Does anyone know where I can buy spotted dick in the US? Not the Heinz mix, but a the real thing already made.

I remember Allan Havey making fun of a tin of it on a segment on "Night After Night" years ago, and it supposedly came from a local grocery store. Now, as to whether you can find it outside New York or LA, I don't know.

The new fad in my area is worldly grocery stores. Trader Joe's, World Market, etc. I'm sure I could get some dick there

I know someone who is connected to the owners of Trader Joes somehow. Maybe I will ask if he can get me some dick.

I had a co-worker get me a can of Heinz Spotted Dick from the UK for my "Shelf of Weird Products" and he said it was tough to find so he wanted me to eat it. I told him I can't open the can so he got another. I ate it the other day, with authentic cane syrup from the UK (I forget the brand.) I sure hope the real dish is better than the canned variety. The syrup saved the day, and I was able to stall until he got the syrup. I guess he doesn't know we have cane syrup in the US as well...
The best part is the instructions for opening: "To prevent spurting, hold cloth over..."

I guess he doesn't know we have cane syrup in the US as well...

Perhaps he just didn't know what it's called in the US -- I'm assuming that this is the stuff called "golden syrup" in the UK, yes?

Peter

I'm assuming that this is the stuff called "golden syrup" in the UK

He referred to it as cane syrup. Maybe it's a perception thing and he thinks the stuff from home tastes better to him. He declined to try the spotted dick claiming he'd had enough at school in the UK...

You could always make it yourself, of course; it's not difficult.

http://www.be-ro.com/recipe/showrec.asp?rec=124

Don't pay any attention to any recipe you see on the net that uses margarine or butter instead of suet. It's got to be suet.

Peter

Suet - The hard fatty tissues around the kidneys of cattle and sheep, used in cooking and for making tallow.

OK, so that would be lard I'm guessing? I don't think I've ever seen suet in the super market.

If you don't pay attention to any recipe that uses butter or margarine, I fear you'd be ruling out about 70% of all recipes

Butter is my friend. My delicious, delicious friend

Suet [...] so that would be lard I'm guessing?

Lard, at least in the UK, refers to any pig fat, and isn't the same thing as suet at all.

http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=117724f1.0112211849.2e1b4683%40posting.google.com

Beware of vegetarian imitation suet: http://www.britishsupermarket.com/shop9.htm (and nor should you be paying five bucks, ideally; it should be a dirt-cheap byproduct of the beef industry)

http://www.tripewriting.org/archives/2001/12/000038.html (if you have to make the suet from scratch then I guess it's suddenly not such an easy dish to make)

Peter

Butter is my friend. My delicious, delicious friend

There speaks a man who does not know suet...

Peter

More suet links I've just found.

http://www.aristotle.net/~asca/suet.htm "Suet is available, usually free, from the butcher at the supermarket", apparently. But you might have to fool him that you're going to make bird feed out of it...

http://nuthatch.birdnature.com/suet.html again fails to mention that it's good for feeding humans too.

Peter

Hmmm. I will get this together and make it some day. I don't have time this week to hunt down beef kidney fat. I would also have to devise a way to steam it. Would a rice cooker work?

I think you can steam the spotted dick in a covered pyrex bowl placed in a saucepan with a little water in the bottom. Simply put the lid on the saucepan and steam for the required time.

I would rather starve than have to order one of these in a crowded U.S. restaurant.

I think you can steam the spotted dick in a covered pyrex bowl placed in a saucepan with a little water in the bottom. Simply put the lid on the saucepan and steam for the required time.

With lots of water in the bottom. The pyrex bowl has to be floating, otherwise the bottom of the pudding will stick to it and burn. But for, ahem, best realism, spotted dick should be cylindrical rather than basin-shaped. Perhaps a big Chinese-style bamboo steamer?

As all the web pages I've found seem to imply that the use of suet is nearly unknown in the USA, there must be a business opportunity for the first company to market suet products successfully. A jam roly-poly, or a steak-and-kidney pudding, just isn't the same made with butter or margarine in the dough instead of suet. All you need is a suitably grandiose American-sounding name, like maybe First National Sueteria, and you, yes you robricc, could be the Mrs Fields of suet pastry. Once you've got your market used to jam roly-poly, spotted dick, and steak-and-kidney pudding, you can graduate them to the more advanced stuff such as Sussex Pond Pudding...

Peter

I would rather starve than have to order one of these in a crowded U.S. restaurant.

Well, first you'd have to find the restaurant with it on the menu, eh?

/me ...envisioning waitress at Chilis wearing "Ask About Our Drowned Baby!!" button

All you need is a suitably grandiose American-sounding name

Or one that doesn't make you giggle and/or embarrassed to order.
Spotted dick = Spotted Richard?

Perhaps at the next european meet (I will be coming) we could have a suet tasting event. Similar to wine tasting. If we don't like it, we can spit it out. But, I would imagine only the americans would have a problem with such things as steak-and-kidney pudding.

and you, yes you robricc, could be the Mrs Fields of suet pastry.

Of course, to be successful with selling suet in America, you must call it something else. People would immediately google "suet" and find out it's birdfood. The idea of eating kidney fat isn't that appealing either. We like a lot of buzzwords for our food since FoodTV has become such a hit. Perhaps "Naturally flavored buttery infused chutney salsa" would be good?

I'll keep you guys posted on how the Spotted Dick search/baking goes. I think I may have found a brit that will get it or cook it.

Or one that doesn't make you giggle and/or embarrassed to order.
Spotted dick = Spotted Richard?

Spotted Richard is good. But perhaps for added effect you could find a word that's widely used for "dick" in the UK but not the US? Todger? Dong?

The Oxford Companion to Food, which everyone should own IMO, suggests "Spotted dog" as the usual euphemism. (And there certainly is a dalmatian look to the finished product.)

I would imagine only the americans would have a problem with such things as steak-and-kidney pudding.

I can't decide whether the US term "variety meats" is more or less off-putting than the English one "offal".

Perhaps "Naturally flavored buttery infused chutney salsa" would be good?

How about "Storecupboard Shortening"? One useful property of suet is that it contains so much saturated fat that you don' t need to keep it in the fridge. (At least at UK temperatures -- Arizona etc. might be different...)

Peter

We know about dongs over here. Perhaps you remember the controversy surrounding the nomination of our Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas and the porn ``star'' involved: ``Long Dong Silver''

And the whole concept of trying to sell something intended to be this high in saturated fat to the American marketplace is laughable. It just won't work. You'd have to hide it, and I'm pretty sure that that wouldn't work in this case. I'm sure that you can find it in some specialty stores, though.

And the whole concept of trying to sell something intended to be this high in saturated fat to the American marketplace is laughable. It just won't work.

Yeah, I thought about mentioning that. But I think that's painting the marketplace too broadly. Sure, it won't sell to Californian fitness freaks, but something tells me standards of food faddiness vary from place to place in the US.

Peter

Even in the deep south, you don't see uber-fatty cooking so much as you did twenty years ago. Given, I live in a fairly urban area, but it's hard to find streak-of-lean and fatback anymore.

Than again, I still know of restaurants that serve that sort of stuff, plus calves' brains and other southern delicacies. No chitlins, as far as I know.

I lived not too far from you in Rocky Mount for 10 years, Bitt, and there's still plenty of that stuff around if you know where to look for it. I directly recall a place that proudly advertised chittlins and fatback on their sign. Not to mention all the "mom and pop" joints that serve southern pork barbecue and fried chicken to all the local good 'ol boys.

Of course then there's Norman, Oklahoma, which has an entire food category for donuts.


Oh how I want to go to Norman Oklahoma...

mmmmmmmmmm.... donuts...

tripod sucks!

They are plenty of places I know of that you can get chitlins, but calve brains? never heard of that, and neither of these were southern delicacies. Being from the deep south, I eat a lot of southern food, but stuff like that is just disgusting.

I used to live 60 minutes south of Norman, to understand the category for Donuts you have to realize how excited they were when the got their first Krispy Kreme Donut store. Some youth teachers in the church drove all the way to Norman for donuts that day before church and then all the way back in time for Sunday School.

Crap. Thanks for the save. I just found the image online and didn't know Tripod were such bastards.

It's true. I just remember growing up that you could find all sorts of that stuff at the grocery store, but now all the Piggly Wigglys and whatnot have closed down, at least in the greater Raleigh area. I mean, I know a few places that I can find it, but it's not nearly as ubiquitous as it used to be. And there are many, many barbecue/fried chicken places all around, but, in my mind, that hardly qualifies with the odd stuff you used to see. (I used to eat lunch at least twice a week in a cinderblock shack that served basically nothing but those two items.)

Then again, the Triangle (Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill) and the Triad (Greensboro, Winston-Salem, and ... High Point?) are very different from much of the rest of the state (Charlotte included), so I might just be a little isolated these days.

Well, I was joking about the ``delicacies''. I would never eat any such thing. I do remember people finding the bullet in their meal and that being considered good luck. Weird. However, check out the entry for Big Ed's here. They specifically mention brains. Too bad I can't find a full menu for Big Ed's. It's an excellent down-home country restaurant, right in the middle of the city.

I saw it made by jamie oliver on food TV the show was olivers twist. They don't have the recipe listed on their website but they re-run the shows about every week so I am sure it will be on again soon.

The little taqueria down on the corner by my house sells calf brain tacos. Never been drunk enough, yet...
Most of the Mom n Pop Mexican restaraunts around sell all the "strange stuff" as it's part of their culture to use the entire carcass. Menudo from tripe, beef tongue, etc. Barbacoa is a traditional BBQ dish made by wrapping the head in burlap and slow cooking in a hole in the ground full of hot coals overnight. Then they scrape the meat off the skull. It hought it was rather sweet, kind of weird tasting to me. But the iguana I ate in Trinidad was the weirdest thing in taste and origin I ever ate...

But the iguana I ate in Trinidad was the weirdest thing in taste and origin I ever ate...

Well, Dave, living in Texas, you must be familiar with the delicacy that Texans
call "calf fries" and other parts of the American West refer to as
"Rocky Mountain Oysters."

Pretty good, actually. But then almost anything fried tastes pretty good.

I used to go eat them at a place called, I am not making this up,
"Betty's Truck Stop" which was in fact, a truck stop.

Also, some of the "good ol' boy"-type fraternities will hold a "Calf Fry" as a
fundraiser occasionally. And, yep, they are only serving a small portion
of the overall animal. And said animal was probably unhappy to be separated
from said portion!

Calf fries, heard of them, but never see them available around Austin...
That's right up there with the beef brain tacos, I'll try 'em when I'm good and drunk...

I've never seen calf fries in Austin although I have in Fort Worth or out in west texas.

Even in the deep south, you don't see uber-fatty cooking so much as you did twenty years ago.

That's ironic. Just yesterday I saw a news report on CNN that the average colorific intake of the US population has increased by 200 over the same time period.

That's because sugar has taken its place.

Just yesterday I saw a news report on CNN that the average colorific intake of the US population has increased by 200 over the same time period.

Yeah, you can always tell US advertisements on British television, because they use much brighter colours. What the colorific intake must be of someone subjected to such saturated colours day in and day out, doesn't bear thinking about...

Peter

http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mspotteddick.html

here's the recipe

http://www.foodtv.com/foodtv/recipe/0,6255,22405,00.html

sounds scary

As long as this thread has been bumped... I had some Heinz spotted dick the other day. It was pretty good but maybe a bit too sweet.

I had to heat it at my parents because the heating instructions call for a 650W or 750W microwave with times varying greatly between them. I have an 1100W microwave that I didn't feel like exploding spotted dick inside of.

I read in yesterday's Daily Telegraph (18 - 09), that a health authority in Gloucestershire has returned, on their menus, to "Spotted Dick" having decided three years ago to describe it as "Spotted Richard" to avoid embarrassment.
Apparently it avoided embarrassment, but nobody had a clue what they meant. The workings of the public sector mind are always puzzling!