A soft, spreadable, fresh sheep's milk cheese, so named because it slips from its rind as it matures. It can be obtained plain, or with garlic and herbs, or peppercorns. It is available in cylinders or discs. This was a Silver Medal winner at the 1996 British Cheese Awards.
A variety of lobster with a flat tail, shaped somewhat like a slipper, which is the edible part. The Mediterranean slipper lobster is generally used for flavouring soups as it does not carry much meat. However, the Australian variety from Queensland, Scyllarides squammosis, is a good meaty lobster. It is found in warm waters.
A name for the Balmain bug, a type of sand lobster found around the southern coasts of Australia and in some parts of the north west but mainly off the eastern seaboard. Sand lobsters are any of a variety of small crustaceans bearing a resemblance to lobsters and which bury themselves in sand or mud during the day. There are many of them, including bay bug, bay lobster, shovel-nosed lobster and rudder-nosed lobster which is similar to a slipper lobster. Moreton Bay bugs and Balmain bugs are available commercially. Moreton Bay bugs are slightly more triangular than the Balmain bug, which also have their eyes placed very centrally, while those of the Moreton Bay bug are placed right out on the margin of the carapace. They are available at around 25 cm (10") in length. Balmain bugs are said to be sligthly inferior in flavour to Moreton Bay bugs, which are also a little larger in size.
The slippery Jack mushrooms is listed as edible but some people do have allergic reactions to it. The sliminess always makes it just seem unattractive to me and I have never eatne it. (If gathering mushrooms you must be absolutely certain what you have before you eat them as many are very poisonous.)
A fruit infused gin. Sloes, the wild plum-like fruit of the blackthorn plant, are added to gin as a flavoring.
The sloe berry is a wild fruit like a small, tart plum with purple skin and yellow flesh which grows on the blackthorn. It is famously used to make sloe gin.
