January is punishment month. A time for the faithless to self-flagellate at the feet of the gods Gym and Abstinence. In preparation for this paroxysm of who-am-I-kidding self-denial, I re-read Toast, Nigel Slater’s memoir of growing up in Wolverhampton in the ’60s. Like any good cook, he knows when to hold back as well as add. The book has poise. Slater treats the discovery of a new pudding with almost equal weight to the death of his parents, which means the latter hits you like a mallet.
Still, it is just the thing to read when your stomach is rumbling more than usual. Food is everywhere. Mostly Slater writes about the food he loves. A revelatory gratin dauphinoise. Sherbet dips. An unfortunate family experiment, never to be repeated, with a new-fangled dish from abroad: spaghetti bolognese. His language is appetising when he describes the things he loves. Less expected, perhaps, is how forcefully he hates things, too. This is not a gourmet fantasy where everything is to be savoured. Eggs, in particular, make him vomit. In one terrible scene, his father forces him to eat them.
It is axiomatic that chefs, or others professionally involved in food, have to be Catholic in their appetites. Nigella Lawson, child of a similar era to Slater, once wrote, ‘I had quite the wrong start for a future food-obsessive: I absolutely loathed eating as a child.’ She, too, remembered being forced to finish whatever was on her plate, regardless of how congealed or unappealing the dish.
An open mouth is taken to be synonymous with an open mind. There is something infantile about refusing even a bite. Exasperated, we urge toddlers to ‘just try it’. A child who ‘just tries it’ is more likely to become a liberal adult. If you don’t try new things, you will never learn what you are missing out on. The last thing any parent wants is a ‘fussy eater’.
Yet what are chefs, critics and recipe testers if not fussy eaters? They say you should never trust a thin chef. If that is true, though, surely it follows that you should never trust a fat critic? Evidently they don’t mind what they stuff in there, as long as it is calorific.
It turns out that many of the most astute palates hate some things as strongly as they love others. St John’s patron Fergus Henderson is fond of inveighing against coriander, the ‘bully’ of the herb garden. He shares this genetic prejudice with Julia Child, who extended equal displeasure to rocket. Of the critics, Jay Rayner loathes baked beans; Marina O’Loughlin mince pies. Chef Olia Hercules doesn’t like avocado, so hopefully she has been able to buy a house.
The late AA Gill variously didn’t like truffle oil, balsamic vinegar and winkles. Anthony Bourdain claimed not to like Chicken McNuggets, which has a ring of untruth. You might not like what is involved in their making, but the nugget itself is unassailable. Not all of these famous dislikes are so mundane. Heston Blumenthal claims a fermented skate wing, an Icelandic delicacy given to him on a boat, was the only thing that ever made him retch. He could have spared us a lot of fuss with a less welcoming appetite.
Every time my daughter (who’s two) says she doesn’t like something, I worry that she might become the dreaded fusspot. It is the response of a vain chef. It says: ‘How could you possibly not enjoy this shepherd’s pie I made?’ Then again, maybe she just has good taste.
Read last week's column: Crimes against croissants have reached epidemic levels across the UK
As you dislike it: is there really anything wrong with being a fussy eater?
Many of the most astute palates hate some things as strongly as they love others