Friday open thread: food opinions (on a Saturday)

[dolorosa_12]

I've got chicken stock bubbling on the stove, using the bones leftover from Christmas dinner, I'm eating leftover roast vegetables for lunch, and I'm slowly making my way through the Yuletide collection. (I think after writing this post I'll switch over to Madness, as I'm more in the mood for shorter fics.) My aim this year is to write substantive comments on at least 50 fics in the main collection, and at least 20 in Madness (although the latter may depend on what fandoms are represented). I saw myself described on an anonmeme as a 'fantastic recipient,' so now I feel a huge amount of pressure to live up to that!

I paused my regular Friday open thread yesterday as I figured that many people in my circle would be otherwise occupied, but I didn't want to let a week go by without it, so here we are with a prompt from dhampyresa: what food do you wish more people would give a chance?

(I want to get this out of the way first, though: people have restricted diets for all kinds of reasons, so I don't want the comments in this post to descend into judgement of people's dietary choices or preferences. I'm operating on the assumption that responses are directed at people who have adventurous diets, ample disposable income to spend on food, the time available to cook, should they want to, and do not have disabilities that might affect their ability to buy or prepare food.)

I don't actually really have an answer for this — there's not really any foodstuff that I feel is unfairly maligned, since people's food preferences tend to be very personal and idiosyncratic. I suppose the one thing I might say is marzipan. There are a lot of people in anglophone countries whose first experience of marzipan is the terrible, synthetic-tasting stuff that gets used as icing on wedding cakes. This tends to create an unfavourable impression, so I wish more people had the opportunity to try the good stuff.

I suppose that's my answer more generally: I hope people give a second chance to items of food that they first encountered in bad-quality iterations, because usually when something is cooked/prepared well, it has something to recommend it!

What about you?

Comments

[schneefink]

The problem imo is that when people eat something for the first time they think that's how it tastes and often don't realize that it's just badly prepared. Happens often with marzipan, but also in my experience with brussel sprouts (and the rest of the cabbage family too.)

[dolorosa_12]

You're absolutely right, and I agree with you about brussels sprouts and other brassicas. (And apparently brussels sprouts' terrible reputation was well deserved in the past, but since the 1990s people have been using a different variety, very different from the previous version.)

[naye]

For me it would probably be people who've experienced tofu only as a meat substitute, when it is incredibly ill suited for that role, but absolutely wonderfully delicious when served in any of the many, many dishes actually based around its actual flavor and consistency. I'm just looking at the Wikipedia page for tofu now, longing for agedashi or mapo tofu - or just the satisfying silkiness of it in miso soup. Mmmmm. ♥

[dolorosa_12]

I've never understood the point of meat substitutes. If I want the taste and texture of meat, I'll eat meat, and if I don't want to eat meat, I want to eat a meal which is designed specifically to require no meat — not a previously meat-filled meal with the meat removed or substituted. And you're right, tofu is often the prime culprit for ill-fitting meat substitutes; I've also seen it used as a substitute for scrambled eggs, which sounds really unappealling.

And now you've made me crave agedashi dofu!

[bruttimabuoni]

I think my first answer is prunes, which have such a stupid reputation in the UK. Dried plums are *delicious* if you eat them without social associations, and they have somehow never been reclaimed from the gastric treatment idea. Don't eat a bucket of them, but then any dried fruit full of fibre will upset your stomach if you let it... I love them, and have a couple of puddings I would make for get togethers if people weren't dumb about the whole prune concept.

Oh, and I am a huge fan of chicken livers as a cheap but good, easy meat to cook, ideal for small meals. If it's dietarily possible, I recommend them a lot, and people often get so cautious. I am myself iffy about taste/texture in all kinds of offal, so I do get it, but I want that to count for something - this is an offal I can get behind!

I'm with you on marzipan too, though there is a lot of bleurgh out there, so I can understand how people get cautious. But the good stuff is excellent. I might see if there's any Luebecker stuff going cheap from the posh deli in fact...

[dolorosa_12]

You're absolutely right about prunes!

I wish I could get over myself and eat offal, because it makes me feel like a complete hypocrite (I'm kind of of the attitude that if you eat meat, you shouldn't be squeamish about particular kinds of meat), but I just can't make myself do so. My husband really likes liver and orders it in restaurants all the time, but it's not something I'd be comfortable cooking at home.

Glad to be able to help with the marzipan! I hope you're able to get some of the good stuff.

[senmut]

You are a fantastic commenter from ones I've tumbled across.

[dolorosa_12]

Awww, thank you! That's a really kind thing to say.

My favourite part about Yuletide is getting comments on my own fic, so I try to respond to everything I read in the manner I would wish my own work to be received.

[nerakrose]

Having lived in a handful of different countries I find this question very tricky, because there are foods that one culture enjoys, but others don’t...but I’ll try anyway.

- Liver, and perhaps liver casserole from Finland (maksalaatikko) in specific, though I doubt anybody outside Finland even knows what it is. I’m not a fan of ox liver fried/whatever in steaks - the texture is offputting and it’s not a great way to enhance the flavour. But liver casserole is great! Chicken liver in various forms is also great.

- blue cheese! Yes it has a smell, and yes its full of blue mould...but blue cheese can be really great. There’s a lot of variety between brands, some sharp, some more mellow, some tangy, some pungent - and if one tried a variety first that was offputting...well.

I wanted to make kransekage for NYE but when I started looking for marzipan to make it, I quickly realised that not even Waitrose has decent marzipan. I’m not even overly fond of it (I only like it in kransekage) but I’m still upset that the UK is saddled with this travesty they call “””marzipan”””. I was going to order some Odense marzipan from Scandi kitchen but they’re so overwhelmed trying to service all the poor Scandinavians and Finns stuck in the UK for the holidays bc pandemic that it’s been impossible to get a delivery slot for MONTHS.

Some foods that I want to like but will probably stop trying eventually bc I seem to just continue to not enjoy them:
- fennel
- parsley
- british Chinese takeaway (the ones I’ve tried have been so....weirdly bland??? V disappointing. Only good thing is that one nearby does good prawn toast...which seems to me a very british thing? I’ve not come across it anywhere but the UK, with the caveat that I’ve never travelled outside Northern Europe.)
- parsnips

[dolorosa_12]

As I said to bruttimabuoni above, I wish I could force myself to eat offal, because not eating it makes me feel like a hypocrite.

I love blue cheese, although it's very rich and I can only eat it in small doses. I find that it tastes a lot better when accompanied by something acidic, like apple, grapes, or some kind of sour chutney.

I was going to order some Odense marzipan from Scandi kitchen but they’re so overwhelmed trying to service all the poor Scandinavians and Finns stuck in the UK for the holidays bc pandemic that it’s been impossible to get a delivery slot for MONTHS.

I can well imagine, and the border closures last week can't have helped matters.

I love fennel and parsley, although parsnips I can take or leave (like, I'll eat them if they're there, but I'm not going to buy them myself, even if I'm making a British-style roast dinner). Chinese takeaways seem to be so weirdly specific to the country in which they're located (like, Australian Chinese takeaway is really different to the US kind, which are both different to the British one). We've found a good one here in Cambridge (and yes, prawn toast is one of the highlights, and I've never encountered it outside the UK), but we tend to just order the same things over and over again. Now that we're about to move house, we'll have to find a new place, as we'll be too far away for our current favourite takeaway to deliver.

[nerakrose]

it's not to everyone's taste :) I don't eat any of the other parts, just the liver. (I do use the little packet of offal that comes with ducks etc. to make gravy.)

I use blue cheese in cooking a lot! I love it on pizza. it goes well with pineapple imo. I rarely have it plain.

I'm not too broken up about the lack of delivery slots, but I can only imagine how distressing it must be for the people who were planning to go home all along and then couldn't.

parsnips have a very strong flavour that I just can't make friends with. I'll eat them if they're served for me, but I won't buy them. fennel is the same, though i struggle more with eating that.

i only really started eating Chinese food after my dad spent two years there and learned how to cook from his Chinese gf. he would also take me to Chinese restaurants (that don't do takeaway) owned by Chinese people that passed the test of 'majority of customers are Chinese'. those are very different from the danish Chinese takeaway places (which is not my favourite either - it's all deep fried - but it sort of fits into a danish food tradition that's kind of comforting, if that makes sense) and lbr, I miss my local Chinese restaurant in Copenhagen. It's very good food. 😭 over here, i'm trying something new on the menu from my housemates' fave Chinese takeaway place every time we order from them because I'm determined to find something I like so that I'm not just eating triple orders of prawn toast every time. xD (they on the other hand are ordering the same thing every time. XD)
good luck finding a new takeout place!

[chestnut_pod]

Absolute ditto on marzipan! Mazapán is one of life’s great joys.

As for me, it would be eggplant! I want to soothingly pat the shoulders of everyone who has had some paving slab of unsalted roasted eggplant cross-section as a half-hearted vegetarian option and offer them instead some delightful babaganouj or a dish of stewed Asian eggplants with their tender skin and creamy insides.

[dolorosa_12]

I agree with you about eggplant. Babaganouj is delicious, tasteless roast eggplant is horrible. For me it's more of a texture thing: I like the taste of eggplant, but don't like it when it's cooked in such a way that it becomes rubbery.