A Non-Definitive Top Ten

Of things that I could go without eating again in my lifetime.

1. Chorizo and haloumi. Haloumi is the styrofoam of cheeses. Chorizo is the gourmet meat of choice for wankers who are only eating Mexican because they're told its the next big thing by their friends.

2. Pork broth. Japan was the worst for this, I think because (despite the cuisine's reputation for delicacy) they seem to like a lot of strong flavours (bonito, soy etc.) in their cooking which eliminates chicken stock from their arsenal of ingredients. They don't have a lot of agricultural space, so pigs are the next best (or worst, if you given even the slightest fuck about factory farming) thing to "grow". Japan needs more Muslims. (Gosh there were a lot of brackets in that paragraph.)

3. Whelk. If you don't know what whelk is, I envy you.

4. Any lollies that have a base made from that sweet flavoured white shit. You know, strawberries and cream, racing cars. Wrong.

5. Fruit flavoured hot tea. Most of them don't even contain fruit, they have "fruit flavour" instead. You might as well just chew on a packet of Hubba Bubba and count it as five serves.

6. Mackarel. Revolting, greasy, bastardly fish. It has none of the rustic charm of sardines, none of the salty delight of anchovies - it's just a big lump of sump. Someone should begin investigating methods of turning them into crude oil.

7. Caraway seeds. They have but one place, and that is sporadically sprinkled through sauerkraut. The rest of the time their presence is downright offensive - take this toast I had for breakfast, for example. It looked like a delicious grainy loaf, I was nomming away on it - and all of a sudden, FUCKEN' CARAWAY SEED. IT RUINSES IT!

8. Chicken in pasta, closely followed by chicken on pizza. Chicken is already kinda doughy in texture. Putting it in pasta is like stuffing a cooked potato with rice.

9. Panini. Actually, any sandwich that doesn't involve (a) steak; (b) sausage or (c) being purchased from a roadhouse where the only choice one gets to make for their salad sanga is whether or not one wants salt and pepper (combined in a caterer's shaker, of course).

10. Rocket. In its defence, there are few occasions where rocket is required. One of them is in my dear Cunter's exceptional balsalmic-y, bocconcini-y fettucine sauce. Such is the radness of her cooking skills that she manages to turn the evil weed into a mouth-watering concoction. The other occasion is as an accompaniment to Bosc pears, walnuts, balsalmic, olive oil and reggiano. Aside from these isolated incidences, rocket can go fuck itself.

Actually, on second thought, perhaps it's not the rocket's fault that I dislike it so immensely. In fact, I think the real culprits here are the cafe staff who have replaced their compulsive snow-pea sprout garnishing with piles of rocket on the sides of plates across this wide, brown, unpleasant land of ours. Die cafe staff. Die.

Top Six Fails at Dinner

1. The time I substituted bok choy for silverbeet in a silverbeet, onion and olive bake, not reckoning on how watery that piss poor excuse for greenery is, and ended up with a dish full of vague vegetable-ish water rather than the Balterranean mouth party I was hoping for.


2. The time I added kalamata olives to a soft polenta which I'd been stirring over a hot stove for 45 minutes, and then realised that they tasted like chlorine mixed with seasoned flour, and made the rest of the dish taste like that too, and hence required pizza to be ordered for dinner. Extra points awarded because they'd come from a massive tub that I'd bought from our local fruit shop at the time and had to chuck the rest out.

3. The time when we had no potatoes and no pasta and no rice and no bread I only discovered this AFTER the bloke started cooking roast beef on the Weber for dinner, so substitutional genius that I am, I served the cattleflesh with an Asian noodle and pumpkin salad. This did nothing to convince me of the merits of fusion food, just in case you were wondering. To make matters worse we had a friend around for dinner that time, and it was the first time I'd cooked for him. LUCKY WE HAD HOMEBREW TO WASH IT DOWN WITH.


4. The time where one of the stove elements in our East Sydney terrace exploded, blowing a hole through the paella pan that my parents received as a wedding present and ruining the bolognese sauce cooking within. I don't need to explain to you how terrifying it is to know that your kitchen has the power to blast a hold through half a centimetre of frypan, do I?

5. Any time I've used chorizo. In fact, the other day I put chorizo on my list of five things I could easily go through life without eating again, along with caraway seeds; haloumi; pork broth; and perch.

6. Last night, where after hand-shredding half a kilo of potatoes for kartoffelknoedel, and attempting to overcome my fear of haloumi, I finished dressing one of the dinner plates, turned around and promptly had it take a face plant off the kitchen bench onto the tiled floor. SUCKS. Only the fact that I was hopped up on codiene saved the kitchen from taking a trashing last night. Instead I just stood and looked at the shattered plate on the floor then went and had a sulk in front of the heater.