Food fashions come and go.
I recall the late 1990s: lemon tart, glazed like a crème brulee, invaded every dessert menu. Around the same time, you couldn't sit down to lunch without negotiating a bush of wild roquette (cold or wilted) and then there was the miserable sundried tomato (1995-1998, Rest in Peace).
Amid this daintiness, black pudding burst onto restaurant menus. No longer considered unappealing and fit only for an old man's breakfast, it was admitted to even the grandest tables. And it stayed put.
Bistro-style warm salads abounded, an oozy poached egg spilling its creamy yolk across the leaves and the meaty slab of baked black pudding within. Before long, elegant scallops rubbed shoulders with dainty slivers of black pudding in the restaurants of famous chefs. Everyone was converted; a few disgruntled voices mumbled "we told you so" then carried on eating their black pudding.
It is the chameleon of cuisine. European nations posses their own subtly different version, but each starts with the essential pig's blood. Consequently, some become squeamish. They shouldn't: it is just a sausage. Fresh blood has largely been replaced with dried or powdered these days yet the principles remain similar: the onions, cereals, spices and blood, squeezed like sausages into skins or tubing are poached by the butcher before being reheated thoroughly before serving. Our butcher makes a version for us incorporating apple, raisins and treacle, which is perfect mix of unctuous sweetness and spiced savouriness. Class is always in fashion.
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