Detective Sarah and the mystery of Morbido

Further to my nougat rant a little while back, I learned something else to do with nougat today that I thought I ought to share in case there's other nougat lovers out there randomly biting into things they've snatched off shelves and paid for with nary a glance at the packaging save to ascertain that it bears the word 'nougat'. Ahem.

On another visit to Superior Fruit in Graceville today, I noticed that they had some beautiful, shiny packages labelled 'Torrone'. The genuine article! After a little squeeze of the packet to determine the texture (hard-chewy vs soft), and a scan of the ingredients list (having learned my lesson after my last brush with that godawful Nougat Limar), we paid up and took our prize home... Actually we bought a bunch of other stuff on impulse too, Superior Fruit have so many delicious things it's impossible to go home without an impulse buy. Even though I'm on a wheat and dairy-free diet for the next couple of weeks (to see if it helps Setri- more on that in another post) I managed to come home with a bunch of yummy stuff. Anyway, I digress. But the shiny green and golden foil package of torrone worked wonders to distract Setri from whinging in the car on the way home!

Once home I unwrapped the beautiful packaging and discovered something terrible: inside the first layer of foil was a piece of silver cardboard, and inside that was another silver foil package containing the torrone. Soft torrone!

Woe is me and all that... despite the failure to obtain nougat of my preferred texture, I must admit this stuff is absolutely delicious. It contains almonds, pistachios and candied orange and citron. The only disappointment is how squishy it is.

How to save myself from making this particular mistake again? I thought surely the packaging, labelled in Italian, might provide a clue. My knowledge of the Italian language is basically limited to the musical terms I picked up over the years I spent learning piano. Not that helpful.

Some wording on the package beneath the large-font 'Torrone' stated:

"Morbido con mandorle et pistacchi"

Ok. The last word was obviously referring to the pistachio nuts. 'Mandorle' sounded familiar- almonds? 'Con' means 'with'. So something with almond and pistachio. The location of the something would be the perfect place for a descriptor of the texture- soft, or hard or whatever.

It's stupid, but I thought "Ok... morbido... sounds like morbid. Nothing like 'hard' or 'soft'. But if it was going to be one or the other... morbid... when a person is morbidly obese they are very soft! Aha!". Then, as you do, I confirmed with Google. 'Torrone morbido' is indeed soft torrone. I really doubt that the etymology of the word has anything to do with the -ahem- brilliant logic I used to figure it out (I have to go and look it up now!), but there you go.

So, lovers of soft torrone should look out for the word 'morbido' to appear somewhere on the packaging, and lovers of the hard stuff should avoid it like the plague. Don't rely on a surreptitious squeeze of the package to tell you all you need to know, or you might be deceived- like I was- by cunningly placed cardboard! Unless there's no alternative, in which case any nougat that contains the proper ingredients will satisfy cravings until the good stuff comes along... Mmmm.

Nougat Limar. They put WHAT in it??

Sure, it looks good...

I am a lover of nougat. My personal preference is for the hard (chewy, not brittle) Italian-style torrone. I detest nougat with peanuts and dislike pretty much any with any kind of dried fruit except sour cherries, as well as nougat flavoured with  chocolate etc. I like plain nougat with pistachios, almonds or macadamias, in that order, maybe with a bit of honey as long as it doesn't up the sweetness too much.

Now, being a fairly simple product with few ingredients, even the nougat I 'dislike' is generally fairly edible. Definitely not objectionable, so I have no qualms about giving an unfamiliar nougat a go.

After a bad experience buying a new nougat at some markets a few years ago, however, I tried to break myself of this happy-go-lucky approach to nougat. The nougat I bought at the markets tasted salty. "WTF?", I thought at the time. "Nougat doesn't have salt!". I checked the ingredients listed for the pistachio, cherry and cranberry 'Nougat Limar' I had just purchased. Salt was in the list of ingredients. I resolved never to buy the disgusting stuff again. It was hard- I kept seeing this appealing-looking nougat everywhere. Nougat even appeared in the bulk food aisle at Mrs Flannery's, and after buying, tasting and discarding it because it was salty I'm pretty sure it was Nougat Limar, as it was the same pistachio and cranberry flavour as I'd once bought at those markets.

I had made a habit of satisfying my nougat cravings with a reliable purchase of pistachio torrone from the wonderful deli Samios Foods whenever we went there. But slowly it disappeared from their shelves and was not restocked. The horror! So today I did a very stupid thing. I saw some very attractive-looking pistachio nougat at the equally wonderful Superior Fruit. They stock lots of high-quality products. Could it be a good one? I gave it a squeeze and it didn't feel too squishy (I only realised later that it said 'soft, French-style'), so I popped it in our basket. It was Nougat Limar, but I couldn't remember the brand of the Nougat I had resolved never to buy. I didn't think to check the ingredients list to ascertain whether it was dodgy until after it had been passed through the register. What can I say, it was 11am and I hadn't even had a coffee, let alone breakfast! Salt. Never mind, I was starving and had no time to eat any real food before breastfeeding Setri and putting him down for a nap. I tried a piece. The taste of salt was there alright, but it wasn't as overpowering as I remembered.

Later I came back for more. There was another odd taste that really shouldn't be present. Real nougat is made, basically, from egg whites and sugar. It has a very clean taste. This tasted cloying, claggy... it tasted of... powdered milk! That was it!

I checked the ingredients list, reading it thoroughly this time.

Sure enough: 'Milk solids'. Powdered milk! Nougat Limar don't just put in salt, they put powdered bloody milk in their 'nougat'. No wonder it's so revolting. Why is this stuff everywhere??? (Don't tell me the answer to that- I know the sad answer is because most people eat it and like it... most people have no taste!).

Got to find me some genuine, chewy hard torrone to drown my sorrows, to alleviate my thwarted craving for good, honest nougat *sob*.


What's more, on their website they have a link to a page titled 'Our Ingredients'. Except it doesn't tell you a single frickin' thing about their ingredients! It has the varieties of 'nougat' that they flog to unsuspecting consumers, and a big, breathy announcement that "Nougat Limar is Gluten Free". Oh yes, they're so special... just like all those other nougats that taste better, don't have shonky ingredients and are also gluten free because- get this- EGG WHITES AND SUGAR AND NUTS ARE ALL GLUTEN FREE!


GRR.


Why yes, yes I am feeling especially ranty tonight. But the shonky bastards deserved it- I already had a pent-up tirade from the first time I tried their stupid salty nougat a couple of years ago :)