I saw this on the BBC website yesterday and thought you'd like it. It's mindbending. In case you're too busy to read the whole article, it tells the compelling story of an Australian cookery book which inadvertently listed 'salt and freshly ground black people' as an ingredient in the recipe for, ironically, spelt tagliatelle. As is to be expected, almost the entire print run is being recalled, at a cost of around £12k (for which you could finance two schools in the Third World, natch).
Is there any need? It's not as if there's anything remotely offensive or loaded about the concept of grinding, for heavens' sake. On the scale of oppressive culinary punning, this rates somewhere below that giant in the BFG saying that people from Wellington taste like rubber boots and Swedes have a sweden sour flavour.
I, for one, would love to have a book with a comedic misprint in it. I can't believe that anyone was genuinely worried about some nameless copy editor harbouring secret desires to grind the blacks (why didn't Eugene Terre'blanche ever use that as a slogan?) or that any readers, even in Australia, might take the instructions at face value and start grating Aborigines. Well, maybe in Queensland, but the odds are against anyone sitting in a tin shack in the Atherton Tableland deciding that they need a break from kangaroo steaks and whipping the spelt pasta out.
Crackers.
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