Thread 14 - TalkLair: “What The Hell Are We Supposed To Use, Man? Harsh Language?”

[Kucinghitam]

(Previous thread 13).

Summer should be well under way, but the chilly wind, grey clouds and pouring rain beg to differ. Looks like 2024 continues to be a washout - on the bright side, the Tories got washed out too! In the TalkLair, we remain hunkered down keeping cosy and warm. The hearth is glowing, the walls covered in dubious artwork, books by non-approved authors line the shelves, rugs are down on the floors (and assorted pets curled up on them).

We just won’t mention the gnawed bones of our prey over there in the corner of the cave…

That sounds really tasty, SinnerBoy.

I must make some more when I get home!

I remember a teacher telling me the same thing! My dad grew rhubarb in the garden so I used to nibble at raw rhubarb stems dipped in sugar.

I strongly dislike both swedes and turnips - I wonder if there's a reason, other than having spent the years from age 3-to-11 in countries where they didn't really feature? I think there must be something more to it than that, because I love all sorts of other foods that I didn't experience as a child. Maybe I should give them another go?

@SinnerBoy ... I'm tempted by that pickle, which presumably takes away the taste!

Gonners, one of my cousins is the same - actually he has problems with all brassicas, and claims it's scientific because he is a 'super taster' with a palate exceptionally sensitive to sulphur.

It may even be true.

Apparently it is true that some super-tasters are more fussy about strongly flavoured foods, especially bitter tastes as found in brassicas. This makes sense to me.

Although culture and upbringing might possibly have a stronger effect. I am very unfussy/adventurous about food and in fact love many strong/strange flavours, so I was surprised to discover I'm a super-taster (or at least a super-ish-taster) according to that test with the chemical-infused paper strips.

But my family went through a long period of severe financial difficulties when I was a child, where we genuinely had no choice but to eat any meal my parents could cobble together (sometimes they went without, just filling up with a bit of plain rice, so we kids could get nutrition). Interestingly my brother, being 7 years younger, experienced fewer years of this hardship - he grew up more picky about food, and only became more adventurous in adulthood.

Interesting also that supertaster cousin (with a Hong Kong childhood), Gonners, and you all grew up in parts east, with a different and I suspect much greater range of flavours including fermented foods that most of us in these islands. Cousin is quite the foodie and eats all sorts, but has grave reservations about overcooked brassicas.

To be fair, overcooked brassicas are pretty vile.

Well yes, I still gag when I remember one particular dish of cabbage I was offered about 30 years ago. I actually didn't know what it was - and I love cabbage properly (ie minimally) cooked.

I love brassicas generally - it's just swede (bland and pointless beyond belief!) and turnip (somehow "nasty" in a way I can't describe, having avoided it for years) that I dislike. Oh, hang on, I had forgotten brussels sprouts, which make me gag. My sister shares the brussels sprout hatred: 40+ years ago, after a major falling out with our mother, she cooked a wonderful Christmas dinner for her now-husband and me (I had Come Out In Solidarity). This included a ceremonial single brussels sprout per plate, because they were compulsory. All three of us left them.

I ended up not buying a swede today because they were all too big and when I was looking at them I realised that much as I'm recovering I really don't have the strength to cut one of those things up. And I agree with one and all that swede and carrot with plenty of butter and black pepper is bloody lovely. Instead of that I've bought a pre-made/ready meal type thing of mashed carrot and parsnip which will be okay with more butter added and lots of black pepper.

I've probably harked on a lot about my inability to read books this year and then last night I decided to pick up the latest Emma Donoghue Learned by Heart which I bought in hardback despite knowing that I'm hardly reading, that I have other books to read and so on. Got into bed, picked it up only put it down when I was starting to nod off at just over a hundred pages. I'm gripped! I was introduced to her a good few years ago by a friend who sent me a copy of Slammerkin, her third novel, set in the eighteenth century based on a true story - as are a lot of her historical novels. Slammerkin was a term used for either a dressing gown or a promiscuous woman. A while after that I was given a copy of Room. I'm really glad I went got one of her historical fiction works first because while I can see that Room is well written I found it really f-ing annoying and I doubt I'd have gone on to be a fan of her work. I read The Pull of the Stars during lockdown. It was published earlier than planned because it was set in a Dublin maternity ward during the Spanish flu pandemic and I'd highly recommend it as a good way into her writing. I'm more in love with her than usual right now because she's brought back the joy of reading to me!

Tl;dr - the one I'm currently reading is based on the true sory of Anne Lister's first relationship when she was at a boarding school. It's told more from the point of view of Eliza Raine the anglo-Indian girl who she was in the relationship with. It's a beautiful story.

Swede has to be cooked right otherwise it is far too watery and bleurgh. I'm grateful that I don't have the brassica problem. I've almost certainly said this before but when I was a child and we had cabbage for dinner, which being an Irish family was relatively often (hello bacon and cabbage!) I'd have a glass of cabbage water with some pepper in it to eat alongside my meal. I didn't just like my brassicas, I loved them!

I have the coriander tastes like soap gene. I can't stand the stuff.

I seem to recall that M&S do a swede and carrot mash that is pretty smooth (and maybe a bit creamy, which sounds odd) and may be worth a try @MouseMinge

And I love the single ceremonial sprout story @Gonners - I get round the whole sprouts are horrible and sprouts are compulsory at Christmas thing by having sprout tops. In my book at least, they count as sprouts (especially ad there are always a few teeny, tiny sprouts in there) but, crucially, don’t taste of sprouts.

Coriander leaf is vile, but the seeds are a different matter entirely.

Mouse, if you have a microwave you can zap a whole swede (probably on sightly reduced power to give the heat time to reach the middle before the outside is overcooked). Either until fully cooked, or just until soft enough to cut before finishing it by your preferred method.

M&S carrot, swede and potato mash is very buttery (which is why I can no longer eat it).

I've converted MrBint to a lot of brassicas by roasting them. Including sprouts, although they are even better fried.

The super taster thing is true, I had to write about it in a neuro essay but I’ve forgotten most of it now (by that point I’d lost the will to live with the sensory system). It’s something to do with ability to taste a compound called PROP, which is found in quite high quantities in brassicas. Not everyone can. I’ve read that you can tell if you’re a super taster by punching a hole in a bit of paper, sticking it on your tongue and counting the number of fungiform papillae within the circle, but when I tried it the texture of the paper on my tongue made me gag so I didn’t manage to count them.

I LOVE coriander. The more the better.

Oh and PROP was apparently discovered accidentally when it drifted into the air in powder form during an unrelated science project. A scientist happened to get some on his tongue and remarked it was bitter, but the other scientist couldn’t taste it at all. Or something like that.

My dad was almost certainly a super taster as he loathed the taste of brassicas and apparently the only way he would eat spinach as a child was if my grandmother added sugar. I don’t think he ever ate it as an adult. He was very fussy about food in general.

When I was a teenager my mum had a job in a grocery shop. We always ate a lot of veggies at home and my mum was a good cook. Once she told me about a customer who had complained that her family wouldn’t eat cabbage and had said “I’ve boiled it for an hour and they still won’t eat it”. My mum explained how to cook cabbage prop and the woman came back a week later delighted that cabbage was now apparently on the menu for the family. I love the stuff.

Looking at Ocado, I was thinking of the M&S carrot and swede crush rather than the one with potato but both contain both butter and cream. The last few reviews on Ocado suggest that the carrot and swede crush recipe may have changed presumably as part of M&S’s relentless bid to mess with anything people properly like.

I think the one with potato was one of the mashes I used to buy when I was making shove in the oven meals for my mum when I was still working and she couldn’t manage boiling veg. She basically had a variety of cottage pie type things with veg in whatever the stew type thing at the bottom was. Readymade mash was an easy option and I was focussing more on getting decent nutrition into the meat and veg layer.

I love the taste of bitter cabbage and sprouts, as well as broad beans. Sadly, the bitter tastes have been bred out, over recent years. I'm always happy if I encounter a crop of field beans, which go for animal feed; I try to liberate a few...

I love spinach and cabbage - it's just sprouts I dislike, and I suspect that's because I associate them with being boiled to death and compulsory. They're quite palatable fried with a bit of bacon!

I like all brassicas, however they're cooked, though spring greens with leeks and sprouts and bacon are well up there.

One of the few things that is disgusting to me is peanuts, I dislike everything about them. The texture, the flavour and the bitter after taste. They're revolting. My twin reacts to them in the same way.

I hate peanuts too - I eat pretty much anything but the taste and texture of them is horrid to me.

I like cabbage best finely cut, steamed then dried off with a bit of butter and pepper.

But savoy cabbage is also lovely finely cut, then slow cooked for up to 2 hours in a bit of olive oil and garlic with the lid on the pan and maybe a touch of water.

Savoy cabbage, steamed, with butter and black pepper, is a wonderful winter food. And broccoli is one of my absolute staples - I bake it with sautéed onions, leeks and courgettes mixed with beaten eggs and cheese to make a sort of bastardised frittata, or make it into soup with other veg and/or blue cheese.

I'm thinking about a rich minestrone stuffed with beans, vegetables, bacon and loads of savoy cabbage.