Things that I don't like to eat

We'll start with brain pie...

In my line of work, I’m often asked what my favourite things are to cook and eat. I suppose I get that. The problem is that as most of you will understand, that’s a tricky question. I like pretty much everything, or at least I think I do, so as much as it’s an easy question to answer, it also is actually quite difficult as the choices are almost endless. So lets turn that one on its head…

While scrolling through Substack Notes this week, I saw that the excellent Wil Reidi had asked a question about our least favourite things. I like that.

Inspiration. Thank you, Wil. And so it is that this piece today is about things that I don’t like.

I always say that I like pretty much everything, but that surely can’t be right because I can be quite picky if the mood takes me. In fact, I often find myself pretending I don’t like something when in fact it’s just my brain tricking me. Usually, it’s a discussion between my wife and me whereby she’ll ask me to get something from the store and I’ll pull a face, only to be reminded later that I’m actually an idiot and I do actually quite like it. There are many examples of this and I’m not overly proud of my inflexibility.

So. Things I don’t really like. We’ll start with brains

Years back. starving at five in the afternoon after being at work for around ten hours already, and with another seven at least to go, having not eaten pretty much anything all day as I simply hadn’t had the time, except for a couple of broken potato galettes and the trimmed end of someone’s lamb canon, it was time for staff food. The time of day when someone cared enough to take an hour or so out of their schedule to cobble something together that was decent enough for a dozen starving cooks to eat. Waiters also would get fed, but on the whole they were mostly ungrateful in every place I ever worked. I’ll visit that on another occasion.

Lets not get confused here. Staff food in a nice restaurant is probably not quite what you might imagine. We don’t order off menu. One of the cooks will most likely braise something, make a lasagne or roast some fish portions. Generally as standards go, we always ate good food. Sometimes we didn’t. I once had a sous chef, Graeme, who liked to upset the front of house staff by adding unnecessary ingredients to dishes. Like instant coffee powder to soup. Just a little, but just enough to play mind games. There is a newsletter in there somewhere so I’ll stop.

The Chef Patron had made us dinner that day, so I was more than happy to see two large gastro trays of fish pie on the bench. I love fish pie. It was cheesy, golden and crunchy on top, the sauce was creamy and the chunks of fish were huge. Except that they weren’t chunks of fish.

I had a taken a spoonful and was mid chew when I realised that we had a bucket of lambs’ brains in the walk-in fridge for the last few days soaking in salted water, and as the dish hadn’t been that popular we’d quite a few left. That was until now when I realised we has precisely none left as Chef had put them in the pie I was currently chewing. Brain pie.

As a child, for some weird reason, I wasn’t too fond of bacon, vanilla ice cream or baked potatoes. I can happily say whatever had convinced me of such stupidity has long since disappeared. Bacon I think I found too salty, baked potatoes from the Aga tasted burnt, and vanilla ice cream… well I just don’t know. All the more peculiar as I used to eat raw sausages and once drank paintstripper.

Turkish delight. I think I don’t like that, but in fact, I do. I love it, just not the cheap nasty one in that pink packet that tastes of lavatory cleaner. Not that I’ve tasted lavatory cleaner but you get the point.

Summer truffles. I don’t like at all. They taste like cardboard, hardly have any aroma, but just look pretty. I’m well past the point in my career of using unnecessary faff on plates and I think that summer truffles embody faff. They’re expensive just for the fact that they somehow get to be called a truffle. I mean you could inhale all day and all you’ll get is a little musty sock if you’re lucky. Three hundred quid a kilo for something akin to eating paper that tastes of musty sock. No thank you.

Sous vide. I will one day devote an entire newsletter to my absolute hatred of sous vide. That won’t be today. I’ll really wind myself up about it so I do it justice. Pretending to be clever by denaturing proteins at fifty-three degrees is not my idea of fun. Especially when it’s langoustines in a one-star restaurant when I spent the next two days suffering from some kind of bacterial borne illness that I care not to repeat. Placing food in plastic bags and letting it sit in warm water baths for days is not really cooking for me. It makes the texture of meat weird, and I don’t think that warm plastic is an ingredient I really approve of no matter what the pouch manufacturers say. I know there are those that do it well. There are many that don’t. Learn to cook properly. In a pan. With butter. Use your fingers to test when things are cooked. And no reverse searing, please.

PHOTO: COURTESY OF JACQUES-LOUIS DELPAL

Andouillettes. Bum sausage. Enough said. Just wrong. Not even mustard can disguise that pong.

That rhymed.

Strawberries are something that I struggle to eat. After too many years of eating them when they’re not ripe, I mostly now won’t eat them at all. Except for sorbet. Also the ones my wife chops into sugar and leaves for an hour to steep. I like those. And huge blood-red ones from Spain that you can smell at twenty paces. I really love those. Why do shops even sell them when the tips are still pale?

The little bones in tinned sardines. Oh the horror. They crumble into powder in your teeth for God’s sake. I love sardines and I love tinned sardines, though you’ll find me religiously picking out the neat little spinal column every time without fail. One crunch is enough to make me put my knife and fork together

I’m interested when people tell me that they don’t like certain ingredients, especially if it’s something I’m about to prepare for lunch, I like to understand why they don’t like it. You should have a reason not to like something. Just not liking it isn’t something I can understand. I’m interested in why exactly. Is it taste, texture, smell or a combination? I do think that memory plays a part in this process.

Oh, and dates. Peculiar things. Especially when they are not dried. The fresh greenish-yellow ones hanging in bunches that you see in the greengrocer. Very astringent and they suck all of the moisture out of your mouth for an hour.

I don’t like those either.

Until Thursday

William