PEDANTIALAND: April 2009

gaming

Some food phobias begin with a kind of trauma, and others are born of chance. I remember quite clearly being driven to daycare, lidded tupperware in hand, sipping my heated and by then significantly cooled milk (I've been a slow eater all my life). Suddenly, I found in my mouth a slimy lukewarm coagulated mass of fatty milk skin. Feeling quite rightly that this was unnatural, I eschewed milk drinking from then on. My father never quite forgave my grandmother for serving me that hot milk.

My grandmother, as I remember it, was a terrible cook (as was my mother after her). She had an irrational penchant for cutting up all my food into little bits and serving it, pell mell, altogether in a bowl. The provenance of the pieces were indistinguishable by themselves, lukewarm more often than not, and usually greasy. Another penchant, the need to feed everyone all time with meat, meat, and more meat. I'm not exactly sure why all the meat, probably immigrant hoarding, but I do know that the meat was always gristly, chewy, and grey.

I was known for being a squirrel, meaning, I stored the food in cheek pouches and pretended to chew ruminatively over the course of the meal hoping no one would notice. Eventually, I spit out the half masticated morsels into napkins and hid them in the trash. The summary punishment for such trickery was to sit at the table indefinitely until all the food was eaten and when that didn't work, there was a hard wallop and a long period of standing in one corner.

For obvious reasons, I didn't much like steak and milk, but according to family lore, I had other strange "Rules". Food could not be black. That meant shitake mushrooms, seaweed or sea cucumbers. Squishy stuff was out. So shrimp, abalone, squid, and octopus were on the nix list too. Oranges and items of orange color. Salad.

Now to give myself credit, salad in days not long past consisted entirely of soppy iceberg lettuce with dessicated scraps of cucumber or carrot if you were lucky and doused with gloopy sauce. The croutons, being the only crispy choice among those ingredients, I ate, but that's not saying much.

Examining the remaining offenders, I realize however that there were perfectly sane explanations for the madness. For instance, nori in a lot Japanese restaurants comes to the table soggy, making the sushi a bear to consume. Chinese glass noodles often feature rubbery earlobes of dried shitake mushroom, their mustiness covered with soy sauce. Tentacled creatures were nothing but unpleasant bits of dried out chewing gum covered in bread crumbs. Clam chowder soup meant thick goop with undertones of metal and rot. Fresh from acrylic aquariums, shrimp were overcooked and served replete with vein line. I admit there is an unreasonable ick factor to the whole vein thing, but consider this, you can taste the difference between deveined and veined on an unseasoned shrimp. Try it.

I don't think I hated food per se. I was (still am) a picky eater and slender, but I wasn't then (or now), worried about health or weight. Looking back, I just instinctively knew the food I was being served was a waste of my time. There were better things to do than eat bad cooking, like build Lego castles or climb banisters. But I can name each dish, person or restaurant that returned a food to my good graces; the hot off the conveyor belt Krispie Kreme donut and ice cold Strauss milk drunk straight from the glass bottle, luscious Kosher new pickles from Katella Deli (a far cry from supermarket relish), the chef's table meal at a Newport Beach's Tsuru that inspired a fascination with dried bonito on dynamite (I'm not really a purist), the fresh off the tree, perfectly ripe cherries plucked from a branch, or the sweet orange served at Chez Panisse after dinner, sliced between the segments so no distracting pith remains. I appreciate such a thing because peeling and slicing fruit myself is not my favorite occupation.

There are inexplicable exceptions in my good taste. To this day, I still enjoy the cafeteria style metallic taste of Green Bean Almondine or Tuna Casserole. I have absolutely no idea why. But recently, Cook's Illustrated featured an recipe for Green Been Casserole in which no use of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup occurs and I may have to try it. However, suffice to say, I will stand by the idea that If I don't like It, I've probably just never had It good. Yet.