after all to have a highly sophisticated appreciation of your true talents.

The only risk, and a significant risk at that, of all this rear cupboard frivolity is that the items may reject you.

“Oh, so you want me now do yer?” the cacophonous response to your unlikely reach inward. “We’ll see about that…” And so, the struggle between human and consumables begins, with unpredictable effects. Of late, we’ve all been made more aware than ever about human experimentation and unpredictable effects.

Look, we’ve all got too much time on our hands to elaborate on things that probably don’t require elaboration. But let’s all agree that kitchen cupboards are pretty great, in a way that doesn’t get acknowledged nearly enough. Now drink that Corona without a slice of lime.

KITCHEN CUPBOARDS: 9/10

STUFF AT THE BACK OF YOUR KITCHEN CUPBOARD: X₂/10²⁰²⁰

BAKED POTATO

To think that this utter staple of Average Food has been ignored up to this point brings me great shame. I persist in the face of it, for the good of all (our four regular readers).

Though the country is not yet officially in lockdown, I have eaten baked potatoes twice already this week, thus proving once again that us humans are often impatient for punishment.

A baked potato alone, or even with butter or cheese, is a stolid but indisputably a tedious meal. My mother, ever body-conscious, punishes herself regularly with extremely flavourless baked potatoes, all margarine and a few tuna flakes. It is the root, or should I say tuber, of modern puritanism manifested in food.

Yet the topping doth make the situation, and I ask; is there still a time for a little luxury in a time of lockdown? By luxury, I mean Tesco Mixed Baked Beans, and by an answer to the question, I mean yes.

The road to luxury, I have learned, can be one you are forced down. The aforementioned superstore was out of standard baked beans yesterday and presumably until the end of time, so I picked up the luxury version featuring haricot, red kidney, borlotti, pinto and cannellini.

Banged it in the microwave, bit of salt and pepper. Average Food fans: it was 60 pence worth of prestige, raising the potato to the heady heights of the 7/10 big league.

Pimp your potatoes within your means, while you still can. This is a decidedly average blog.

BAKED POTATO: 6/10
BAKED POTATO WITH PREMIUM BEANS: 7/10
THIS BLOG: 5/10

ALL YOUR PASTA AND RICE AND LOO ROLL

Photo: AndrewRT

A confession by Mansour Chow

Yes. It was me. I stocked up on all the supermarket pasta, rice and loo roll I could find just to prevent you getting your disgusting, Corona-ridden hands on them.

I’ve eaten them all. Even the loo roll. In just one sitting

And. They. Were. Delicious

10/10

PITA REVIEW: #worldcupofbread

Pita in Greek means pie. This needed to be thrown out there as an opener. There is a pie competing in the final of the inaugural World Cup of Bread.

Its transmogrification into the name of a bread is a testament to its ability to store goodness inside it. Pita is a pocket. There is nothing innately exciting about pockets, nor ever has there been.

Such pragmatism should only get a bread so far. Because as to the quality of the product itself, this critic states that it’s decidedly mediocre. Flavour is nearly always weak to non-existent. There is an overriding lack of anything resembling character. Everything good about a pita  experience is inherently unrelated to it: its fillings or destination dip. Sure, this is the miniature knife-bottle opener of breads, a valid piece of edible cutlery, but come on people, it’s high time to realise that you can dip or grab with almost any old bread item. Wraps, Warbutons toasted white, potato bread, nay, even breadsticks have a role.

No one would cast doubt on its versatile and texturally-various nature, but should you order a ‘pita’ in a souvlaki establishment in Greece, it is far from certain that your greasy delight will be served in what is known elsewhere as pita. A softer, thicker, more luxurious alternative is often preferred. The Greeks know, as Bananarama, Fun Boy Three, and Jimmy Lunceford before them, that it ain’t what you do it’s the way that you do it.

Fans of pita are well-organised, much in the manner of their favourite bread. A massed mobilisation allowed pita to prevail from an improbable position in its #worldcupofbread semi-final against the vastly superior bread that is naan. The sad victory of a pocket over a party.

That’s better, pita.

It’s not all a high-powered, flour-filled supersoaker of mediocrity, though. Pita has reached its zenith in the form of pita chips – an absolute joy within a stale bread genre. Baked to high-hardness and served in bitesize pieces, pita has belatedly found a form in which it can objectively compete with the best, without the high press of fanatics with Twitter accounts. Unfortunately, the best in this case are in the food genre of crisps, not bread.

If this is considered to be anti-pita propaganda, its supporters can rest easy that it will have little effect. Pita will no doubt prevail in the World Cup of Bread final due to the perfect synergy of zealots and social media, but it will somewhat ironically be a victory reminiscent of Greece’s in the European Championships of 2004. Function defeats form, the purists weep, pies are unmoved from their position as the world’s number one πίτα.

PITA: 5/10

PITA CHIPS: 8/10

BAGEL REVIEW: #worldcupofbread

In terms of bread, is there a bread more bread-like, bringing more pure, unadulterated bread pleasure, than a bagel?

The answer is obvious, but as this is a blog let’s talk around the subject a bit before giving the answer about 400 words further down the page.

Numbers first. A normal, workaday roll comes in at a modest 133 calories. A bagel packs more than twice the calorific punch, coming in at an impressive 289 calories.

These raw, inarguable stats, are at the heart of the bagel’s appeal.

But the bagel isn’t just a heavyweight bread – it is also the most delightful to have and to hold.

As with all the best designs, the bagel’s perfect composition has a utilitarian purpose that would have the Bauhaus lads purring. The hole in the middle provides more surface to allow the thing to bake more quickly and has the added advantage of giving you more crust compared with the aforementioned crusty roll.

If you’re going to give it to me, give it to me raw.

This perfect harmony of form and function underpins the bagel’s timeless popularity.

It is the reason why the Beigel Bakery down on Brick Lane never, ever closes. It is my belief that the entire, thriving night-time economy of London’s East End is predicated on the reassuring fact that, whenever you choose to spill out of your chosen basement, you can, without doubt, get yourself a cream cheese bagel before taking the night bus home.

From a more personal perspective, the beigel has played a leading role in keeping the family unit together. The Sunday trip to Grandma’s, with its ‘always-on’ potential for surgical life enquiries, sometimes seemed onerous. But we always went, in large part because we were guaranteed the chance to pop into the Gants Hill deli on the way home.

So, the beigel is bread, but more so.

Which brings us to Jake Wild Hall’s World Cup of Bread™, which has been lighting up Twitter over the past few weeks and has caused many of us to have deeply philosophical ruminations over what makes the daily staple, in all its forms, so integral to our world-view.

At the start of the tournament, I played it fairly casual, voting occasionally. Then came my sense of shock at challah’s early exit (possibly coming from the fact that is not called ‘that shit-hot bread that is a bit like brioche but is actually *much* better) and I have thought about little else since.

I have backed the big ticket breads, the naan, the baguette, the crumpet. But now, as we are faced with our Bagel v Pita final, it is time to lay the cards on the table and answer the question posed at the top of this blog, which I will repeat, for effect:

In terms of bread, is there any bread more bread-like, bringing more pure, unadulterated bread enjoyment, than a bagel?

The answer is rhetorical.

Vote Bagel.

#worldcupofbread

Third Place Play Off

— Jake Wild Hall (@JakeWildHall) November 2, 2019