Food that I'll have nothing to do with

[ian]

I once heard someone say the word 'courghetti' like that was OK.

[Mr Larrington]

Great cars, them Courghettis!

[Cudzoziemiec]

Hot Wheels and Matchbox are fun too!

[citoyen]

I quite like 'courgetti' as a way of preparing courgettes, but it's absolutely NOT an adequate substitute for actual spaghetti.

[ian]

Courgette is one of those things that has to be cooked hot and quick, otherwise it's watery and forgettable. Actually, I do have a recipe that involves cooking down a tonne of the stuff into a modest amount of sauce, akin to pesto, which is quite good.

But the point of good pasta is that it has good consistency and mouthfeel (don't get me going on the crime that is wholewheat spaghetti) and the sauce clings to it so you can slurp.

[Hot Flatus]

Apart from ratatouille. In which case long and gentle.

[L CC]

At the risk of offending people (bite me, losers), 'keto' stuff mostly seems foul, ingredients in the wrong proportions sprinkled with weird, and missing the important thing, the grand consolation of life. Blessed carbs.

What kind of life is that lacks the heavenly soft pillows of mashed potato? Or pasta, dripping silky sauce or noodles in a spicy broth? I'm sorry, but 'cauliflower rice' and 'courgette spaghetti' should be criminal offences with harsh sentencing recommendations.

Also gluten-free, which mostly seems a scam to sell nasty processed food in the guise it's somehow healthy to the gullible. I once got served gluten-free spaghetti. Ghastly extruded tubes of congealed wallpaper paste, but without the flavour. Even the sauce would have nothing to do it, preferring to sit in a sad puddle on the plate, saying why, ian, WHY? I don't know.

Much as I agree with the sentiment- of course the real thing is tastier and cutting out a food group is madness, but this is a lot like a drinker extolling the virtues of a single malt to an alcoholic.

Potatoes are just a gateway drug to hardlining sugar. There's only so much lard my frame can carry and if I could eat in moderation FFS, I wouldn't have got here. Jeez, if I'd become addicted to cocaine I might have lost my septum but at least I'd be thin.

[rafletcher]

Actually, I do have a recipe that involves cooking down a tonne of the stuff into a modest amount of sauce, akin to pesto, which is quite good.

When I make a meat sauce thing for use with pasta, I grate a couple of cougettes into it, then simmer for 40 minutes or so. The corgette effectively disappears and thickens the sauce.

[fd3]

Mushrooms.

It took me over 20 years to develop a taste for raw tomatoes.  I didn't like Marmite until I went Vegan.

[Regulator]

I love shellfish - in particular oysters... 

I won't partake of bush meat - and actually reported a butcher in Dalston who was selling illegal bush meat.

[Cudzoziemiec]

At the risk of offending people (bite me, losers), 'keto' stuff mostly seems foul, ingredients in the wrong proportions sprinkled with weird, and missing the important thing, the grand consolation of life. Blessed carbs.

What kind of life is that lacks the heavenly soft pillows of mashed potato? Or pasta, dripping silky sauce or noodles in a spicy broth? I'm sorry, but 'cauliflower rice' and 'courgette spaghetti' should be criminal offences with harsh sentencing recommendations.

Also gluten-free, which mostly seems a scam to sell nasty processed food in the guise it's somehow healthy to the gullible. I once got served gluten-free spaghetti. Ghastly extruded tubes of congealed wallpaper paste, but without the flavour. Even the sauce would have nothing to do it, preferring to sit in a sad puddle on the plate, saying why, ian, WHY? I don't know.

Much as I agree with the sentiment- of course the real thing is tastier and cutting out a food group is madness, but this is a lot like a drinker extolling the virtues of a single malt to an alcoholic.

Potatoes are just a gateway drug to hardlining sugar. There's only so much lard my frame can carry and if I could eat in moderation FFS, I wouldn't have got here. Jeez, if I'd become addicted to cocaine I might have lost my septum but at least I'd be thin.

That's quite an interesting comment on the way some people's bodies and minds work (people in general, not personally).

[Regulator]

Marmite....  'tis Satan's smegma.   

[ian]

At the risk of offending people (bite me, losers), 'keto' stuff mostly seems foul, ingredients in the wrong proportions sprinkled with weird, and missing the important thing, the grand consolation of life. Blessed carbs.

What kind of life is that lacks the heavenly soft pillows of mashed potato? Or pasta, dripping silky sauce or noodles in a spicy broth? I'm sorry, but 'cauliflower rice' and 'courgette spaghetti' should be criminal offences with harsh sentencing recommendations.

Also gluten-free, which mostly seems a scam to sell nasty processed food in the guise it's somehow healthy to the gullible. I once got served gluten-free spaghetti. Ghastly extruded tubes of congealed wallpaper paste, but without the flavour. Even the sauce would have nothing to do it, preferring to sit in a sad puddle on the plate, saying why, ian, WHY? I don't know.

Much as I agree with the sentiment- of course the real thing is tastier and cutting out a food group is madness, but this is a lot like a drinker extolling the virtues of a single malt to an alcoholic.

Potatoes are just a gateway drug to hardlining sugar. There's only so much lard my frame can carry and if I could eat in moderation FFS, I wouldn't have got here. Jeez, if I'd become addicted to cocaine I might have lost my septum but at least I'd be thin.

I'm just teasing, as is the nature of the topic, no one needs to justify their diet.

But come to the Holy War, you are wrong about potatoes, and will be put to the sword.

[T42]

When I was a child I spent a prolonged period in traction living on a combination of Hospital Food™

And now I've got Eels - Hospital Food as an earworm...

Eels... there's a passage in The Tin Drum about catching eels by leaving a horse's head under water until they move in to feast and then hauling it ashore. They're tucking in so avidly they don't let go until it's too late.  A friend in Darmstadt used to come close to puking any time anyone would mention it, so of course every so often we did.

[ian]

Mushrooms.

It took me over 20 years to develop a taste for raw tomatoes.  I didn't like Marmite until I went Vegan.

I don't like slimy mushrooms (or giant ones, I can't abide portobello), but recently I've come to quite like the firmer ones. I had some raw ones in a salad and I was ready to dismiss that but actually, they were really good. Make sure you wash them wall, of course, or mushroom might not be only thing they taste of.

I can't do mushroom soup though, that's a foulness too far. Mushrooms are OK as a backing singer in a meal, but a lead, oh no.

[Regulator]

Mushrooms.

It took me over 20 years to develop a taste for raw tomatoes.  I didn't like Marmite until I went Vegan.

I don't like slimy mushrooms (or giant ones, I can't abide portobello), but recently I've come to quite like the firmer ones. I had some raw ones in a salad and I was ready to dismiss that but actually, they were really good. Make sure you wash them wall, of course, or mushroom might not be only thing they taste of.

I can't do mushroom soup though, that's a foulness too far. Mushrooms are OK as a backing singer in a meal, but a lead, oh no.

Mushrooms sauteed in smoked olive oil and butter (unsalted natch*), with smoked garlic and fresh parsley.  Food of Jehovah Herself... particularly if topped with a poached duck egg.

[ian]

No, fried mushrooms are slimy and thus a no-go, so have to be shovelled off my breakfast plate onto my wife's. Usually, while she's not looking. That's another thing the American breakfast gets right, they never slap sloppy mushrooms on my plate.

I always get angry, as a reformed botanist, that mushrooms are always included with plants. They're not plants. They're far more closely related to animals.

[ian]

Actually, I do have a recipe that involves cooking down a tonne of the stuff into a modest amount of sauce, akin to pesto, which is quite good.

When I make a meat sauce thing for use with pasta, I grate a couple of cougettes into it, then simmer for 40 minutes or so. The corgette effectively disappears and thickens the sauce.

This one is basically a courgette pesto, you saute about eight courgettes with plenty of garlic in a generous amount of olive oil for about 40-60 minutes until it's reduced down to a homogenous thick sauce, stir through a generous helping of parmesan, a cup of pasta water and serve with your favourite pasta. You can add some chopped toasted pinenuts but it's not essential. It's a good way to get rid of a glut of courgettes that are past their best and actually far more tasty than it might sound.

[Regulator]

No, fried mushrooms are slimy and thus a no-go, so have to be shovelled off my breakfast plate onto my wife's. Usually, while she's not looking. That's another thing the American breakfast gets right, they never slap sloppy mushrooms on my plate.

I always get angry, as a reformed botanist, that mushrooms are always included with plants. They're not plants. They're far more closely related to animals.

Only if they're not cooked properly...  properly cooked they won't be slimy.

[citoyen]

Only if they're not cooked properly

I was just about to post exactly this comment myself!

[ian]

Nah, they're slimy, and I won't tolerate them.

[Regulator]

I find this and the other thread interesting and odd.  Mainly on the lines of which I agree with.

Do agree on the textures thing, some foods I will not eat unless it has been cooked properly/freshly.  Love fresh squid and calamari, but the frozen stuff can be rubbery and vile.

I like fresh oyster, but not fresh ones are vile.

I love prawns, and don't think about what they eat or how they get here.

Smoked oysters lift a fish pie to a level beyond sublime.    Also good on a pizza.


Several people have said eel...

I think jellied eel is foul, but I love a good smoked eel - or freshly caught eel cooked on a skewer over a wood fire on the riverbank (that's a childhood memory)...

[ian]

The concept of jellied eel is foul, I don't think I've tasted them. I have to honest, I pick the jelly out of pork pies, I just don't like the jelly texture full stop.

I have had smoked eel in Japan, and I don't recall being offended by it.

[citoyen]

I've never had smoked oysters in a fish pie, but I like the sound of it. Until it changed ownership, one of my local pubs always did a very good steak and oyster pie.

Smoked eel is divine. I quite like the flavour of jellied eels, and I'm not bothered by the jelly, I just don't like having to pick out the horrible knobbly bones. My dad is a big fan of jellied eels and tends to just crunch up the bones and swallow the lot. 

I like whelks too but they really don't agree with me and always make my stomach churn. Cockles I'm fine with.

Someone earlier mentioned eating shellfish straight off the beach. I would never do that - they need a good week in a purification tank first, unless you really enjoy having an upset stomach. I guess it depends on the beach.

[ian]

I used to love the little pots of shelled whelks and cockles at the seaside, soaked in malt vinegar and heavily seasoned with salt and pepper. I'm hoping, in retrospect, that they weren't harvested nearby, I'm pretty sure I didn't hold back in the toilet department when paddling off Skegness beach*, and on a summer day, about 10,000 other children were probably doing much the same.

I'm probably showing my age, I can't imagine modern-day children falling for such delights as pickled chewy shellfish. I'd plead for them. I'd sometimes I'd even behave for a bit.

*Skegness day-trips, so exciting. Sometimes we'd do Mablethorpe, but I swear the entire place smelled of grannies. We'd also do Cleethorpes – which was still black-and-white into the early eighties – because my mum's second favourite sister Nora lived there. Once, heaven knows why, we went all the way to Great Yarmouth. Now that was proper oriental. My grandparents favoured the occidental charms of Blackpool (an even more epic trek, they holidayed there in the same guesthouse, for precisely one week and precisely the same week each year for their entire married life till retirement when they stopped going on holiday (?)). Those day trips by coach were the only holiday I got. We once went to Birmingham.