"david taylor" wrote in message
...

"Nick Maclaren" wrote in message
...

In article ,
Martin writes:
|
| Are you one of the people who can distinguish bitter from sour? For
| example, which is bitter and which sour of lemon and grapefruit
juice?
|
| Lemon sour
| Grapefruit bitter
| ?

About half of the UK can't do that. I am interested that you didn't
find them bitter, because the ones I ate were well blanched and as
bitter as hell.

I am indeed able to distinguish between bitterness and acidity. My
cardoons were insipid if you require a more accurate description.
A week ago I acidently put a flat bug into my mouth-it was sitting on the
other side of a raspberries I had picked.
It emmitted an extremely hot and bitter fluid. Charles Darwin used to keep
captured beetles in his mouth and had commented that on had emitted a
bitter discharge as a protective measure. Try one of these if you wish to
broaden your experience.
Regards
David T
Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

P.S
I think Nick Maclaren and I may be talking at cross purposes. The stems of
cardoons immediately below the flower heads and above the leaves are very
bitter-flavour like dandelion(unblanched), hops or the highly convoluted
Indian concurbit whose name I don't remember.
The recommended blanching procedure is to tie up the leaves when the plant
has stopped growing around mid September, wrap paper or polythene round the
plant, earth up and leave for a month. This is more than just immersing the
stems in boiling water and in my case has resulted in an insipid tasting
vegetable.
Maybe there is an optimum procedure that neither of us have discovered
Regards
David T