(Not up for the chitchat? Completely get it. Click the email title to go to a web-based version then jump straight to the recipe or Cultural Fun.)
I was at my brother Adam’s place in Cambridge at the weekend, hanging out, playing games and failing to see the Northern Lights. Also getting genetically tested for the supertaster gene…
My niece Emma, has always been an uncommonly picky eater. Bread, rice, pasta, cheese (only Cheddar) and a few vegetables are OK but not much else. We bake a lot together but it’s a source of sadness to me that I can’t share the rest of my enthusiasm for food with her. And obviously it’s practically challenging for her parents and anyone else trying to get sufficient nutrients into the child on a regular basis…
For a long time it was approached as a problem of fussiness, with adults bribing and cajoling. “Just try it…” we would wheedle, usually unsuccessfully. But recently a colleague suggested to my sister-in-law that Emma might be a supertaster. And being a scientist, Jeanne set about investigating this theory…
An enhanced sensitivity to some flavours is genetic and affordable testing kits are available online. Jeanne has been experimenting on the whole family and meticulously recording the results. The test kit contains four vials of paper strips, three imbued with different chemicals and one plain as a control. They all look identical but place one on your tongue and your reaction reveals a lot.
The chemicals are Phenylthiourea and Thiourea which will taste bitter to someone with the gene and Sodium Benzoate which will taste either sweet or salty. You can see a more detailed breakdown of the experiment and the genetics involved here.
My niece was a firm positive and I was excited to be tested. Two of the strips were ack-ack, spit-it-out-immediately bitter, and one was slightly salty-acidic. Yes! I am officially a “dominant supertaster”! (Recessive supertasters can detect one of the bitter substances but not the others.)
It manifests differently in different people though. I wonder why I should gain an enjoyably sensitive palate from this gene whereas my niece is unpleasantly overwhelmed by anything other than the blandest foods?
Knowing the cause doesn’t make it any easier to cook dinner for her but it does make me more sympathetic.
Weirdly, it also makes me think about my recent Jury Service experience: people with different backgrounds and different outlooks putting their views forward and taking each other seriously. Although the case we were discussing was upsetting, I found it hopeful that we were able to do so respectfully. We all understood it was important not to dismiss anyone’s opinion or experience.
Food preferences don’t have the same weight as the justice system, but my point is that you never know how someone else’s experience of the world might be different from yours and therefore affecting their outlook or behaviour.
Things to Book
Not going to do the big sell on you this week but there are a couple of places left on my 7th June full-day workshop in Oxfordshire. In Good Taste subscribers get 20% off with the code IGT20.
Also, there are still tickets available for my class at The Dusty Knuckle next Wednesday. These usually sell out really quickly so this is very unusual: snap them up if you’ve always wanted to come along…
Knife skills and mindfulness
Until I began to specialise in fermentation, I taught a variety of things at Borough Kitchen Cook School. Among them a knife skills class and a thing called Healthy Cooking Mindful Eating. Or Mindful Cooking Healthy Eating. Some combination of those words anyway.
In both the classes I would make people do an experiment: take a carrot (peeled and with it’s root removed) and slice off a couple of pound-coin-thick circles. Then take a peeler and shave a few long ribbons. Lastly cut the remaining carrot into thin matchsticks.
We would then eat each piece in turn, concentrating on the mouthfeel and how it affected the taste. To me, the chunkiness of the coin boosts my perception of the carrot’s sweetness and the way the large surface area of the ribbon lays flat on the tongue makes eating it feel cooling. The matchsticks seem crunchiest.
I could also have included grated carrot, shred made with a julienne peeler, batons, brunoise and on and on. But three seemed enough. The point was to make people aware a) of the transformational power of knife skills and b) that how we chop, slice, grate and otherwise hack our food into bits has an enormous effect on our perception of it. Texture alters our experience of taste.
Which is a long winded way of saying that it’s worth thinking about making some krauts using veg that isn’t shredded or grated…
Recipe: Ribboned Carrot & Golden Beet Kraut
Makes one 500ml jar’s worth. Scale up or down as appropriate.
Ingredients
250g (approx) carrots, peeled
250g (approx) golden beetroot, peeled (keep the root of one if you don’t have a pickle weight)
1 tbsp mustard seeds
1 tbsp coriander seeds
flaky sea salt
Method
Use a peeler or a mandoline to cut the carrot into ribbons. I used a mandoline (with hand guard!) on a very thin setting. You want the ribbons to be floppy and bend a bit under their own weight. If you’ve got a spiralizer (remember them?) with ribboning capability hiding in the back of your cupboard then this could be an excuse to get it out again.
Do the same with the golden beet. Again, I used a mandoline to make thin slices then a knife to cut the slices into ribbons the approximate width of the carrots.
Put a large bowl on your scales, add the veg and spices and weigh everything together.
Calculate 2.5% of this weight and add it in salt. Toss well until the salt and spices are evenly distributed.
Cover and set aside for 30 mins or so. When you return the vegetables will have softened and you should see a small puddle of brine at the bottom of the bowl.
Pack into a scrupulously clean jar. Push down as you go to eliminate as many air pockets as possible and pour in any brine left in the bowl. Use a pickle weight or saved beetroot end to ensure all the veg is below the brine then seal the jar.
Leave at room temperature, burping and tasting every few days, until your desired degree of tartness is reached then transfer to the fridge. For me this took about 10 days.
Notes (If Ifs And Ands Were Pots And Pans…)
I kept it fairly simple with the spices (for some reason I’m very into mustard seeds right now) but you could go in all kinds of directions here. Ginger, garlic, green chilli and some coriander, cumin and ground turmeric would have pleasing curried vibes.
Or double down on the coriander by adding freshly chopped leaves too for a take on the classic soup combo.
Caraway and dill would be another good pairing. Whatever you fancy really.
Try playing with different root veg when they’re in season. Celeriac would be great. Parsnips would work well too. Or it would be a good use of kohlrabi and/or broccoli stalks.
Here is the kraut on my very Insta-friendly lunch bowl the other day. I usually eat something like this when WFH - a combo of veg, ferments and hummus. It doesn’t normally look this pretty though…
Cultural Fun
17 years after surreal hospital-set sitcom Green Wing finished on TV it’s back as a podcast. The show’s visuals were always really distinctive so it’s lacking something in an audio-only format but I listened to all six episodes of Green Wing Resuscitated in more or less one go. I don’t think I laughed once but that doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy it. I did. Particularly the back-and-forth between arrogant anaesthetist Guy Secretan (Stephen Mangan) and self deprecating surgeon “Mac” MacCartney (Julian Rhind-Tutt).
The rest of the cast has returned too including Tamsin Greig, Mark Heap, Michelle Gomez and Olivia Colman and it’s lovely to hear the all-star comedy gang back together. I can’t imagine that it would make any sense at all to someone who hadn’t seen the original but if you were as fan then this will please you.
On a darker note I’ve also been listening to the audio book of Naomi Klein’s Doppelganger. She does a really great job of taking the story of how she has been serially confused with Naomi Wolf - also a dark-haired, Jewish writer of popular intellectual cultural commentary but otherwise not that similar - and opening it out.
Klein explores doubles through literature and popular culture but also writes about how but turning ourselves into online brands through social media we have all created out own doppelgangers, other selves who might obliterate us. And through the story of the “other Naomi” and her transformation from left-wing feminist into alt-right conspiracy theorist, Klein shows us the “mirror world”, an alternative reality of delusion but one that shouldn’t be underestimated.
I found it completely gripping, albeit in a dystopian thriller sort of way. She writes particularly persuasively about how the mainstream dismissal of people with legitimate worries around vaccinations or online privacy pushed them people into coalition with the far right. Another thing this week that made me think about the importance of listening sympathetically to other people’s viewpoints…
I think I’ve recommended Vittles before but there was a particularly nice issue this week about British Watercress:
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In Good Taste is a Sycamore Smyth newsletter by me, Clare Heal. You can also find me on Instagram or visit my website to find information about my catering work, cookery lessons and upcoming events.
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Am currently in a phase of adding ribboned carrots to my (cabbage) kraut, along with a big bunch of dill. Before that, I was deep in a carroway phase. It's funny how my fermenting tastes go through phases like that. Sounds like I'm not alone...
Am currently in a phase of adding ribboned carrots to my (cabbage) kraut, along with a big bunch of dill. Before that, I was deep in a carroway phase. It's funny how my fermenting tastes go through phases like that. Sounds like I'm not alone...