“
Something that had been a single cell, a cluster of cells, a little sac of tissue, a kind of worm, a potential fish with gills, stirred in her womb and would one day become a man--a grown man, suffering and enjoying, loving and hating, thinking, remembering, imagining. And what had been a blob of jelly within her body would invent a god and worship; what had been a kind of fish would create, and, having created, would become the battleground of disputing good and evil; what had blindly lived in her as a parasitic worm would look at the stars, would listen to music, would read poetry.
”
”
Aldous Huxley (Point Counter Point)
“
All space is relative. There is no such thing as size. The telescope and the microscope have produced a deadly leveling of great and small, far and near. The only little thing is sin, the only great thing is fear!
("The Jelly-Fish")
”
”
David H. Keller (American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny from Poe to the Pulps)
“
PLATITUDE, n. The fundamental element and special glory of popular literature. A thought that snores in words that smoke. The wisdom of a million fools in the diction of a dullard. A fossil sentiment in artificial rock. A moral without the fable. All that is mortal of a departed truth. A demi-tasse of milk-and-mortality. The Pope's-nose of a featherless peacock. A jelly-fish withering on the shore of the sea of thought. The cackle surviving the egg. A desiccated epigram.
”
”
Ambrose Bierce (The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary)
“
After half an hour of forced family fun, in which I score fifty points and take out at least seventy-five percent of my anger trying to blast Frankie with the ball, our game is cut short. Princess gets stung on the top of her foot by a teeny-tiny newborn baby of a jelly-fish and carries on like some shark just swam away with her torso. For one brief moment I wonder if it's the ghost of my journal, reincarnated after its watery death to claim vengeance by stabbing her with its thin metal spiral. The thought makes me smile on the inside, just a little bit.
”
”
Sarah Ockler (Twenty Boy Summer)
“
Looking upwards, she speculates still more ambitiously upon the nature of the moon, and if the stars are blazing jellies; looking downwards she wonders if the fishes know that the sea is salt; opines that our heads are full of fairies, 'dear to God as we are'; muses whether there are not other worlds than ours, and reflects that the next ship may bring us word of a new one. In short, 'we are in utter darkness'. Meanwhile, what a rapture is thought!
”
”
Virginia Woolf (The Common Reader)
“
My mom’s smile is genuine,
A lilac beaming
In the presence of her Sun.
Indentions in the sand prove
Time’s linear progression,
Her hair yet unblighted,
Carrying midnight’s consistency.
Clear tracks fading as the
Movement slips further
In the past.
Cheekbones
High, soft,
In summer’s hue,
Hopeful.
Each step’s unknown impact,
A future looking back.
My father’s strength:
One whose
Life is in his arms.
Squinting past the camera,
He rests upon a rock
Like caramel corn half eaten,
Just to the left
Of man-made concrete convention
Daylight’s eraser
Removing color to his right.
Dustin sits
In my father’s lap,
Open mouth of a drooling
Big mouth bass;
Muscle tone
Of a well exercised
Jelly fish,
He looks at me
Half aware;
His wheelchair
Perched at the edge
Of parking lot gravel grafted
Like a scar on nature’s beach,
Opening to the ironic splendor
Of a bitter tasting lake.
I took the picture.
Age 11.
Capturing the pinnacle arc
Of a son
To my lilac
Who
Outlived him and weeps,
Still.
Their sky has staple holes –
Maybe that’s how the
Light
Leaked out.
”
”
Darcy Leech (From My Mother)
“
You're sitting in the old arm-chair, thinking of this and that, and then suddenly you look up, and there he is. He moves from point to point with as little uproar as a jelly fish.
”
”
P.G. Wodehouse (My Man Jeeves)
“
As for me, I am proud of my close kinship with other animals. I take a jealous pride in my Simian ancestry. I like to think that I was once a magnificent hairy fellow living in the trees and that my frame has come down through geological time via sea jelly and worms and Amphioxus, Fish, Dinosaurs, and Apes. Who would exchange these for the pallid couple in the Garden of Eden?
”
”
W.N.P. Barbellion (The Journal of a Disappointed Man)
“
As a final test, I tried to look Arthur in the eyes. But no, this time-honoured process didn't work. Here were no windows to the soul. They were merely part of his face, light-blue jellies, like naked shell-fish in the cervices of a rock. There was nothing to hold the attention; no sparkle, no inward gleam. Try as I would, my glance wandered way to more interesting features; the soft, snout-like nose, the concertina chin. After three or four attempts, I gave it up. It was no good. There was nothing for it but to take Arthur at his word.
”
”
Christopher Isherwood (Mr Norris Changes Trains)
“
Take some jelly take some fish
”
”
Julian Smith
“
It was a delicious meal -- skim milk, wheat middlings, leftover pancakes, half a doughnut, the rind of a summer squash, two pieces of stale toast, a third of a gingersnap, a fish tail, one orange peel, several noodles from a noodle soup, the scum off a cup of cocoa, an ancient jelly roll, a strip of paper from the lining of the garbage pail, and a spoonful of raspberry jello.
”
”
E.B. White
“
Airplane Dream #13' told the story, more or less, of a dream Rosa had had about the end of the world. There were no human beings left but her, and she had found herself flying in a pink seaplane to an island inhabited by sentient lemurs. There seemed to be a lot more to it -- there was a kind of graphic "sound track" constructed around images relating to Peter Tchaikovsky and his works, and of course abundant food imagery -- but this was, as far as Joe could tell, the gist. The story was told entirely through collage, with pictures clipped from magazines and books. There were pictures from anatomy texts, an exploded musculature of the human leg, a pictorial explanation of peristalsis. She had found an old history of India, and many of the lemurs of her dream-apocalypse had the heads and calm, horizontal gazes of Hindu princes and goddesses. A seafood cookbook, rich with color photographs of boiled crustacea and poached whole fish with jellied stares, had been throughly mined. Sometimes she inscribed text across the pictures, none of which made a good deal of sense to him; a few pages consisted almost entirely of her brambly writing, illuminated, as it were, with collage. There were some penciled-in cartoonish marginalia like the creatures found loitering at the edges of pages in medieval books.
”
”
Michael Chabon (The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay)
“
VISIONS OF GRANDEUR
I'm walking through a sheet of glass instead of the door,
Flying over a giant candlestick lighting up Central Park,
Repeating two courses at Hard Knock's College,
And swimming through the Red Sea with silky jelly fish.
I'm hopping over an empty row house in Philadelphia,
Getting a seventy dollar manicure on a gondola in Venice,
Wearing a white pearl necklace stolen from Goodwill,
And running my first New York City marathon.
I'm discussing the meaning of life with my late cat Charlie.
Dating John Doe- the thirty-third chef at the White House,
Running non-stop on a broken leg through a bomb-blasted city,
And keeping a multi-lingual monkey named Alfredo as my pet.
I'm spying on two hundred and twenty-two homegrown terrorists from Iowa,
Worshiped by a red-headed gorilla named Salamander,
Sleeping with a giant teddy bear dressed in black leather,
And wearing hot pink lipstick over a shade of midnight blue.
”
”
Giorge Leedy (Uninhibited From Lust To Love)
“
There is no fathoming the fathoms. All you can do is map the minuscule, memorize it, use it to predict infinity: the shimmering galaxies in the scales of an artedius fish, the solar storms of a moon jelly's gastrodermis, each bobbing kelp the stem of an ocean god's eyeball.
”
”
Daniel Kraus
“
The road was wet with rain, black and shiny like oilskin. The reflection of the street lamps wallowed like yellow jelly-fish. A bus was approaching - a bus to Piccadilly, a bus to the never-never land - a bus to death or glory.
I found neither. I found something which haunts me still.
The great bus swayed as it sped. The black street gleamed. Through the window a hundred faces fluttered by as though the leaves of a dark book were being flicked over. And I sat there, with a sixpenny ticket in my hand. What was I doing! Where was I going?
("Same Time, Same Place")
”
”
Mervyn Peake (Weird Shadows From Beyond: An Anthology of Strange Stories)
“
but the most sumptuous thing in the room at that moment was naturally the sumptuously laid table, though, of course, even that was comparatively speaking: the table-cloth was clean, the silver was brightly polished; three kinds of wonderfully baked bread, two bottles of wine, two bottles of excellent monastery mead, and a large glass jug of monastery kvas, famous throughout the neighbourhood. There was no vodka at all. Rakitin related afterwards that this time it was a five-course dinner: fish soup of sterlets served with fish patties; then boiled fish excellently prepared in a special way; then salmon cutlets, ice cream and stewed fruits and, finally, a fruit jelly.
”
”
Fyodor Dostoevsky (The Brothers Karamazov)
“
On a summer morning she woke to a sense of returning health. She had been lying like a waste shore, at low spring-tide, covered with dry seaweeds, withered jelly-fishes, and a multitudinous life that gasped for the ocean: at last the cook washing throb of the great sea of bliss, whose fountain is the heart of God, had stolen upon her consciousness, and she knew that she lived.
”
”
George MacDonald
“
Like the time Brianna accidentally threw away the little white bag that contained my double-chocolate, double-fudge cupcake. I’d actually JUST purchased it from the CupCakery. YES! I’ll admit I had to dig through the garbage to find it. And there was a big blob of jelly, a half-eaten fish stick, and slimy oatmeal stuck to the outside of the bag that looked pretty nasty. But the cupcake inside seemed okay, so I actually ATE it. . . .
”
”
Rachel Renée Russell (Tales from a Not-So-Secret Crush Catastrophe (Dork Diaries #12))
“
Jack: “We were in danger. We shall probably get pneumonia.”
Mary: “Isch!”
“There! You’re sneezing already.”
“I am not sneezing. That was an exclamation of disgust.”
“It sounded like a sneeze. It must have been, for you’ve every reason to sneeze; but why you should utter exclamations of disgust I cannot imagine.”
“I’m disgusted with you—with your meanness. You deliberately tricked me into saying——”
“Saying——?”
She was silent.
“What you said was that you loved me with all your heart and soul. You can’t get away from that, and it’s good enough for me.”
“Well, it’s not true any longer.”
“Yes, it is,” said Wilton, comfortably, “bless it.”
“It is not. I’m going right away now, and I shall never speak to you again.”
She moved away from him, and prepared to sit down.
“There’s a jelly-fish just where you’re going to sit,” said Wilton.
“I don’t care.”
“It will. I speak from experience, as one on whom you have sat so often.”
“I’m not amused.”
“Have patience. I can be funnier than that.” - Wilton's Holiday
”
”
P.G. Wodehouse (The Man With Two Left Feet and Other Stories (Jeeves, #0.5))
“
It [the charcuterie] was almost on the corner of the Rue Pirouette and was a joy to behold. It was bright and inviting, with touches of brilliant colour standing out amidst white marble. The signboard, on which the name QUENU-GRADELLE glittered in fat gilt letter encircled by leaves and branches painted on a soft-hued background, was protected by a sheet of glass. On the two side panels of the shop front, similarly painted and under glass, were chubby little Cupids playing in the midst of boars' heads, pork chops, and strings of sausages; and these still lifes, adorned with scrolls and rosettes, had been designed in so pretty and tender a style that the raw meat lying there assumed the reddish tint of raspberry jam. Within this delightful frame, the window display was arranged. It was set out on a bed of fine shavings of blue paper; a few cleverly positioned fern leaves transformed some of the plates into bouquets of flowers fringed with foliage. There were vast quantities of rich, succulent things, things that melted in the mouth. Down below, quite close to the window, jars of rillettes were interspersed with pots of mustard. Above these were some boned hams, nicely rounded, golden with breadcrumbs, and adorned at the knuckles with green rosettes. Then came the larger dishes--stuffed Strasbourg tongues, with their red, varnished look, the colour of blood next to the pallor of the sausages and pigs' trotters; strings of black pudding coiled like harmless snakes; andouilles piled up in twos and bursting with health; saucissons in little silver copes that made them look like choristers; pies, hot from the oven, with little banner-like tickets stuck in them; big hams, and great cuts of veal and pork, whose jelly was as limpid as crystallized sugar. Towards the back were large tureens in which the meats and minces lay asleep in lakes of solidified fat. Strewn between the various plates and sishes, on the bed of blue shavings, were bottles of relish, sauce, and preserved truffles, pots of foie gras, and tins of sardines and tuna fish. A box of creamy cheeses and one full of snails stuffed with butter and parsley had been dropped in each corner. Finally, at the very top of the display, falling from a bar with sharp prongs, strings of sausages and saveloys hung down symmetrically like the cords and tassels of some opulent tapestry, while behind, threads of caul were stretched out like white lacework. There, on the highest tier of this temple of gluttony, amid the caul and between two bunches of purple gladioli, the alter display was crowned by a small, square fish tank with a little ornamental rockery, in which two goldfish swam in endless circles.
”
”
Émile Zola
“
Cold leek and potato soup. Little pastry boats filled with minced chicken or fish in a white sauce. A large green salad, a tomato and spring onion salad, a cold roast of beef with horseradish or port wine jelly to taste, cold roasted chickens with sage and onion stuffing, with a variety of crisp cold vegetables, each with their proper sauces. Fruit salad. A marmalade-filled roulade with slices of sugared oranges and crème Chantilly which was even now rolling in its damp tea towel as though there were no such things as culinary accidents in the world. Cheeses and fruits and coffee or tea.
”
”
Kerry Greenwood (Murder and Mendelssohn (Phryne Fisher, #20))
“
…I have become horribly radical. I am just going to India to see what I can do in that awful mass of conservative jelly-fish, and start a new thing, entirely new—simple, strong, new, and fresh as the first born baby. The eternal, the infinite, the omnipresent, the omniscient is a principle, not a person. You, I, and everyone are but embodiments of that principle: and the more of this infinite principle is embodied in a person, the greater is he, and all in the end will be the perfect embodiment of that, and thus all will be one, as they are now essentially. This is all there is of religion, and the practice is through this feeling of oneness that is love.
”
”
Chaturvedi Badrinath (Swami Vivekananda: The Living Vedanta)
“
Six months from now her baby would be born. Something that had been a single cell, a cluster of cells, a little sac of tissue, a kind of worm, a potential fish with gills, stirred in her womb and would one day become a man-a grown man, suffering and enjoying, loving and hating, thinking, remembering, imagining. And what had been a blob of jelly within her body would invent a god and worship; what had been a kind of fish would create and, having created, would become the battle-ground of disputing good and evil; what had blindly lived in her as a parasitic worm would look at the stars, would listen to music, would read poetry. A thing would grow into a person, a tiny lump of stuff would become a human body, a human mind. The astounding process of creation was going on within her.
”
”
Aldous Huxley (Point Counter Point)
“
I lie on the seashore, the sparkling flood blue-shimmering in my dreamy eyes; light breezes flutter in the distance; the thud of the waves, charging and breaking over in foam, beats thrillingly and drowsily upon the shore—or upon the ear? I cannot tell. The far and the near become blurred into one; outside and inside merge into one another. Nearer and nearer, friendlier, like a homecoming, sounds the thud of the waves; now, like a thundering pulse, they beat in my head, now they beat over my soul, wrapping it round, consuming it, while at the same time my soul floats out of me as a blue waste of waters. Outside and inside are one. The whole symphony of sensations fades away into one tone, all senses become one sense, which is one with feeling; the world expires in the soul and the soul dissolves in the world. Our little life is rounded by a great sleep. Sleep our cradle, sleep our grave, sleep our home, from which we go forth in the morning, returning again at evening; our life a short pilgrimage, the interval between emergence from original oneness and sinking back into it! Blue shimmers the infinite sea, where the jelly-fish dreams of that primeval existence to which our thoughts still filter down through aeons of memory. For every experience entails a change and a guarantee of life’s unity. At that moment when they are no longer blended together, when the experient lifts his head, still blind and dripping, from immersion in the stream of experience, from flowing away with the thing experienced; when man, amazed and estranged, detaches the change from himself and holds it before him as something alien—at that moment of estrangement the two sides of the experience are substantialized into subject and object, and at that moment consciousness is born.33
”
”
C.G. Jung (Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Volume 5: Symbols of Transformation (The Collected Works of C. G. Jung))
“
At the kneading trough in the bakehouse, he and Philip pummeled maslin dough until the dull-skinned clods stretched and sprang. A scowling Vanian showed them how to make the airy-light manchet bread that the upper servants ate, then the pastes for meat-coffins and pie crusts. They baked flaking florentine rounds and set them with peaches in snow-cream or neats' tongues in jelly. They stood over the ovens to watch cat's tongue biscuits, waiting for the moment before they browned. John mixed the paste for dariole-cases, working the mixture with his fingertips, then filled them with sack creams and studded them with roasted pistachio nuts. In the fish house across the servants' yard, the two boys scaled and cleaned the yellow-green carp from the Heron Boy's ponds, unpacked barrels of herrings and hauled sides of yellow salt-fish onto the benches and beat them with the knotted end of a rope.
”
”
Lawrence Norfolk (John Saturnall's Feast)
“
COOKBOOK FOR
THE MODERN HOUSEWIFE
The cover was red with a subtle crosshatch pattern and distressed, the book's title stamped in black ink- all of it faded with age. Bordering the cookbook's cover were hints of what could be found inside. Alice tilted her head as she read across, down, across, and up the cover's edges. Rolls. Pies. Luncheon. Drinks. Jams. Jellies. Poultry. Soup. Pickles. 725 Tested Recipes.
Resting the spine on her bent knees, the cookbook dense yet fragile in her hands, Alice opened it carefully. There was an inscription on the inside cover. Elsie Swann, 1940. Going through the first few, age-yellowed pages, Alice glanced at charts for what constituted a balanced diet in those days: milk products, citrus fruits, green and yellow vegetables, breads and cereals, meat and eggs, the addition of a fish liver oil, particularly for children. Across from it, a page of tips for housewives to avoid being overwhelmed and advice for hosting successful dinner parties. Opening to a page near the back, Alice found another chart, this one titled Standard Retail Beef Cutting Chart, a picture of a cow divided by type of meat, mini drawings of everything from a porterhouse-steak cut to the disgusting-sounding "rolled neck."
Through the middle were recipes for Pork Pie, Jellied Tongue, Meat Loaf with Oatmeal, and something called Porcupines- ground beef and rice balls, simmered for an hour in tomato soup and definitely something Alice never wanted to try- and plenty of notes written in faded cursive beside some of the recipes. Comments like Eleanor's 13th birthday-delicious! and Good for digestion and Add extra butter. Whoever this Elsie Swann was, she had clearly used the cookbook regularly. The pages were polka-dotted in brown splatters and drips, evidence it had not sat forgotten on a shelf the way cookbooks would in Alice's kitchen.
”
”
Karma Brown (Recipe for a Perfect Wife)
“
Now this is grand, she thought, the white linen well-pressed, the warm light glimmering from a score of candles, the silver plate polished like mirrors. It was a feast in a picture book, a queen's banquet in a fairy castle.
At the centre rose a vast Desert Island molded from sugar-paste, just as Aunt Charlotte had used to make it. A stockade of licorice crowned the peak, and a pathway of pink sugar sand stretched to the shore. The whole was surrounded by a sea of broken jelly, swimming with candied fish. First off, she ate the two tiny sugar castaways from the lookout on her island- very sweet and crisp they were, too. She stood to make a toast. "To you, Jack, my own true love," and took a long draught.
Sugarplums next; a whole pyramid to herself, of every color: raspberry, orange, violet, pistachio. She was eating dinner back to front, and she recommended it heartily. Next, her teeth sank into a sticky mass of moonshine jelly- it was good, very good.
”
”
Martine Bailey (A Taste for Nightshade)
“
This texture...
you used an aspic."
"Bingo! Those golden cubes under the egg...
are a chicken aspic!
So what's an "aspic"? Easy! It's a jelly made from the chilled broth of gelatin-rich meats and fishes.
I simmered chicken wings in bonito broth seasoned with saké and light soy sauce. This drew the chicken's natural savory flavor and gelatin into the broth. I quickly chilled the resulting broth until it gelled, and then cut it into small cubes."
"It was the aspic he was making in that enormous pot."
"Sprinkle the cubes over piping-hot rice... and the rich chicken aspic will melt and coat the egg curds with a "ploop"!"
I see. In other words... the aspic is really a thick, rich and savory chicken soup! The full-bodied and salty flavor of the aspic broth... brings out the soft, mild sweetness of the egg curds perfectly. Not only that, each bite is a heaven of fluffy smoothness.
In every way, the aspic is emphasizing and magnifying the deliciousness of the eggs!
”
”
Yūto Tsukuda (Food Wars!: Shokugeki no Soma, Vol. 1)
“
I was settin’ at this restaurant
When the waiter came up and said,
“What do you want?”
I looked at the menu—it looked so nice
Till he said, “Let me give you a little advice.”
He said,
“Spaghetti and potatoes got too much starch,
Pork chops and sausage are bad for your heart.
There's hormones in chicken and beef and veal,
Bowl of ravioli is a dead man’s meal.
Bread's got preservatives, there's nitrites in ham,
Artificial coloring in jellies and jam.
Stay away from doughnuts, run away from pie,
Pepperoni pizza is a sure way to die.
Sugar’s gonna rot your teeth and
make you put on weight,
Artificial sweetener’s got cyclamates.
Eggs are high cholesterol, too much fat in cheese,
Coffee ruins your kidneys and so do teas.
Fish got too much mercury, red meat is poison,
Salt's gonna send your blood pressure risin’.
Hot dogs and bologna got deadly red dyes,
Vegetables and fruits are sprayed with pesticides.”
So I said,
“What can I eat that's gonna make me last?”
He said, “A small drink of water in a sterilized glass.”
And then he stopped and he thought for a minute,
And said,
“Never mind the water—there’s carcinogens in it.”
So I got up from the table and walked out in the street,
Realizin’ there was absolutely nothing I could eat.
So I haven't eaten for a month and I don't feel too fine,
But I know that I'll be healthy for a long, long time.
”
”
Shel Silverstein
“
Joël describes here, in unmistakable symbolism, the merging of subject and object as the reunion of mother and child. The symbols agree with those of mythology even in their details. There is a distinct allusion to the encircling and devouring motif. The sea that devours the sun and gives birth to it again is an old acquaintance. The moment of the rise of consciousness, of the separation of subject and object, is indeed a birth. It is as though philosophical speculation hung with lame wings on a few primordial figures of human speech, beyond whose simple grandeur no thought can fly. The image of the jelly-fish is far from accidental. Once when I was explaining to a patient the maternal significance of water, she experienced a very disagreeable sensation at this contact with the mother-complex. “It makes me squirm,” she said, “as if I’d touched a jelly-fish.” The blessed state of sleep before birth and after death is, as Joël observes, rather like an old shadowy memory of that unsuspecting state of early childhood, when there is as yet no opposition to disturb the peaceful flow of slumbering life. Again and again an inner longing draws us back, but always the life of action must struggle in deadly fear to break free lest it fall into a state of sleep. Long before Joël, an Indian chieftain had expressed the same thing in the same words to one of the restless white men: “Ah, my brother, you will never know the happiness of thinking nothing and doing nothing. This is the most delightful thing there is, next to sleep. So we were before birth, and so we shall be after death.”34
”
”
C.G. Jung (Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Volume 5: Symbols of Transformation (The Collected Works of C. G. Jung))
“
This white broth...
... is soy milk!"
"That's right! I mixed a dash of parmesan cheese and a little dollop of miso paste into the soy milk and then lightly simmered it.
This is my pike dish...
Pike Takikomi Rice, Ojiya Style!"
OJIYA
Also called "Zosui," Ojiya is soup stock and seasonings added to precooked rice, vegetables and fish and cooked into a thick porridge. It is distinctly different from dishes like risotto, which is uncooked rice that is first sautéed in butter and oils before adding liquid... and Okayu, which is a rice gruel cooked to soupy softness in extra water.
"Soy milk?"
"Ah, so you finally see it, Alice.
Like all soups, the most important part of Ojiya porridge is the stock!
He built this dish to be porridge from the start...
... with soy milk as the "stock"!"
"Soy milk as soup stock?!"
"Can you even do that?!"
"So that's what it is!
Soup stock is essentially meant to be pure umami. Like kombu kelp- a common stock- soy milk is packed with the umami component glutamic acid. It's more than good enough to serve as a sound base for the Ojiya porridge! Not only that, umami flavors synergies with each other. Adding two umami components to the same dish will magnify the flavor exponentially!
The inosinic acid in the pike and the glutamic acid in the soy milk... combining the two makes perfect, logical sense!
"
"Soy milk Ojiya Porridge. Hm. How interesting!"
"
Mm! Delicious!
The full-bodied richness of the cheese and the mild, salty flavor of the miso meld brilliantly with the rice! Then there are the chunks of tender pike meat mixed in...
... with these red things. Are they what I think they are?"
"Yep! They're crunchy pickled-plum bits!"
"What?!"
"Again with the dirt cheap, grocery store junk food! Like that cracker breading and the seaweed jelly pearls..."
"He totally dumped those in there just for the heck of it!"
"These pickled plums are a very important facet of the overall dish! They have a bright, pleasing color and a fun, crunchy texture. Not only that, their tart flavor cuts through the rich oiliness of the pike meat, giving the dish a fresh, clean aftertaste. And, like all vinegary foods, they stir the appetite- a side effect that this dish takes full advantage of!
Finally, these plums are salt pickled! It is no wonder they make a perfect accent to the pickled pike at the center of the dish!"
”
”
Yūto Tsukuda (食戟のソーマ 13 [Shokugeki no Souma 13] (Food Wars: Shokugeki no Soma, #13))
“
Well then, first would be the abalone and sea urchin- the bounty of the sea!
Ah, I see! This foam on top is kombu seaweed broth that's been whipped into a mousse!"
"Mm! I can taste the delicate umami flavors seeping into my tongue!"
"The fish meat was aged for a day wrapped in kombu. The seaweed pulls just enough of the moisture out of the meat, allowing it to keep longer, a perfect technique for a bento that needs to last. Hm! Next looks to be bonito. ...!"
What rich, powerful umami!"
Aha! This is the result of several umami components melding together. The glutamic acid in the kombu from the previous piece is mixing together in my mouth with the inosinic acid in the bonito!
"And, like, I cold aged this bonito across two days. Aging fish and meats boosts their umami components, y'know. In other words, the true effect of this bento comes together in your mouth... as you eat it in order from one end to the other."
"Next is a row... that looks to be made entirely from vegetables. But none of them use a single scrap of seaweed. The wrappers around each one are different vegetables sliced paper-thin!"
"Right! This bento totally doesn't go for any heavy foods."
"Next comes the sushi row that practically cries out that it's a main dish... raw cold-aged beef sushi!" Th-there it is again! The powerful punch of umami flavor as two components mix together in my mouth!
"Hm? Wait a minute. I understand the inosinic acid comes from the beef... but where is the glutamic acid?"
"From the tomatoes."
"Tomatoes? But I don't see any..."
"They're in there. See, I first put them in a centrifuge. That broke them down into their component parts- the coloring, the fiber, and the jus. I then filtered the jus to purify it even further. Then I put just a few drops on each piece of veggie sushi."
"WHAT THE HECK?!"
"She took an ingredient and broke it down so far it wasn't even recognizable anymore? Can she even do that?"
Appliances like the centrifuge and cryogenic grinder are tools that were first developed to be used in medicine, not cooking. Even among pro chefs, only a handful are skilled enough to make regular use of such complex machines! Who would have thought a high school student was capable of mastering them to this degree!
"And last but not least we have this one. It's sea bream with some sort of pink jelly...
... resting on top of a Chinese spoon."
That pink jelly was a pearl of condensed soup stock! Once it popped inside my mouth...
... it mixed together with the sea bream sushi until it tasted like-
"Sea bream chazuke!
”
”
Yūto Tsukuda (食戟のソーマ 8 [Shokugeki no Souma 8] (Food Wars: Shokugeki no Soma, #8))
“
God damn you!” Alfred said. “You belong in jail!” The turd wheezed with laughter as it slid very slowly down the wall, its viscous pseudopods threatening to drip on the sheets below. “Seems to me,” it said, “you anal retentive type personalities want everything in jail. Like, little kids, bad news, man, they pull your tchotchkes off your shelves, they drop food on the carpet, they cry in theaters, they miss the pot. Put ’em in the slammer! And Polynesians, man, they track sand in the house, get fish juice on the furniture, and all those pubescent chickies with their honkers exposed? Jail ’em! And how about ten to twenty, while we’re at it, for every horny little teenager, I mean talk about insolence, talk about no restraint. And Negroes (sore topic, Fred?), I’m hearing rambunctious shouting and interesting grammar, I’m smelling liquor of the malt variety and sweat that’s very rich and scalpy, and all that dancing and whoopee-making and singers that coo like body parts wetted with saliva and special jellies: what’s a jail for if not to toss a Negro in it? And your Caribbeans with their spliffs and their potbelly toddlers and their like daily barbecues and ratborne hanta viruses and sugary drinks with pig blood at the bottom? Slam the cell door, eat the key. And the Chinese, man, those creepy-ass weird-name vegetables like homegrown dildos somebody forgot to wash after using, one-dollah, one-dollah, and those slimy carps and skinned-alive songbirds, and come on, like, puppy-dog soup and pooty-tat dumplings and female infants are national delicacies, and pork bung, by which we’re referring here to the anus of a swine, presumably a sort of chewy and bristly type item, pork bung’s a thing Chinks pay money for to eat? What say we just nuke all billion point two of ’em, hey? Clean that part of the world up already. And let’s not forget about women generally, nothing but a trail of Kleenexes and Tampaxes everywhere they go. And your fairies with their doctor’s-office lubricants, and your Mediterraneans with their whiskers and their garlic, and your French with their garter belts and raunchy cheeses, and your blue-collar ball-scratchers with their hot rods and beer belches, and your Jews with their circumcised putzes and gefilte fish like pickled turds, and your Wasps with their Cigarette boats and runny-assed polo horses and go-to-hell cigars? Hey, funny thing, Fred, the only people that don’t belong in your jail are upper-middle-class northern European men. And you’re on my case for wanting
”
”
Jonathan Franzen (The Corrections)
“
He appreciates the night and its wandering points of light, its lawns turned the color of blackberry jelly, its gravel smoothed to tweed, its owls tearing at the throats of mice. He is bountiful with love.
If America has gods, this is where they dwell—under rocks, in the branches of trees, in ivy, skunkweed, the hearts of fish, the flight of geese.
”
”
Rikki Ducornet
“
In the Sea of Japan, 500 million Nomurai jellyfish—each more than two meters in diameter—are clogging fishing nets; a region of the Bering Sea is so full of jellies that it’s been renamed “Slime Bank.” “Jellyfish grow faster and produce more young in warmer waters,” one researcher explained.
”
”
Bill McKibben (Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet)
“
Our main problem over the past few days and weeks,’ he said, ‘has lain in trying to connect the various phenomena. In fact, there wasn’t any obvious connection until a jelly-like substance started to crop up. Sometimes it appeared in small quantities, sometimes in larger amounts, but always with the distinguishing characteristic that it disintegrated rapidly on contact with air. Unfortunately the discovery of the jelly only added to the mystery, given its presence in crustaceans, mussels and whales - three types of organism that could hardly be more different. Of course, it might have been some kind of fungus, a jellified version of rabies, an infectious disease like BSE or swine fever. But, if so, why would ships be disappearing or crabs transporting killer algae? There was no sign of the jelly on the worms that infested the slope. They were carrying a different kind of cargo - bacteria that break down hydrates and cause methane gas to rise. Hence the landslide and the tsunami. And what about the mutated species that have been emerging all over the world? Even fish have been behaving oddly. None of it adds up. In that respect, Jack Vanderbilt was right to discern an intelligent mind behind the chaos. But he overestimated our ability - no scientist knows anything like enough about marine ecology to be capable of manipulating it to that extent. People are fond of saying that we know more about space than we do about the oceans. It’s perfectly true, but there’s a simple reason why: we can’t see or move as well in the water as we can in outer space. The Hubble telescope peers effortlessly into different galaxies, but the world’s strongest floodlight only illuminates a dozen square metres of seabed. An astronaut in a spacesuit can move with almost total freedom, but even the most sophisticated divesuit won’t stop you being crushed to death beyond a certain depth. AUVs and ROVs are only operational if the conditions are right. We don’t have the physical constitution or the technology to deposit billions of worms on underwater hydrates, let alone the requisite knowledge to engineer them for a habitat that we barely understand. Besides, there are all the other phenomena: deep-sea cables being destroyed at the bottom of the ocean by forces other than the underwater slide; plagues of jellyfish and mussels rising from the abyssal plains. The simplest explanation would be to see these developments as part of a plan, but such a plan could only be the work of a species that knows the ocean as intimately as we do the land - a species that lives in the depths and plays the dominant role in that particular universe.
”
”
Frank Schätzing (The Swarm: A Novel)
“
Servers swept across the floor as they could hear invisible music to oohs and aahs from all the tables. Ours presented us with a palm-sized white plate with two teensy golden choux pastry puffs.
"Foie gras spheres with Sauternes jelly," he proclaimed.
The sweet-savory cloud dissolved on my plate, and I couldn't help but hum. "Holy crap, can I have fifty of those and call it a day?" I said. "That's fantastic."
Nicole nudged me with a grin. "Told you."
After the puffs came neatly squared smoked eel sandwiches, the fish's smoky richness bitten off by sharp horseradish. They were delicious, and fairy-sized. So were the next two dishes.
”
”
Sarah Chamberlain (The Slowest Burn)
“
So the jelly fish slowly walked towards the pine-tree. In those ancient days the jelly fish had four legs and a hard shell like a tortoise.
”
”
Yei Theodora Ozaki (Japanese Fairy Tales)
“
1 cup milk plus: 1. Small bowl cold cereal + blueberries + yogurt 2. 1 egg, scrambled or boiled + 1 slice toast + strawberries 3. 1 cut-up chicken sausage + toast + ½ banana 4. ½ bagel + cream cheese + raspberries 5. 1 slice ham on toast + ½ orange 6. ½ tortilla rolled up with cheese + melon + yogurt 7. Small bowl oatmeal + cut-up bananas and strawberries Lunch and Dinner 1. 1 salmon cake + carrots + rice 2. Fish pie + broccoli 3. 3 oz salmon + cup of pasta + peas 4. 2 fish sticks + cup couscous + veg 5. ½ breast of chicken + veg + small potato 6. Roast chicken + dumplings + veg 7. 1 meat or peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich + apple + yogurt 8. 1 small homemade pizza + fruit 9. Pasta with tomato sauce and cheese + veg 10. Chicken risotto + veg 11. Ground beef + potato + peas 12. Small tuna pasta bake + veg 13. 4 meatballs + pasta + veg 14. Chicken stir-fry with veg + rice
”
”
Jo Frost (Jo Frost's Toddler Rules: Your 5-Step Guide to Shaping Proper Behavior)
“
The Army had your soul, once you’d been in it all those years—there were things you couldn’t shake off so easy, because they’d gone deep into you, and it was painful when they came out, because of the roots they’d grown, right deep down in your guts.
Name and number? Watson, 606. Smarten up there, Private Watson! You’re a soldier now, you know, not a bloody jelly fish! Get that salute right, private! Sir! Sir! Sir! Corporal, what’s your unit? Corporal Watson, dress that man! You are in charge of this rabble, Corp’l Watson? Sir! Report to my quarters, Sarnt Watson, oh six hundred hours! You should know better than that, Sergeant—now get those men in order! Sir! Sir! Sir!
Hold, Watty.
”
”
Elleston Trevor (The Flight of the Phoenix)
“
Take some jelly and a fish
”
”
Julian Smith
“
Edible flowers have many culinary uses. Sought after for their flavors, aromas, textures and colours, edible flowers are used fresh, frozen, dried, crystallized or as a foam - in molecular gastronomy - and appear in meat and fish dishes, pastas, salads, soups and desserts. Some common forms of edible flowers are found in garnishes, candied sweets, confits and jellies, pickled flowers or flower vinegars; flavourings such as essences and spice blends; food dyes and colourings; teas, infusions and tisanes; flavoured waters and syrups; and liquors, cordials, bitters, wine, beer and mead.
”
”
Constance Kirker (Edible Flowers: A Global History)
“
In one word, I have a message to give. I have no time to be sweet to the world, and every attempt at sweetness makes me a hypocrite. I will die a thousand deaths rather than lead a jelly-fish existence and yield to every requirement of this foolish world, no matter whether it be my own country or a foreign country. You are mistaken, utterly mistaken, if you think I have a work, as Mrs. Bull thinks; I have no work under or beyond the sun. I have a message, and I will give it after my own fashion. I will neither Hinduise my message, nor Christianise it, nor make it any ‘ise’ in the world. I will only my-ise it and that is all. Liberty, Mukti, is all my religion, and everything that tries to curb it, I will avoid by fight or flight.
”
”
Chaturvedi Badrinath (Swami Vivekananda: The Living Vedanta)
“
like a pantry that moves with the day. In the middle should be peanut butter and jelly, maybe cans of tuna fish.
”
”
Annabel Monaghan (Summer Romance)
“
People born from the bird egg are interested in beauty, order, harmony and meaning”.
“People born from a fish egg appear in flotation of jelly, and this jelly contains hundreds and thousands of eggs, where the most important thing is not any individual egg, but the condition of the many”.
“People born from the bear egg is like a child holding on to their very best doll. Bears do not have a pragmatic way of thinking, and which their favorites can be sacrificed for some higher end. Bears claim a few people to love and protect, and feel untared by their choice; they are turned towards those they can smell and touch”.
”
”
Sheila Heti
“
Most comb jellies have little direct effect on humans, except through a minor role in marine food webs. One species, however, stands apart as the villain of the basal invertebrates. In the 1980s, the Atlantic comb jelly Mnemiopsis was accidentally introduced into the Black Sea, probably in ballast water carried by commercial shipping. Once in its new environment, away from natural competitors and predators, it reproduced rapidly – all the while consuming vast quantities of larval fish and crustaceans. Some (controversial) estimates placed the total seething mass of diminutive comb jellies in the Black Sea at over half a billion tonnes. The local anchovy fishery, already under heavy fishing pressure, was decimated. While ecologists debated what to do, a possible solution arrived, unplanned, in the shape of another accidental introduction. The newcomer was a second comb jelly, this time the voracious Beroe. Fortuitously, Beroe does not eat fish or crustaceans, but is instead a specialist predator of other comb jellies and nothing else. As the invading Beroe now feast on the Mnemiopsis, the fish stocks are showing gradual and welcome signs of recovery.
”
”
Peter Holland (The Animal Kingdom: A Very Short Introduction)
“
She knew what she was, and she finally knew what it meant to shine, shine rare like a jelly fish.
”
”
Summer Breeze (The Unstoppable Shine)
“
Well, Big A. Since we’re both in the ‘sharing is caring’ mood, care to tell me how you four fell in with each other? I mean, no offense, but y’all are about as opposite as salt and jelly fish.”
“I’m sorry…did you say jelly fish?”
“Yup. Sure did. Totally opposite things, right?”
“Uh…yeah. I suppose so.”
“So the phrasing works.”
“Okay, but the actual phrasing is ‘as opposite as salt and pepper’. You know that, right?”
“First of all, people put salt and pepper in almost everything, so apparently they do, in fact, go together. Second of all, pepper is boring. Jelly fish are cool, and way more opposite. They’re all ‘Bzzz! Bzzz! I sting you! Von, two, tree times! Mwa ha ha’!” She cackled in a Count Von Count voice.
”
”
D.S. O'Neill (Demon Bones (The Soul Series #2))
“
Tokyu Food Show!" Oscar and Nik both said.
I eagerly followed the gang to their favorite local food spot in Shibuya Station, where another Japanese department store with a basement food hall offered dazzling displays of grilled eel, fried pork, fish salad, sushi, seafood-and-rice wraps, dumplings, mochi cakes, chocolates, and jellied confections.
”
”
Rachel Cohn (My Almost Flawless Tokyo Dream Life)
“
I’m sure our newcomers appreciate hearing that being diagnosed with HIV is not all doom and gloom.” The leader’s gaze swept over all the others in the circle. “With an attitude like Duncan’s, great things will happen to you. Don’t let the disease define you. Make the disease work for you instead.” An hour later, the meeting was over. John had gotten the opportunity to introduce himself to the group, something he would have preferred to have skipped, but that wasn’t allowed. Everyone must participate in that part; only the question and answer session that followed was optional. He hadn’t mentioned that he used to be a cop, certainly not that he had been fired. He’d just said that he was a private eye and that he would be happy to be their spy if they needed one. “That wasn’t so bad now, was it?” Linda asked John when they were outside the room and in the hallway, where donuts and coffee and tea were served. Most of the participants milled around there, connecting with each other. John shrugged and grabbed a jelly donut. “I guess not.” The bespectacled leader named Robert came up to them then. He was on the short side and had an emaciated face with delicate features. He stuck out a bony hand toward John. John took it and gave it a firm shake. “John, it’s so nice to have you join us today,” Robert said with a broad smile that displayed big, graying teeth. Robert was HIV-positive as well, and in the chronic HIV stage. “Thank you for having me,” John said and returned the smile as best he could. “It’s been very…educational. I’m glad I came.” “Great,” Robert said, then his attention went to Linda. “Thanks for bringing your friend, Linda. And for coming again yourself.” “Oh, of course,” Linda said and smiled. Her hazel eyes glittered with warmth. “It’s a great group and you’re a great leader.” “Thank you. That’s so kind of you to say.” Robert tossed a glance over his shoulder, then leaned in toward John and Linda. “I just wanted to apologize for Doris.” “Apologize?” Linda repeated. “What did she do?” “Well, for starters, she’s not 33. She’s 64 and has been infected for thirty years. She’s also a former heroin addict and prostitute. She likes to pretend that she’s someone else entirely, and because we don’t want to upset her, we humor her. We pretend she’s being truthful when she talks about herself. I’d appreciate it if you help us keep her in the dark.” That last sentence had a tension to it that the rest of Robert’s words hadn’t had. It was almost like he’d warned them not to go against his will, or else. Not that it had been necessary to impress that on either John or Linda. John especially appreciated the revelation. Maybe having HIV was not as gruesome as Doris had made it seem then. Six Yvonne jerked awake when the phone rang. It rang and rang for several seconds before she realized where she was and what was going on. She pushed herself up on the bed and glanced around for the device. When she eventually spotted it on the floor beside the bed, it had stopped ringing. Even so, she rolled over on her side and fished it up to the bed. Crossing her legs Indian-style, she checked who had called her. It was Gabe, which was no surprise. He was the only one who had her latest burner number. He had left her a voicemail. She played it. “Mom, good news. I have the meds. Jane came through. Where do you want me to drop them off? Should I come to the motel? Call me.” Exhilaration streamed through her and she was suddenly wide awake. She made a fist in the air. Yes! Finally something was going their way. Now all they had to do was connect without Gabe leading the cops to her. She checked the time on the ancient clock radio on the nightstand. It was past six o’clock. So she must have slept
”
”
Julia Derek (Cuckoo Avenged (Cuckoo Series, #4))
“
branzino in salt crust branzino in crosta di sale 1 whole 4-pound branzino, sea bass, striped bass, loup de mer, or red snapper, cleaned and scaled Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper ½ cup extra virgin olive oil ½ lemon, sliced ½ orange, sliced 3 sprigs fresh tarragon 3 sprigs fresh oregano 1 bay leaf 1 garlic clove, sliced 2 pounds kosher salt 1 tablespoon fennel seeds 1 tablespoon black peppercorns 8 large egg whites 1 tablespoon chopped fresh tarragon 1 tablespoon chopped fresh basil 1 tablespoon chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley 4 lemon wedges or slices 1 Preheat the oven to 375°F. 2 With a pair of shears, cut out the gills of the fish, if necessary, and wash the inner cavity. Season the cavity to taste with salt and pepper and drizzle with about ¼ cup of olive oil. Put the lemon and orange slices, tarragon, oregano, bay leaf, and garlic in the cavity of the fish and gently press the two sides of the fish together. 3 In a large bowl, stir 2 pounds of kosher salt and the fennel seeds, peppercorns, and egg whites to a paste-like consistency. You might find it easiest to mix this with your hands. 4 Spread a ½-inch layer of the salt paste over a shallow baking pan, such as a jelly roll pan, large enough to hold the fish. Put the stuffed fish on top of the salt. 5 Pack the rest of the salt paste around and over the fish so that it is completely encased. 6 Bake the fish for 30 to 45 minutes, depending on the weight of the fish. A full 4-pound fish will require 40 minutes; a fish that weighs a little more than 4 pounds will need 45 minutes. Do not overcook. 7 Remove the pan from the oven and let the fish rest, still encased in the salt, for 5 to 8 minutes. Using a mallet or the handle of a heavy knife, crack the salt. If the fish is cooked through so that the flesh just flakes and is opaque, remove all the salt using a knife and spoon to lift it off. If the fish needs a little more cooking, rest the chunks of salt back on top of it and return it to the oven for 5 or 6 minutes, or until done. Let it rest again for about 5 minutes before removing all the salt. 8 Drizzle the fish with ¼ cup of olive oil and sprinkle with the chopped tarragon, basil, and parsley. Serve with a wedge or slice of lemon. This is one of my all-time favorite recipes—partly because I love the drama of cracking open the salt shell and exposing the fish, but mainly because it tastes so good. The salt case keeps the fish perfectly moist but does not make it especially salty. In fact, the fish is perfectly cooked and flavored. Cooking fish this way is a technique as old as ancient Rome, and for all its tableside drama it’s surprisingly easy. It’s important to begin with a 4-pound fish (or one slightly larger). I like this
”
”
Rick Tramonto (Osteria: Hearty Italian Fare from Rick Tramonto's Kitchen: A Cookbook)
“
Feel like a piece of drawn threadwork, or an undeveloped negative, or a jelly fish on stilts, or a sloppy tadpole, or a weevil in a nut, or a spitchcocked eel. In other words and in short—ill.
”
”
W.N.P. Barbellion (The Journal of a Disappointed Man)
“
He moves from point to point with as little uproar as a jelly fish.
”
”
P.G. Wodehouse (My Man Jeeves (Jeeves, #1))