Fancy Food, Fancy That

I blame the unusual proliferation of cooking shows.  There was a time when there was food, we cooked it and then we ate it and that was pretty much the end of our involvement.  Now, apparently we have to get creative.  We have to develop "new takes" on traditional food.  Usually this consists of taking some traditional ingredients, adding a whole bunch of new ingredients and then attempting to persuade the people we have inflicted these on that they are eating something traditional.

Which is why when I trotted along to the canteen that my employers helpfully provide in the hopes of preventing their employees from leaving the building at lunchtime the "bangers and mash" on offer were slightly unusual.  There were indeed bangers, there was indeed mash and to top it all off there was onion gravy.  Simple, traditional and, let's face it, not too exciting fare.  But wait; these were pork and fennel sausages.  How new and exciting.  How deeply interesting.  How in the hell did anyone come up with that? 

At what point precisely did somebody sit down and think that what the world really needed was a licorice flavoured sausage?  Would anybody attempt to market sausage flavoured licorice?  Well, probably yes.  If not now then eventually.

I actually like fennel.  I like sniffing it and bruising fresh sprigs of it between my teeth.  Allowing it's flavour to permeate a sausage however does make me think that the people involved in food preparation nowadays simply have too much time on their hands.

Despite my English heritage (thanks Dad) I am not one of those who thinks that non-bland food is an offence against Christ.  I am also prepared to accept that in the course of experimentation there are going to be a number of cockups along the way.  What I don't understand is why these cockups must then be foisted upon the unsuspecting public with the strong implication that if we don't like them there must be something wrong with us.  There is a hint of the emperors new clothes about the entire situation.  Everybody is so awestruck at sitting down to a wonderful dinner produced by a first class chef that nobody has the nerve to point out that the food tastes like crap.

It has been pointed out to me that I have a dreadful palate.  That I tend to like simple foods with an emphasis on meat and gravy and perhaps less interest in the wonders of the vegetable kingdom.  Do vegetables have a kingdom?  Animals have a kingdom but I strongly suspect that vegetables would have a people's republic but I digress.  As I said it has been pointed out to me that I do not have an adventurous palate.  This is true insofar as I won't eat absolutely anything simply for the novelty value of eating it, nor do I necessarily find virtue in blending together a dozen ingredients that have never been blended before just because they haven't been so blended before.  I have, however in the course of a life that isn't over yet eaten beef, chicken, buffalo, deer, goat, duck, kangaroo, sheep, crocodile, wild boar, quail, octopus and numerous things I couldn't quite identify but were, on balance of probability, animals of some sort.  Most of the preceding came accompanied by vegetables some of which I also ate.  I also like salt and vinegar crisps in icecream.  In short I do not think I am particularly precious in my dietary requirements (apart of course from a refusal to eat sea dwelling animals, the octopus was a rare and not repeated exception).

Despite the catholicity of my eating tastes I refuse to believe that licorice flavoured sausages are a good idea.  And while we're making fancy sausages can we focus less on the putting of new things into them and a little more on removing the bits of gristle currently present.  Let us leave the licorice flavour to things like ouzo and sambucca both of which I also detest but which I am unlikely to inadvertently order for lunch.  Let us realise that there is only so much we can do to a dead animal before it ceases to be cooking and simply becomes mutilating a corpse.  And on that note. Bon appetite.