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.)

[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. ♥

[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...

[senmut]

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

[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

[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.