Like many people, I was a difficult eater as a child. Mostly this was due to a severe intolerance to most artificial colourings and preservatives. I was the kid who had to take their own lunchbox to parties; a fact which still makes me shed a little tear of self-pity. Unnecessarily, I imagine, as I don’t recall it bothering me much at the time.
However, a large part of my fussy eating was due to sheer pigheadedness. There were a ton of things that I just wouldn’t touch, including an entire category called “things that have bits in”. I wasn’t quite in the league of my partner, who I’m told used to pick every single bit of onion out of his spaghetti bolognese. Unlike my poor mum-in-law, my parents at least had the blessing of a gullible child. For years I declared an undying hatred for mushrooms whilst blithely chowing down on tins of mushroom soup, which my mum told me was called “chickmush”. As you can tell, I wasn’t the most perceptive child. The mushroom thing changed, thankfully. I clearly remember walking up to my mum when I was about six and declaring with no preamble whatsoever that “I didn’t used to like mushrooms, but now I do”. Years later, they’re one of my all-time favourite foods.
These culinary volte-faces of mine have happened with many different foods over the years. Here are a few of my favourites:
Gherkins: I vividly recall claiming as a teenager that gherkins were “the second most disgusting food on the planet”. (Dry cat food was first on the list, incidentally. I tried it in order to see if I was missing out on anything. I wasn’t). Now, it’s a completely different story. I will happily munch gherkins straight from the jar, but I also love them in wraps, sandwiches and burgers. They work anywhere that a bit of crunch and vinegary sharpness is needed. Sadly, dry cat food remains disgusting.
Offal (within reason): As a meat-eater, I’m a great believer in the “use every part of an animal” philosophy. If something has died to provide you with a meal, the least you can do is make sure that you don’t waste large parts of its body. This ethos, combined with my interest in butchery, means that I’m not particularly squeamish about offal. Now, anyway. This wasn’t always the case. My first experience of eating offal was the kidney element of supermarket steak and kidney pies, i.e. barely-visible pieces of greyish, chewy matter. This gave me the hubristic notion that I now liked offal. I was utterly horrified when I ordered a steak and kidney pie at a family pub lunch and received something with actual kidneys in it. Now, I’ll happily eat whole kidneys, particularly on toast with a rich sauce, and I’ll cook with other types of offal. I’m afraid I still draw the line at eating something’s brains though, largely because the pattern of brains repulses me.
Shellfish: I’m still working on this one. I have a strong dislike of anything with a shell, and a phobia of one thing in particular (can’t even type the name, but it walks sideways and lives in water). I now love scallops, mussels and prawns, but it took me quite a few years to get to this point. Anything larger, like lobster, I’m still a bit iffy about.
Capers: I used to spend quite some time picking capers out of salads in restaurants. I don’t think I really objected to the flavour; it was more to do with their texture and the way they seem to congregate at the bottom of a bowl, so that all you had left at the end of the dish were capers. This was until I discovered the savage delights of chopping them up, so you get all of their sharp, fresh bitterness without the hassle of chasing them around your plate.
Olives: Olives are the example people always use when talking about foods that people grow to like, for good reason. A lot of people seem to grow up hating them, and eventually come to love them. When I’d make a disgusted face at my dad as he ate olives, he’d always tell me that I’d grow into them – green ones first, and then the black ones. He was completely right.
All this just goes to show that it’s important to question your culinary likes and dislikes, not just as a child but throughout your life. You could be missing out on something wonderful.
Rosefood 