Taste the taste in your mouth, taste the taste on your tongue

[venta]

Another day for pointless curiosity... how are you at eating things when you don't know what they are? I made sausages at the weekend (post on the topic coming soon), and offered some pieces of cooked sausage to colleagues to see if they could guess what was in it. Both happily chomped down on mystery food without any info. I regard this as completely normal, but am aware that some people would never do it.

So... in the poll below, I'm asking about whether or not you'd eat mystery food I gave you. This is not just a meal I've cooked, this is something "mysterious" I'm inviting you to try. I'm aware some of you probably trust me, and some of you barely know me. Let's assume I'm someone you know well enough to know won't poison you, or feed you fag-ash-and-spider sausages for a laugh, but not someone whom you feel you know well enough to place special trust in.

Let's also assume that I know about your dietary requirements, so I won't give you meat if you're vegetarian, I won't feed you pork if you eat kosher, and I won't give you wheat if you're coeliac. I have perfect knowledge of your dietary requirements, even if they're quite complicated :) I don't know about your likes and dislikes, though, so won't guarantee not to feed you aubergine if you really hate it.

[Poll #1907455]

I feel there's quite enough options already, if you want to be all snowflakey, you can do it in the comments ;)

Comments

[beckyc.livejournal.com]

If you offer me mystery food which you assert is me-friendly, then sure, why not? (Random person on the street, not so much).

I like food in general, particularly interesting food. Usually the worst that will happen is I might not like it - and how would I know that unless I tried it?

This usually works out fine. There was that one time that lnr gave me a me-friendly mystery chocolate which turned out to be a chocolate covered raw brussel sprout (there was context, she wasn't being mean ;-). ). And that was, ahem, not a taste I'm ever likely to come to fully appreciate (sorry!).

[venta.livejournal.com]

Well, I'd agree. I just remember (years ago) being in a restaurant with a good friend, and I was eating something like seafood linguini. I uncovered a ... thing. I had no idea what it was, commented on this, and ate it.

He was completely aghast that I would put a thing in my mouth when I didn't know what it was. I guess it having tentacles didn't help :)

I was working on the assumption that if it was in my seafood linguini, it was fundamentally an edible thing that people who like seafood liked. So had no problems at all eating it, even without introduction.

[ailbhe]

I am so glad I missed most of the chocolate coverings.

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

There are various reasons for being offered food blindfold, but at least one is "I think you wouldn't accept it if you could see it". If I can't attach a low probability to that reason, it's going to be scarier than viewed food.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Eep, you and beckcy know each other?!

People should stop doing this to me :)

(Or I should learn that there are only about 200 real people in the world and get over it...)

[erming.livejournal.com]

I'd try it but that would be assuming you know I'm allergic to wheat, eggs, soya, nuts, ginger and prawns. Which is often a big ask as saussages often contain bits of wheat in them.

My friend Ashleigh summed it up quite well when she said "Why don't you just say you are allergic to food!"

[huskyteer.livejournal.com]

I would at least need to know whether I was expecting something sweet or savoury. It really disconcerts me when I think I'm getting one and it turns out to be the other. (Forewarned, I'm all for ice cream that looks like spaghetti bolognese and so on.)

[venta.livejournal.com]

Well, I didn't know that, but hypothetical-me who was offering hypothetical-you hypothetical-mystery food knew :)

[venta.livejournal.com]

Interesting, I hadn't thought of that.

I think the single weirdest food I've ever eaten was a G&D's petition-flavour, of port and stilton. Even forwarned, your brain sort of went:

Yup, port ice cream, I can understand that.
Might have made more sense as a sorbet, really.
Nice, though.
CHEESE

Every time.

[bibliogirl.livejournal.com]

Port sorbet and Stilton icecream, for the win. (Made it for rotwang's birthday a few years ago ;))

I would need to know about the item's me-friendliness (largely "does it have sugar in it, or a lot of starch?") but beyond that I will eat most things...

[erming.livejournal.com]

I'm usually so impressed someone (or some place) has managed to cater for me I'll eat it happily!

[ailbhe]

Oh, no, but I know a lot of people involved in a great chocolate covering conspiracy, including locusts and a complete fried breakfast. And I know LNR.

[snow-leopard.livejournal.com]

So long as I had been assured that said food was suitable for Vegetarians I would be willing to try pretty much anything proffered!
But then I grew up in an eating food of each other's plates / ooh try this thing I am eating type family (a lot of people are aghast at our food swapping antics in restaurants).

[phlebas.livejournal.com]

If it does have aubergine in it, I want first try.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

I would be as willing to try random goo but my trying would be more cautious if its taste is not as obvious from its appearance as sausage. The thing with the fork, only if I get to hold the fork.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I'm not really sure why I picked aubergines as my exemplar of nastiness, I quite like them.

You should try this (http://justhungry.com/japanese-country-style-stewed-eggplant-nasu-no-inakani).

[phlebas.livejournal.com]

I think I should!
I was going to recommend correspondingly a recipe for pasta alla Norma, but the link made LJ think it was spam. Silly LJ, pasta alla Norma is made with aubergines, not spam.
Googling "serious pasta alla Norma" should find the right recipe though.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I guess it's more of a problem with processed food, as the most unexpected things turn out to have wheat and soya in them.

For home-cooking, it doesn't sound too scary a list, as most of them are fairly easily avoidable things. I guess wheat/eggs make cake difficult, but the others are all things you would consciously put in.

Does the wheat thing not make beer-drinking difficult in Germany?

[erming.livejournal.com]

In Germany I avoid Weizen beer - Weizen and Lambics were my two fave beers :-( and try to hope that the stuff they put in it for head isn't wheat.

Lagers and Pilsners, dunkels (but not dunkel weisse) and schwarz, kolsch, altbier all seem ok.

Eating out is more of a challenge and whatever country sauces and soups are a major problem as they are usually thickened with wheat.

As for baking I have special flours (ingrediants resemble a chemistry set as you have to add lots of things for individual properties of wheat flour) and egg replacement powder that is great and most people can't tell it doesn;t have egg in it!

[venta.livejournal.com]

I think the spam problem might be because you weren't my friend. Since I don't do locked posts, I don't think I'd put you on my friends list because you don't post, so there's no reason to.

Hopefully, having now decided you are my friend, LJ might be a bit less hissy about you posting links

Recipe looks interesting. I wonder if my fabulous local deli can furnish me with the requisite ricotta; sounds like it's tricky to track down.

[phlebas.livejournal.com]

I've never managed to track down the real thing but have tried several substitutions - feta and ricotta both work pretty well but a mixture of ricotta and pecorino is favourite so far.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

That incident put me off the idea of mystery food and I wasn't even the subject l-)

[sammason.livejournal.com]

My Watson laughs at me for being a try-anything-once person where food's concerned, while she orders fried chicken with chips. Then she has weird moments. I forget which East Asian country she was in where she decided to try every kind of seafood, and did. This week one of her staff handed round a treat meal of Indian takeaway. 'What's this thing that looks like a sausage with a hole up the middle?' asked Watson. I think it was probably sheesh kebab but I told her it may have been penis.

[sammason.livejournal.com]

LJ goes hissy if anybody posts a url.

[beckyl.livejournal.com]

'The ones that look like chocolate brazils, aren't'

On account of them being chocolate covered garlic cloves, as it happened.

On the subject of trying food - I expect I would be happier not knowing what something is if my preconceived notion might interfere, but that's generally looking at things like grubs, insects etc. I will arbitrarily rule out trying things like wasabi peas on the basis of too spicy/horseradish-y which I know I won't like.

Mostly, I think I will eat anything with tentacles, especially if they are tiny.