For conch, it is all in the prep work. I eat the conch ceviche appetizer every time I eat at Yvette’s in St Martin. Their conch isn’t tender, but it is just a little chewy.
Iguana is weird. Tough, chewy, gamey chicken is how I’d describe it. There’s very little meat and it clings to the bones, so you eat it by gnawing the meat off the bones. I feel like a caveman eating it.
I like frog legs, but got turned off to them when I worked in a neurophysiology lab. The lab down the hall did muscle physiology using the gastrocnemius muscle from frogs. Nearly half their preps had to be discarded due to too many parasite cysts, and those were frogs raised for scientific research!
Ah, another groat consumer! Oat groats I presume? But I admit to flinching a bit at the addition of soy and pesto (tho I love both those ingredients on other things, albeit not together).
I once mistakenly added Penzey’s ‘Justice’ spice blend (shallots, garlic, onion, green peppercorns, chives, and green onion) to my oat groats and butter and maple syrup, having grabbed that container instead of the cinnamon. I ate it, but it was not inspiring enough for me to repeat that error.
There a maybe apocryphal story about a US Army General (Abrams?) during the Vietnam conflict meeting with some of his counterparts on the NVA side. They wanted to throw him off his game so they served dog stew. He ate it and asked for seconds.
In the first part of my career as a manufacturing engineer I spend a lot of time in the boonies of various parts of Asia. Much of the food was outstanding but some was very challenging. It cured me of some of my pickiness. Eat or starve. I did go hungry on occasion.
There’s a Senegalese restaurant in my neighborhood that has crocodile on the menu, and I found it similar to iguana (I guess unsurprisingly). Not terrible, but odd.
Their antelope dish, by contrast, is delicious.
And my kids, bless em, were excited to try both, and they had seconds on the antelope. I have not raised picky eaters.
My kids are 33 and 30. I always told them they did not have to eat anything they didn’t like, but they wouldn’t know if they liked something without trying it.
That reasoning worked well for us. When they were little they tried and liked pretty much everything. As adults we can go to any restaurant and eat anything on the menu, including novelty items none of us have tried.
Correct (although I also enjoy wheat berries, spelt, barley, etc. oats are my favorite). The predominance of rolled oats in the marketplace is surely the consequence of some historical inertia that I don’t understand. People seem to be warming up to steel cut oats, why not even less processing?
That’s my exact texture issue. I don’t like that soft crunch texture so apples and celery and water chestnuts are out. Carrots are ok if cooked soft like in stew. Also cucumbers but I can’t stand the actual taste of cucumbers. If put a thin slice of cucumber in water the water tastes foul to me.
Conch ceviche is some the most delicious raw seafood I’ve ever had. As for horse, I have no emotional associations with them, so when I saw a vendor at the end of the M2 metro in Budapest selling ló kolbász (“horse sausage”), I had to give it a try. It was … meh. Too dry for my tastes.
Exactly! The Mrs and I make two cups of oat groats about every 5-6 days. We love the chewy texture. We rinse and toast the oats, then use a pressure cooker set for 28 minutes which makes it just right for us.
We should branch out to to wheat berries and spelt sometime. We do use barley at times. I’d like to try some buckwheat groats too someday, I just need to remember to order them online
Alligator isn’t unusual at Cajun places, at least here in Texas. I’m not entirely convinced that it’s a common meat in Cajun country, but more of a “tourist” dish.
Anyway, it’s more akin to chicken than anything else, but it’s a little chewy and a little bit… fishy(?) when fried up as nuggets.
I guess where I get crossways with a lot of picky eaters is more in the can’t eat vs. don’t like to eat aspect of things.
I mean, I’m with you. Cucumbers aren’t good. They’re kind of like nasty melons, except not sweet, and they are kind of almost perfumey. I don’t like to eat them. But if I’m trying not to offend someone, or just too lazy to pick them out of a gyro or something, they’re not going to poison the whole thing and make it inedible. Same thing with raw tomatoes.
But a lot of the self-proclaimed picky eaters I’ve met treat it like it’s can’t eat whatever it is. Which seems a bit more mental illness-adjacent if it’s some normal food like cucumbers or carrots.
I’ll second @bump just above. But ref @hajario, I’ll also distinguish between
I strongly prefer to not eat [whatever] because it squicks me out.
I strongly prefer to not eat [whatever] because it roils my stomach or intestines.
The former is 100% in the mind. That doesn’t mean it’s any less real, or any more voluntary. But it is a psychological oddity, not a physiological oddity.
The latter is a least probably in the guts, not the mind, for most people and most foods. Although hysteria can certainly make a crowd suddenly think they all have food poisoning.
The textural issue is strong with many folks, and causes a gag reflex that can’t be suppressed. I had it as a kid with many foods. If I tried to eat it, I’d end up retching at the table, which is rather humiliating. I learned to swallow a lot of foods whole with a beverage, once cut up into smaller pieces, to avoid this.
I’m grateful I eventually overcame that reflex and now am an adventurous eater. I empathize with those who have not been able to overcome it.
When I think of texture in food, it is always a positive. For example I like okra. In many recipes they suggest ways to decrease the “slime”, but it is a plus for me.
My Andalusian Gazpacho is forced through a chinois, giving it an intensely smooth, creamy texture.
Can someone give examples of “bad” texture in food?
I once ordered sushi, and the chef found a rabbit with bronchitis, made it hock up a thick loogie, cut a cube of the carrot-stained mucus, and stuck it on some rice.
This is the best response. If you know your guest would potentially not be able to pick from 6 choices…you’d be better off taking them to Applebees. They are not the type of person that would appreciate fine dining.
For people that are foodies and adventorous eaters, the primary part of the dining experience is trying unique combinations of flavor that are created by the chefs. Not just getting the best steak or the best dover sole.
Heh, I knew it was uni before I read it was uni. Yes, uni is (so far) the only sushi I would not order again. If it were served to me I’d eat it, but if someone else at the table was reaching for it I would not mind. Then again, a friend told me that really fresh uni is much better tasting than what I have had.