Pickles are perfectly fine for those who like them. My wife likes pickles. I don’t. I can even understand their popularity as a condiment on burgers and hot dogs.
But why, in the name of all that is holy, must one be stuck on the plate right next to my BBQ? Ribs do not require a condiment - indeed, I can’t even conceive how that could work. OK, so some folks apparently enjoy a pickle with their meal. But why should I have to suffer a pickle soaking it’s evil juice into my bread? Why is that the default?
Because pickles taste great accompanying ribs. Around here (Fort Worth, Texas) BBQ is also usually accompanied by slices of raw white or red onion. I don’t care for the taste, and can’t eat raw onion in any case, but apparently a lot of people do enjoy it. Believe me, if this wasn’t popular, the restaurants wouldn’t bother offering it.
Season your greens, most people don’t- a salad should have a sprinkle of salt and pepper- preferably coarse salt. I hardly use salad dressing and it tastes so good.
Eating noises drive my batty. Eat quietly or get away.
People who make yuck faces or remarks about other peoples food. My kids knew from early on that they didn’t have to eat or like the food for dinner, but they will never say “yuck” about the food.
I base my ideas on the fact that many, many, many people serve vegetables regularly that are just steamed or baked or raw, with no seasoning or very little seasoning, as a side dish.
I have never seen a recipe for “plain baked chicken” without any sort of seasoning, nor have I ever heard of anyone besides my friend eating it in this way.
I love the little wooden spoons that come with the little ice cream cups. Vanilla+wood=Yum. It makes me feel like a kid again.
Yes, I’m weird.
Yet, what’s weirder: I hate hot food on paper plates. In fact, I really hate paper plates. They seem so savagey and second-rate. I can suffer things like chips and cake on them. But I’m not going to scrape anything liquid that’s going to suck up the paper into my food. Ewww.
My wife would serve everything on paper plates if I let her. Luckily she’s a wonderful cook and a perfect human being, except for that.
I hate a sub-type sandwich that has too much bread in relation to the filling. So I pick off a bunch of the bread to improve the ratio. By the time I’m done, it looks like weasels have been attacking my sandwich and birds are circling overhead for the bread leftovers.
I like mayo on any meat sandwich, including the sacred pastrami and corned beef. At real delis, I cheat and ask for mayo packets after the fact hoping they might think it’s for some other purpose (like fries, maybe). At faux delis, I don’t give a shit.
I deconstruct pizza- eat the toppings first, eat the cheese, scrape the saucy doughy part of the crust underneath the cheese and then maybe eat the rest. I reserve this show for close friends and family!
I think I probably am, based on that list of foods given. I don’t like the taste of coffee or grapefruit juice–the bitterness of them overwhelms any other “note”. I do like spinach on pizza, though…
It is only now that I am in my 40s that I find myself reaching for more spices and herbs to liven my food up. But I still can’t stand pickles (and why don’t they ask if you want one, eh?) or olives or other savory relish type things.
Maybe, although the ones I’ve had didn’t have the spices. It was just like a regular fluffy white cake, but pink and tomato-y. Top it with whipped, sugared lard and sliced cherry tomatoes.
It’s not as bad as it could be, but it’s still one of those things that makes you feel like you are living in a parallel universe.
Just becasue a real Japaneese guy is making your sushi does not mean he is any good at it or better than the mexican guy down the street doing it.
Volume of wasabi means relitivly nothign. Strenghs of the condomint vary greatly.
Just becasue someone is wearing a chef coat or a chef hat does not mean they are knowledgable about food at all. Even if they do have a head chef position. I have been in the industry for agres and this is scary true.
Same with cookbooks. Because it is in a cook books means nothing. Unless it is in a classic like Joy or or any other time honered regualrly updated cookbook. Those will usually turn out even on the first attempt just fine even with substitutions and ajustments. All others be wary. And do not realy on an unproven recipie for an important meal no matter how purdy the picture or what celebrity chef wrote it. Chefs make aweful cookbook writers. They dont know how much they put in or how long it took them to make it.
Anyhow I gues my annoyance with food is peoples assumtion that sushi is some thing only a master can do. Or is precicly done. Any ol’hack can nock out some failry good sushi that most woudl not know the difference. Yes in idea it is a delicalte balance due to how simple it is, each ingreadient must be doen properly. And if that is the case. The rice perfect. the Nori propery toasted and fresh, the fish impecable, the soy of decent quality the wasabi fresh and pungent then the whole can be an amazing product. If not just add a heap of wasabi and some soy. That fixes most bad sushi and still tastes good on good sushi.
Chefs that get offended. Fuck them. If someone orders food from me it is theirs now. Fuck it. Do what you want with it. My emotions are not based on your desires. <TO COOKS>If coustomers are offending you remember this, You get the customers you deserve.
Or that some chef in a restaraunt is delicatly prepairing their food and tasting it to ensure a proper balance of flavors. BULLSHIT!!! In a busy place it is a mad crazy. the heaqd chef has probally already gone home and the assitant or sous chef is runing things and likly drinking on the job and just banging it out.
Except for a very samll percentage most food is just trown together. True honest care for food is rare at least in my 25 years of experience. Most shit tastes good becasue we are hungry and need to eat and being the evolved omnivors that we are we can derive pleasure form eating a broad range of things for survial.
Most food in most places is a hack job. Even if it tasts good.
So you have a right to hack it up at the table as well. Pile on that fucking wasbi if you like it. It is probally defrosted fish anyhow and overcooked calrose rice. Load up that kethcup It probaly needs it. Put the fucking steak sause on it. 90% chance the fucking grill dude dont have a clue as to what he is dong with that meat anyway. If they get offened they are just feeling insecure.
But unless they are pickled onions, they are NOT leaking juice onto the bread and contaminating perfectly good BBQ sauce. You like pickles. Fine. But the horrible, nasty things should be on the side not laying on top of the bread. If bread soaked with pickle juice was that appealing, I’d see pickle-flavored bread in stores. There is a lunch meat called “pickle loaf” but it is not pickle-juice-soaked bread.
They do it because some people like it. But it would be interesting to hear what percentage of the plates in a BBQ restaurant came back to the dishwasher still pickle-laden, and what amount of bread comes back uneaten because of pickle juice contamination.
Actually, yeah, even fresh raw onions leak onion juice. I can taste it, especially if I pick them off my salad, because it’s quicker and easier for me to pick the onions off the salad that I ordered “no onions” on than to send it back and have someone else pick the onions off of it. I know they’re not supposed to, and I know they do it anyway, because I’ll taste the onion juice. The onion juice will contaminate anything the onions have been on. Fortunately, I can tolerate a very small amount of it, but I do my best to avoid all of it, so I will have a reserve in case I have to eat some onion later in the day.