Updated Sept 2023
Ok, I’ll admit I’m a roast beef and Yorkshire pudding man – plain vanilla. I love steak rare or medium rare but never well done! Unfortunately I like my veggies cooked so they are not crunchy. When I eat out, the food I’m served is amazing at times but sometime I say to myself “it must be chef’s night off” but because I’m a Brit I don’t complain!
Steak. How hard is it to cook a steak? It must be one of the easiest things to cook but obviously the quality of the meat plays a good part and some restaurants don’t appear to have a good butcher. Even so, when you ask for a medium rare steak and you get something that’s been cooking for a few days it’s obvious that the chef is not a chef.
Char grilled. WTF. However on earth do they get away with “Char Grilling”? What cook in their right mind would even consider burning a lump of meat (or vegetable) let alone think it’s OK to actually serve burnt food! Who actually wants to eat burnt meat, burnt vegetables etc – I certainly don’t! Apart from the fact that burnt meat is (possibly) carcinogenic the taste is vile as is burnt vegestables. Burnt food doesn’t have any nutritional value so why would you want to eat it? I think that the burnt black marks / grooves in the food is because the chef (or cook) can’t be bothered to clean the griddle. Some Restaurants have the nerve to describe this as “grilled”. Sometimes you get a steak cooked to perfection on the inside – butter knife tender but it’s spoiled by the deep burnt lines of the griddle. Is it me or do people actually enjoy the taste of burnt meat? Good cooks can take advantage of the Maillard reaction where (mainly meat) is “browned”, this creates a lot of lovely additional taste. With foods that have a sugar content, they can be “caramelised” but in either case; Brown is done, Black is buggered! (Ruined)
Curry, Spices and herbs. When I cook it’s my reckoning that “seasoning” should enhance the flavour of the food not replace it. In the case of a “Spicy Curry”, I can only imagine that the food cooked with it is past its use by date and the curry and spices are there to mask the taste of the food. Why would anyone want to eat something that will cause them to need to drink lots of cold water and then spend the next day in the loo suffering from “ring sting”. Why would anyone want to subject their taste buds to to such an assault – I don’t get it, is it me?
Peppers (a.k.a. Capsicum.) These come under the same category as above but I’ve singled them out because they get into everything and I can’t stand the taste. In my opinion they do nothing to enhance the taste of food, if anything it’s quite the opposite but you can’t escape them; they even get in to salads! Turns out there are over a 1000 varieties of peppers, inc chilli peppers and it’s a minefield. I’ve discovered the “bell peppers” labelled “Sweet & crunchy” are actually lovely and these days I often just munch on a sweet pepper. If they’re fresh they don’t “repeat” much! Green ones are “immature” and I don’t like the taste, Yellow ones are more “mature”, Orange are even more mature and the red ones are fully “mature”. I do actually like eating the “Sweet (Bell) Peppers if they are are Yellow, Orange or Red and they fabulous stuffed with say minced Lamb.
Smoked food. Fish, meat etc. I am definitely missing something here! Ok, I’ll admit to enjoying a bit of “finny haddock” but smoked bacon, smoked cheese smoked ham, smoked whatever etc etc. I’m lost for words.
Barbecues (BBQ). Why would anyone actually want to eat food that has been cooked in flames and had the flavour enhanced with “some wood” (hickory) smoke ? I want to taste the food not the dam smoke, is it me? I don’t BBQ much but when I do, I use a flat cast iron plate on the gas burner so that I’m not cooking in a naked flame. OK, I’m not caveman and I don’t get why anyone would want to cook food in a naked flame and burn it. I like eating 36 day dry matured (beef) steak and I would be horrified if someone wanted to cook this bit of meat (that has been lovingly matured) by setting fire to it and getting it charred. IMO only someone that doesn’t like meat would do this.
Brown bread, why is it that eating establishments assume that everyone wants brown bread – yuck. The advantage of White bread is that you can see if anything has got into that shouldn’t be there but with brown bread, especially the sort with bits of wood in it and all that crap on the outside, you would just think that the “addition” was normal! is it me 🙂 I do actually like brown bread as long as it doesn’t have the bits of wood (whatever) in it and doesn’t have all the rubbish on the outside. I don’t eat much bread but tend to favour the 50 / 50, usually toasted.