Talking enthusiastically about everyday foods
The Guardian had a column called How to eat, which is now reaching an end. It sounds entertaining; I’ll have to browse the back catalogue. The idea originated in irritation at the pompous posh brand of food column.
Would there be mileage, we wondered, in sending up such high-handed advice in a clearly tongue-in-cheek, OTT way? But by flipping the subject matter and talking enthusiastically about everyday foods – beans on toast, lasagne, pesto, Magnums, pasties, hummus – in a way that would generate engaged, friendly debate below the line (BTL)? Note: the bottom half of the internet was less toxic then.
Sounds interesting but wait a second – pesto and hummus and lasagne and beans on toast? One of these is not like the others. The first three are foreign, yes, but that’s not the most relevant difference. The important difference is that they’re good. Beans on toast are not.
Naturally, some people got very angry. The implicit How to eat vibe was: please yourself, each to their own, crack on. I wasn’t going to come around and shout through your letterbox because you were serving (grotesque, medieval) bread sauce with Christmas dinner. But personal taste is sensitive. A cohort took How to eat at its word and saw any criticism of their dishes as an insult. Even under mildly amusing pieces about crumpets or coleslaw, the Guardian comment moderators had work to do.
Of course. Also, beans on toast are an insult to human intelligence.
The philosopher and writer Julian Baggini, an early contributor BTL, finds it fascinating how, when discussing food, rather than holding true to the Latin maxim de gustibus non est disputandum (in matters of taste there can be no disputes), rational people “find themselves acting as though … the whole point is to dispute”.
Guilty as charged! At least, when the subject is beans on toast. I can refrain from disputing a lot of food tastes, but the worthlessness of beans on toast is an objective fact. (Beans on toast, for non-UK readers who may not be aware, doesn’t mean some deliciously seasoned and sauced beans with an inexplicable piece of toast under them, it means canned beans made by Heinz with an inexplicable piece of toast under them.)
“Philosophers are drawn to aporias,” he emails, “two or more individually compelling but collectively incompatible claims. How to eat is the Platonic form of such a contradiction. It is absurd to say there is one right way to eat a food, and also obvious that cream before jam on a scone or pineapple on pizza is wrong. In philosophy such contradictions are torturous. With food, we get to enjoy them.”
Heh. I’m agnostic on the cream/jam question but emphatically gnostic about pineapple on pizza – it’s criminal.
They conclude with a few certainties of their own.
2 Raw bell peppers, ruin of many a pizza or tuna sandwich mix (particularly, those bitter green vibe killers), have fewer supporters. Rise up, Britain, rise up!
Hang on! Raw red or orange bell peppers are delicious. Really. Very different from the green ones, and very good, and crawling with vitamins. They’re also good cooked, especially of course with garlic and onions, but a raw red pepper in the afternoon is a fine snack. But I wouldn’t put raw ones on a pizza, no. Wrong vibe.
14 There are certain foods – ice-cream, chips, cheese, crisps, toast – that, even at their worst, are still enjoyable. As How to eat put it in 2012: “With its killer combination of fat, salt and umami, it is impossible to be a snob about cheese.” This, it transpires, is not a universal view.
Agreed, except about chips aka french fries. I don’t hate them but I don’t like them much either – they just seem dull to me. I never eat them. Potato salad, potatoes cooked with cheese in some way, hash browns, mashed, little red potatoes with lots of garlic and parsley, yes, but chips/french fries no.
18 Make a mess. Proudly wear your dinner. Get the kitchen roll on the table. Or just wipe your hands on your jeans. How to eat spent a lot of time debunking the myths of good manners: tip that soup bowl towards you; eat on the bus; chill out about double-dipping (this was pre-Covid).
No no no. Again, one of these is not like the others. Eating on the bus affects other people on the bus, people who have not chosen you as a munching companion, so broadly speaking, don’t eat on the bus unless you have the seat to yourself and it’s something quiet and not smelly.
19 When you start talking about how acrid bitterness is a positive characteristic in food and drink (grapefruit, coffee, slightly burned jacket potatoes, west coast IPAs), people start looking at you funny.
Well then they should have some beans on toast. Of course it is. Dark chocolate is another, and so is kale. I hated that last acrid bitterness as a child, but bitterness is an acquired taste. I done acquired it.
On lasagne: “Like a good U2 song, impressive vegetable lasagne is possible but so vanishingly rare as to be statistically insignificant. For every exquisite artichoke or wild mushroom [version], there are 10,000 lumpen veggie lasagnes layered with a ‘Mediterranean’ vegetable slurry that has all the sunshine flavour of an abandoned graveyard in Telford.”
To put it as tactfully as I can, that might be a British cooking thing as opposed to a vegetable lasagne thing.
One woman’s comfort food is another woman’s childhood punishment.
OB: I maintain that evcerything, by which I mean EVERYTHING, is an acquired taste; except of course for maternal milk. For each of us, there was a time in our life when we would reject everything bar that. All else is literally a matter of taste, and comes later. But no doubt some unfortunates never get past the beans on toast (passable with lots of ground black pepper and a sprinkle of grated Parmesan cheese.)
But some combos are off the planet; like anchovies and ice cream; in the same dish and at the same time.
As a bit of a beans connoisseur, I’ll agree that Heinz beans are gross, whether on toast or not. :P
As far as ‘wearing’ your dinner or wiping your hands on your jeans, gtfo, and I’ll never dine with you again. Slobs don’t charm me in the least. Showing my age I guess. :D
Knowing that some commercial ketchups contain a little pineapple juice for sweetness to offset tomato acid and for complementary fruity flavor, I have in my youth tried pineapple topping on pizza a few times.
Hated it.
Eventually I determined that it was because of the huge chunks of the stuff used. I tried a homemade pizza using crushed, drained pineapple paired with jalapeno pepper and found that palatable.
But then i add Louisiana hot sauce to my lapsang souchong.
The OP is pretty dense, lol. Ophelia yes, no pineapple on pizza either, so disgusting, and you can’t even pick it off, it’s just ruined. As far as fries or chips go though, I never met a potato I didn’t like, with the possible exception of candied yams when I was young, I still don’t love them. :D
Ew, yes, that’s another one – for years and years I thought I hated sweet potatoes but I don’t, I just hate them cooked as a sweet thing instead of a savory thing. I love sweet potato fries – a fact I forgot when saying I find fries boring. White potato fries yes, but orange ones are good. But the sweet version evokes a genuine hint of nausea.
I enjoy pineapple on pizza. I don’t eat it much. It has to pair with something salty to be good. I used to get a pizza with bacon, pineapple (chunks, mind you, not crushed), and jalapeños. Delicious. It’s best if the oven is very hot, so the pineapple gets charred on the corners..
Raw, green bell peppers are very nice in a salad with onions, tomatoes, and feta. I would eat that right now.
Putting sugar on sweet potatoes is a terrible idea. They’re already sweet, hence the name. The best way to cook them is simply to bake them whole. Japanese sweet potatoes are the best kind.
French fries (frites, chips, etc.) can be terrible, especially if they were previously frozen, and no weird gunk on the outside can fix that. The potatoes must be fresh. They must be fried, drained, and fried a second time. They must not be pale, or floppy. For extra points, they should be fried in some sort of animal fat, like, say, goose or duck. Then they’re delicious.
Beans on toast is hilarious. That’s not what toast is for. Have you people no sardines?
My point exactly about sweet potatoes. They’re good with added savory but HORRIFYING with added sugar. They don’t become like chocolates or lemon tart or anything, they become like an awful cloying heavy sick-making sludge of nightmare.
Toast is worthless without peanut butter. There, I said it. Preferably extra sourdough from Oakland or S.F. :D
Pesto? Who can possibly eat that? Yuck!
Have to agree about pineapple on pizza, though. And the acrid bitter tastes are good, though my husband disagrees, so I don’t ask him to share my coffee. I’m also assured that broccoli is bitter, but it doesn’t taste that way to me…it is delicious, yes, but it has never tasted bitter to me.
twiliter – peanut butter? That’s best used for re-grouting the bricks.
Food is a fun topic, as long as people aren’t intense about it. I’ve had meals where everyone not only mocked what others ate, but actively chided them for eating what they liked. I admit, there are some foods I will never understand the appeal – like peanut butter – but seriously? Is it really worth your time to chew out a stranger for eating ‘wrong’?
Beans on toast is indeed a basic dish only fit for people in a huge rush. Beans on toast with a fried egg on top however is a meal for kings and queens.
Other acceptable toppings for toast include peanut butter, vegemite, cooked mushrooms, or nutella.
Raw capsicum is good on pizza! So long as the pizza is then put on the oven and cooked. Otherwise, no; cold salads on pizza are weird.
Sweet potatoes are like potatoes but worse, because nature added sugar to something that doesn’t need it. Blech, I’ve never seen the appeal.
I love love LOVE pineapple on pizza, and so now I will have to try beans on toast, for the simple reason that if I love something that another person detests, I might love (or at least like) a different thing that the same person detests.
Heinz beans were a fixture of my childhood, but I have baked beans of any variety rarely these days. I’ll pick up a can; I imagine they are better than B&M or Bush’s on toast.
ikn, “That’s best used for re-grouting the bricks.” :D
Silly otter, bricks are for kids. Or was that Trix….
Ah, Heinz canned beans, one of the most awful products ever created, and yet beloved by almost every UK citizen I’ve ever met. It’s some sort of sharp cultural divide. I’m reminded of a story from my misspent youth when, many years ago, I and a bunch of friends (Americans and Germans) decided to make a floating raft trip down one of the larger and more famous German rivers (you know, one of the ones with castles on the shore every 100 meters). It was to be a multi-day trip, and the group planned out exactly where we would put in each evening and set up camp. On the very first day we approached the first put-in and landed and our German friends began setting up camp. However, it was summer, and only about 3:00pm: we had arrived much earlier than we had anticipated. We Americans decided that it was too early to camp, and that we should just continue floating until evening, but the Germans were adamant that No, This Is Our Camping Spot Today, So We Must Stay Here Because That Was The Plan. After much discussion and eventually some heated arguments, we Americans decided to float onwards while the Germans decided to stay put. As we drifted off, one of the Germans called after us: “we don’t understand you!!”
(We met up again the following day, and there was great rejoicing.)
Pineapple is an excellent pizza topping, but needs to be accompanied by pulled pork, jerk chicken or something similar.
Strangely dill pickle chips can be an excellent pizza topping with just the right amount of salty acid to accompany lots of things.
I enthusiastically add my name to the pro-pineapple-on-pizza team. I was in a long-lasting argument with a colleague at work on the topic. As far as I’m concerned he lost the argument after putting potato chips (!) on his.
I’m oddly and perversely indifferent to pineapple-on-pizza, so long as an appropriately salty meat is also on the disc. It’s not my favorite, or even one I go looking for, but if it’s there, I’ll give it a shot every once in awhile and enjoy it for what it is.
Of course, as a Chicagoan, I know that all such pizzas are frauds, anyway, as they are invariably just that weak New York thin-crust crap…. Real pizza has substance–even, dare I say it, heft–thank you very much.
Also, a proper hot dog has a total of nine ingredients (Vienna Beef dog, yellow mustard, onion, tomato, dill pickle wedge, neon green sweet relish, sport peppers, all on a poppy seed bun and topped with celery salt).
And the rest of the country has no idea what you’re missing w/re: Italian beef sandwiches and pizza puffs.
I like pineapple, but not on a pizza. In Colombia about 25 years ago we went for pizza with a family with two small children. Someone suggested we let the children choose the pizzas, and they both chose Hawaiian. Yukh!
NEVER let the children choose the pizza!
There is no disputing that Gus took the east bound bus.
iknklast @ 10 – you don’t like PESTO??????????
I used to grow a good amount of basil for the very purpose of making pesto. Now I’m thinking I want a pesto and peanut butter sandwich, in honor of iknklast. :D
I like pineapple on pizza.
My favorite pizza when I was a kid was pineapple with canadian bacon. I think Shakey’s Pizza called it “the Hawaiian”. Shakey’s had a birthday club for kids. Pizza, pop, and party favors for the kids. The birthday kid got their own personal size pizza. When I was the birthday kid, I would get the Hawaiian. I didn’t have to worry about any of the other kids trying to take some of my pizza. :-)
Speaking of Chicago pizza: my high school geometry teacher, a Chicagoan, made sure we knew that “it’s deep dish, not pan.”
Pineapple and Canadian bacon sounds like a good combination to me. Pineapple and tomato sauce on the other hand doesn’t.
My mother introduced Canadian bacon into the family Index of OK Foods when I was a kid and I liked it a lot and it was kind of a special thing in my head – not the familiar old bacon (which I still also liked a lot) but this exciting new CANADIAN kind. Exotic.