Sous vide is a crime. I'm glad you bring up the textural aspect of such meat. The texture always makes me think of what I feel eating raw human must feel like.
I did have very good brains with brown butter and capers once though. Very pleasant.
A very fun piece, Will. Honoured to have helped bring it to life!
I'm with you on the andouillettes and the sous vide. When everyone around me was losing their comprehensive minds about the putative wonders of sous vide all I could think was whether they'd never learned how to use a bain-marie.
Andouillette are pure filth. I never understood why everyone got so excited about boil in the bag, just awful. And then we get lectured about how great it is by social media cooks.
I can’t quite get over the Strawberry Thing. All I see in England are the incredible strawberries 🍓. Small, red, soft-inside-in-a-good-way, juicy & perfumed, according to all the posts I read and tennis commentators at Wimbledon. In CA, we somehow ended up with strawberries like lemons. The size & astringency of, without the juice and apple-crunchy to boot. Seriously terrible. Cringe-worthy. Always have to roast or macerate heavily. Same for raspberries. 😕
I live in Wimbledon and am well acquainted with good strawberries as a result. My sister lives in Las Vegas. When we visit her for Christmas (not strawberry season!) she always has a big bowl of “strawberries” in the fridge that last a couple of weeks, are more similar to apples than berries and have zero taste. Complaining about her strawberries (those aren’t strawberries) is my go-to gripe when I’m in the mood to be annoying. 😂
Oh see! You know. Those strawberries your LV sister gets come from either Mexico or CA, although not at Christmas. Our strawberry season is Feb/Mar. at least it’s supposed to be! Huge as houses and narly. Every time Tennis Channel shows the boxes of berries with lashings of cream, I have to turn away because I’m dying of envy.
As a kid I hated pizza. I don't know what I was thinking. Nowadays, the only thing I can't really stomach is tripe (pun intended). Which is a problem because I've just moved to Porto, the residents of which are nicknamed "Tripeiros" for their love of the stuff. I once had it presented to me at 2am in a wine bar lock in, as a special late night snack. Couldn't do it.
Tripe is another one of those things. My father loves it. I don’t. I was once shown a tripe recipe involving sealing it in a huge copper pan with a paste, leaving it in a bread oven for 36 hours to work it’s magic. After everything then we stirred a pot of mustard through it. It wasn’t nice. My head chef was a three star Michelin French man who was so proud to show me what his grandmother had taught him I didn’t have the heart to tell him.
Interesting to read your dislike of sous vide - my cooking teacher Chef David Duverger also said (despite using the technique) that sous vide was a ‘lazy way of cooking’, and insisted that it was important to learn to cook using pans properly...
One hundred per cent. It’s lazy and deskills chefs. It’s important to be able to cook portions of meat to the correct cuisson by touch. There are some that say the texture is good, but I disagree. Also the warm plastic factor makes me unsure.
My mom, an excellent cook (& my muse in the kitchen), made fried calf brains once, when I was about 10. I could not stomach it and fried myself an egg. I don’t think anyone at the table truly enjoyed them, mom included. Also, I will never, ever eat insects. Nope.
Cooked gooseberries!! Oh goodness, just writing it makes me feel decidedly unwell! I had a plate of them plonked in front of me at one of my first school lunches, (60 years ago, at the tender age of 4), and it was served with that synthetic cream that whiffed of petrol fumes, well that’s what it smelt like to me anyway. I promptly vomited all over it and was subsequently marched briskly to the lavatories to clean up. On my return to the school dining room, there was another plate of them waiting for me - so I was sick over that plate too! Luckily, I was sent home after that, but to this day I can hardly utter the name of that berry without heaving. Oh and coriander leaf - but I haven’t thrown up over that - yet!
I remember half cooked doughnuts at school. They were raw in the middle. That and spam with beetroot. My friend at the time puked and they did the same with her as they did to you.
Talk about a crime! Cripes. Half-cooked doughnuts? Spam & beets? Plates of gooseberries (which I love but not plonked as is at school)? All Crimes Against Food Decency!
I, too, had school lunch trauma. We emigrated from Austria and my 1st day at school we marched down to the cafeteria whereupon some faceless person slid skin-colored divided plates through the pass-through. They lost me right there with the weird plates but undaunted I proceeded to the table. On this divided plate was unidentifiable stuff (to me): a sandwich of white Wonder Bread, thick with peanut butter (never before seen), covered in great blobs of Concord grape jelly so that the squishy sandwich had volcanoes of jelly. One bite and I couldn’t open my mouth. Literally glued my mouth together. The other offering was canned Boston baked beans swimming in super sweet tasteless goo. I told my parents, “If you ever do that to me again, I’ll burn the place down!”
Peas. Fresh, canned, cooked, mashed. As a baby, I would immediately spit them out and as an adult have to steal myself when they are added to a dish to give it ‘color’ or ‘a veggie.’ Will eat around them like I’m still five. They’re sweet (vegetables should not be sweet) and crunchy but also mushy? Blech.
Skate - when l was little l was told to ‘eat up’ - except it was off! These days l only have to see skate on a menu or at the fishmongers and l get a visceral response and smell ammonia 🤢!
I’ve had pig brain nuggets and much like sweetbreads l just can’t get past the texture.
Oh I love skate! Can’t get that here in California, but skate wings in brown butter... mmmmm. My classical French side is showing up on this post! Ha ha ha!
Brains are lovely panfried like sweetbreads. Andouille no....Once had thanksgiving turkey done sous vide (why???) so revolting in every way like kleenex wads dipped in warm milk.
Yes, yes, yes! With brown butter and capers. Oh my. But... I think plonking them in pie/sauce maybe would be unpleasant in texture. I mean, I’m adventurous but even I think that’s gonna be weird. Totally get why he did it, but did anyone actually eat it? Might just as well tossed them out. Or just sautéed them up.
I know I know. Everyone loves them. I love all brassica’s & other khols and can’t for the life of me understand why they do me wrong. Every year going on .. ugh.. at least 50, I try them, thinking oh, this time I’ll fall in like. Raw, roasted, steamed, baked, grated, boiled (😬), blanched. Nope. Not yet. Same problem with Scotch.
Oh that's interesting tho that you like the other brassicas. One of my great "likes" is roasted and charred brassicas with lots of salt to balance the bitter char.
On the brain theme: plain cauliflower. As a vegetable on the plate? Blech! As a carrier of flavour? Bring it on! Cauliflower is a cheap and cheerless vegetable that sometimes get used to bring up the count to meat and three veg. But I'm showing my age there.
Hey you, I love this. As a chef too, my answer to this question is usually, badly cooked food......We are doing very similar things. Perhaps you would enjoy my blog :)
I have to agree with many of your points - I think there will be a few posts off the back of this one. I struggle with foods that I don't not like, for example I can not eat liver or kidney - it's not that I don't like them so much it is the texture. If it is ground up and mixed with other ingredients I enjoy the flavours.
I like truffle but I don't like it that much to lord it up like a magnificent beast, but I am forever told that I must have underdeveloped sense of taste or smell not to love them more then life itself - just nonsense.
I once saw sous vide tripe on the menu - it had to be a joke, I'm sure the chef just put it on there to see which idiot bought it and charged them an extra £10 supplement for the pleasure.
Sous vide is a crime. I'm glad you bring up the textural aspect of such meat. The texture always makes me think of what I feel eating raw human must feel like.
I did have very good brains with brown butter and capers once though. Very pleasant.
A very fun piece, Will. Honoured to have helped bring it to life!
So glad we are of the same opinion, and as you are of a different age group to me I like that the opinion has filtered down to your peers.
I'm with you on the andouillettes and the sous vide. When everyone around me was losing their comprehensive minds about the putative wonders of sous vide all I could think was whether they'd never learned how to use a bain-marie.
Andouillette are pure filth. I never understood why everyone got so excited about boil in the bag, just awful. And then we get lectured about how great it is by social media cooks.
I can’t quite get over the Strawberry Thing. All I see in England are the incredible strawberries 🍓. Small, red, soft-inside-in-a-good-way, juicy & perfumed, according to all the posts I read and tennis commentators at Wimbledon. In CA, we somehow ended up with strawberries like lemons. The size & astringency of, without the juice and apple-crunchy to boot. Seriously terrible. Cringe-worthy. Always have to roast or macerate heavily. Same for raspberries. 😕
I hate to say it but Spanish are a superior fruit to English.
Has the availability of such produce been impacted by Brexit?
I live in Wimbledon and am well acquainted with good strawberries as a result. My sister lives in Las Vegas. When we visit her for Christmas (not strawberry season!) she always has a big bowl of “strawberries” in the fridge that last a couple of weeks, are more similar to apples than berries and have zero taste. Complaining about her strawberries (those aren’t strawberries) is my go-to gripe when I’m in the mood to be annoying. 😂
Oh see! You know. Those strawberries your LV sister gets come from either Mexico or CA, although not at Christmas. Our strawberry season is Feb/Mar. at least it’s supposed to be! Huge as houses and narly. Every time Tennis Channel shows the boxes of berries with lashings of cream, I have to turn away because I’m dying of envy.
As a kid I hated pizza. I don't know what I was thinking. Nowadays, the only thing I can't really stomach is tripe (pun intended). Which is a problem because I've just moved to Porto, the residents of which are nicknamed "Tripeiros" for their love of the stuff. I once had it presented to me at 2am in a wine bar lock in, as a special late night snack. Couldn't do it.
Tripe is another one of those things. My father loves it. I don’t. I was once shown a tripe recipe involving sealing it in a huge copper pan with a paste, leaving it in a bread oven for 36 hours to work it’s magic. After everything then we stirred a pot of mustard through it. It wasn’t nice. My head chef was a three star Michelin French man who was so proud to show me what his grandmother had taught him I didn’t have the heart to tell him.
Interesting to read your dislike of sous vide - my cooking teacher Chef David Duverger also said (despite using the technique) that sous vide was a ‘lazy way of cooking’, and insisted that it was important to learn to cook using pans properly...
One hundred per cent. It’s lazy and deskills chefs. It’s important to be able to cook portions of meat to the correct cuisson by touch. There are some that say the texture is good, but I disagree. Also the warm plastic factor makes me unsure.
My mom, an excellent cook (& my muse in the kitchen), made fried calf brains once, when I was about 10. I could not stomach it and fried myself an egg. I don’t think anyone at the table truly enjoyed them, mom included. Also, I will never, ever eat insects. Nope.
I can totally understand this.
Mushrooms - I just can’t, even though I know they’re not all slimy and ‘gooberey’. I’m deeply scarred by bad experiences!
Quite strange how the brain tricks us.
Cooked gooseberries!! Oh goodness, just writing it makes me feel decidedly unwell! I had a plate of them plonked in front of me at one of my first school lunches, (60 years ago, at the tender age of 4), and it was served with that synthetic cream that whiffed of petrol fumes, well that’s what it smelt like to me anyway. I promptly vomited all over it and was subsequently marched briskly to the lavatories to clean up. On my return to the school dining room, there was another plate of them waiting for me - so I was sick over that plate too! Luckily, I was sent home after that, but to this day I can hardly utter the name of that berry without heaving. Oh and coriander leaf - but I haven’t thrown up over that - yet!
I remember half cooked doughnuts at school. They were raw in the middle. That and spam with beetroot. My friend at the time puked and they did the same with her as they did to you.
Talk about a crime! Cripes. Half-cooked doughnuts? Spam & beets? Plates of gooseberries (which I love but not plonked as is at school)? All Crimes Against Food Decency!
I, too, had school lunch trauma. We emigrated from Austria and my 1st day at school we marched down to the cafeteria whereupon some faceless person slid skin-colored divided plates through the pass-through. They lost me right there with the weird plates but undaunted I proceeded to the table. On this divided plate was unidentifiable stuff (to me): a sandwich of white Wonder Bread, thick with peanut butter (never before seen), covered in great blobs of Concord grape jelly so that the squishy sandwich had volcanoes of jelly. One bite and I couldn’t open my mouth. Literally glued my mouth together. The other offering was canned Boston baked beans swimming in super sweet tasteless goo. I told my parents, “If you ever do that to me again, I’ll burn the place down!”
The children at school these days have no idea of the tortures we had to endure. If it happened today, I think someone would probably sue the school!
Drat. FIFA Women’s World Cup US-POR ended Nil-nil.
Peas. Fresh, canned, cooked, mashed. As a baby, I would immediately spit them out and as an adult have to steal myself when they are added to a dish to give it ‘color’ or ‘a veggie.’ Will eat around them like I’m still five. They’re sweet (vegetables should not be sweet) and crunchy but also mushy? Blech.
Love that. Tinned smell of puke.
Skate - when l was little l was told to ‘eat up’ - except it was off! These days l only have to see skate on a menu or at the fishmongers and l get a visceral response and smell ammonia 🤢!
I’ve had pig brain nuggets and much like sweetbreads l just can’t get past the texture.
Oh I love skate! Can’t get that here in California, but skate wings in brown butter... mmmmm. My classical French side is showing up on this post! Ha ha ha!
My wife had the same experience a decade ago in a 1 star. Still queasy about it now. The restaurant wouldn’t accept that it smelt of ammonia.
Brains are lovely panfried like sweetbreads. Andouille no....Once had thanksgiving turkey done sous vide (why???) so revolting in every way like kleenex wads dipped in warm milk.
I’ll go with pan fried brains, yes. And sweetbreads wrapped in bacon.
Yes, yes, yes! With brown butter and capers. Oh my. But... I think plonking them in pie/sauce maybe would be unpleasant in texture. I mean, I’m adventurous but even I think that’s gonna be weird. Totally get why he did it, but did anyone actually eat it? Might just as well tossed them out. Or just sautéed them up.
Brussel sprouts...Boo hiss 👎🏻 | Everything else is fair game!
In the name of balance I can passionately say I am on Team Brussel Sprout. Love them.
I know I know. Everyone loves them. I love all brassica’s & other khols and can’t for the life of me understand why they do me wrong. Every year going on .. ugh.. at least 50, I try them, thinking oh, this time I’ll fall in like. Raw, roasted, steamed, baked, grated, boiled (😬), blanched. Nope. Not yet. Same problem with Scotch.
Scotch I agree. A nasty drink that makes you angry and gives you a headache.
Oh that's interesting tho that you like the other brassicas. One of my great "likes" is roasted and charred brassicas with lots of salt to balance the bitter char.
And a squeeze of lemon 😋. Also, preserved Moroccan lemon vinaigrette does something with roasted broccoli and it’s char.
Sounds great.
Funnily enough I love them
On the brain theme: plain cauliflower. As a vegetable on the plate? Blech! As a carrier of flavour? Bring it on! Cauliflower is a cheap and cheerless vegetable that sometimes get used to bring up the count to meat and three veg. But I'm showing my age there.
Hey you, I love this. As a chef too, my answer to this question is usually, badly cooked food......We are doing very similar things. Perhaps you would enjoy my blog :)
I have to agree with many of your points - I think there will be a few posts off the back of this one. I struggle with foods that I don't not like, for example I can not eat liver or kidney - it's not that I don't like them so much it is the texture. If it is ground up and mixed with other ingredients I enjoy the flavours.
I like truffle but I don't like it that much to lord it up like a magnificent beast, but I am forever told that I must have underdeveloped sense of taste or smell not to love them more then life itself - just nonsense.
I once saw sous vide tripe on the menu - it had to be a joke, I'm sure the chef just put it on there to see which idiot bought it and charged them an extra £10 supplement for the pleasure.