Not on my dinner plate.. Review on My Ten Least Favorite Foods

In my long years of association with food and beverages (I have been teaching food and beverages for a living for the past ten years and more pertinently eating them for a living for as far back as I can remember) I have often wondered as to if I am correct when I say that I love a food or (for that matter) hate it. Like for example I say I Love chicken… but look at the way I treat it, I don’t mind them getting killed for my sake, even after they are dead I don’t leave them in peace (mind you not even one piece), I smear them with the most potent of spices, subject them to boiling, fry them in oil, shove them into searing hot ovens… do I let go of them after that…hell NO! I bite them chew them and grind them into the smoothest of pastes before I swallow them…. Does the word “Love” have such a connotation..? In that case it’s safe to say that I don’t “Love” my family!!!!

While you try and figure out whether you “Love” your family or for that matter Chicken, I will try and list a few food items that I wouldn’t prefer to see on the menu when any of you mouth-shutters invite me for a meal.

A few exotic preparations:

Caviar: Not that I expect that many of you would offer me this one. Also I don’t want any one to think that I move around in circles that eat caviar regularly. I have tried this dish once and I have thanked Lord Almighty for letting me be an average middle class human being who doesn’t have to eat these and put on an act suggesting that this was the best thing to have happened to world of food. Available in three main categories, Servuga (smallest, blackish and cheapest), Ossetra (very oily and brownish in color) and Beluga (largest, grayish and the most expensive), these are raw slimy eggs of sturgeon fish served in small quantities (thankfully) at the start of a meal.

Steak Tartare: Mince 150-200gms of raw lean beef (or raw horse meet if you are a purist!!!!), season with salt, pepper and few drops of Worcestershire (or Tobasco...does not make a difference I assure you) sauce. Shape into a ball, place it in the centre of a plate, hallow out the centre of the ball and put a raw egg yolk, arrange a little chopped parsley, chopped onions, chopped shallots and drained caper around the meat ball.

Serving suggestion: You can serve this with tomato ketchup, olive oil and Worcestershire sauce…. Do I need to elaborate why I hate this one?

J(e)DI’s tip : You can save on the tomato ketchup, olive oil (is good for skin I believe) and the sauce if you ignore the serving suggestion. In fact you can save on a whole lot of ingredients and a lot of trouble if you take my advice and stay away from this dish.

Raw sardines (Sardine Crues): I did not have much of problem eating sardines until, I was subjected to this exotic sardine preparation by a senior of mine who is a Cordon-bleu (Thanx Asha aka Crazeebiddee) chef…here is the recipe for those of you who are adventurous enough:

Lay sardines in a tray without removing the head, scales or gutting; generously season with salt and pepper. Refrigerate for two days. Remove the heads, gut the sardines and serve with toast and highly salted butter. Incidentally, I have never looked upon sardines as a favorite food item ever since.

Boiled eggs:This is one example of how man (or for that matter woman) in haste will never achieve the best possible results. An egg if left alone, will produce a beautiful chick at its own time and read the first paragraph again to see what are all the various possibilities available to mankind (a little less kind I accept) with regard to making a meal of it. But we in haste arrest the whole process in the egg stage itself. I still can stand the more tolerable omelets and fried eggs, but boiled eggs are not my cup of tea (how can they be..?) especially if they have gotten rubberized after being left to cool down.

Most hated ingredients:

Crabs: I like most shellfish preparations. But crabs represent an incessant challenge to me. The meat is okay but finding them is the tough part. Finally when you have gotten to them, you realize that the whole effort was not really worth it. There are so many sea dwellers that carry their flesh in much more copious amounts and easily accessible locations why bother searching inside the shells of a crab.

Bananas:As a kid I had a problem spelling them….maybe it all started there. But then I liked biting into one occasionally. It all happened during a pilgrimage to Sabarimala when I was 9 years old. As a pilgrim I was to be a strict vegetarian and only palatable stuff available at the railway stations was banana fritters (Ethayka-Appam for those who have traveled by train in Kerala ... the fluorescent yellow dripping in oil ripe banana delicacy..?) By the end of my first day on the move, I had thrown up three times and swore I won’t have anything to do with bananas anymore, have been sticking to it rather religiously.

Aubergenes: Available in violet, white, light green and sometimes in combination of all three, despicable in all forms, brinjals to me represent a bland (raised to the power of n) vegetable. Yes there in one form in which I can eat it and that is the spicy Hyderabadi Bagara baigan, that too with some excellent Nawabi Biryani and raitha. If anyone of you in here says that Baigan bartha or any other variation of this stuff is a delight to eat, please take my share too.

Bitter gourd:The exterior looks like that of a crocodile doesn’t it, that too of an envious one. The interior is even worse. My parents loved it, so did my sister. I was the odd man (no I wasn’t a man then) out. I remember my mom trying to force feed me bitter gourd. In fact I still have nightmares about them.

Radish:If sardines are the most smelling of the fishes, then radish is the stinker amongst vegetables (with an exception of bamboo shoots which is not as common on Indian dining tables as radishes are) It is also another bland vegetable, supposedly rich in minerals like sulphur, iodine and iron (now you know where the stink comes from). Now I know of people who stuff this thing even into something as delicious as a paratha, and as if that weren’t enough, even the leaves of this vegetable are used to torment you.

Ladies finger: Also known as Okra, this is the food I hate the most. So much so that I can’t even stand someone next to me eating it. If you have cared to just look inside this vegetable you will realize that it has just two things - slime (a load of it) and balls (and a load of that too). Why on earth will anyone remotely sensible, even think of eating it? My research leads me to the fact that this plant actually belongs to the family of plants that produce cotton. I certainly will not look at even cotton with the same liking in future!!! The biggest of ironies lies in its name, just to make it clear its ladies finger the vegetable that I hate like hell… while a Lady’s finger can be ( edited to preserve the standards on MS).

Comments please…..