Food memories: when did you first discover ***** and find a new food love?

[Smithy]

We all have them, running through our lives: the first encounter with some new food, and the realization that a world awaits. Or maybe that first encounter is a happy memory because of the surroundings and circumstances. Or maybe it's a funny story about something you loathed then but remember fondly now. (To this day, I use the horrid but effective hiccup cure I learned while tending pub in England.)

 

Over in the Breakfast topic, @billyhill mentions cooking (Mexican) chorizo and eggs for breakfast. I flashed back to my first encounter with that dish: aboard a sailboat with 5 college friends, and Francesca -- an accomplished sailor and cook -- feeding us chorizo and eggs for breakfast, with tortillas. I think that was it: no sour cream, no garnishes, certainly no fancy dishware. It was marvelous. I'd never had anything like it. The ocean air may have added spice; being with good friends on high adventure certainly was a marvelous seasoning. My experiences with ground meats before then had been limited to hamburger, bologna, and pepperoni.

 

"This is wonderful!" I exclaimed, "what's in this sausage?"

 

Cesca looked at me, grinned and winked. "Don't read the label." 😄

 

To this day, I can't cook chorizo and eggs without thinking of her and that trip.

 

I'll bet everyone here has equally evocative stories. C'mon. Spill.

[billyhill]

Much love.

[Alex]

10 hours ago, Smithy said:

To this day, I use the horrid but effective hiccup cure I learned while tending pub in England.

 

I liked the story about chorizo, but I suspect that this is an even better one.

Edited December 29, 2022 by Alex
to reword (log)

[Alex]

Mushrooms the First: I was 21 and still shied (well, ran) away from mushrooms. My girlfriend and I were having a couple of friends over to her house for a steak dinner, and she was making sauteed mushrooms as one of the accompaniments. I was too embarrassed (not to mention smitten with her) to admit to that semi-phobia or, even worse, to leave them on the plate. Deliciousness ensued. The girlfriend and I eventually broke up, but mushrooms and I have been in a fulfilling relationship ever since.

 

Mushrooms the Second: A couple of years later, a grad school classmate from northern Michigan took a few of us morel hunting. We ate them later that day, sauteed in butter with a little salt. Bumped my culinary aspirations up a notch or two, it did.

[Darienne]

I have a goodly number of first food stories.  I've posted the one about the soft-boiled egg already in the past and I may have also mentioned my Brussels Sprouts and Mother story.  'Not in my house you didn't eat Brussels Sprouts' my Mother said with some pride... Huh  ?????  And what about the amazing Almond Cookies from the now long gone Canton Inn in Ottawa when I was pregnant for the first two offspring.  (Our Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau used to eat there.)

 

But a first with much joy was Mexican food which I had never had until 1984, Ed's and my first trip to the Southwest.  Mexican food had yet to make it to East Central Ontario and I wouldn't give you two cents for what's available now.  And especially for Chile Rellenos.  Oh frabjous joy!  I order them over and over when down there.  Eating heaven.  I've made them once...just too much work and we can't buy the correct chile in our area.  So I buy Poblanos....which Ed is out buying I hope as we speak...last week there weren't any at all and we can get them in only one grocery store...and I'll make a Chile Rellenos Casserole which we will eat next week.  

[Katie Meadow]

How funny that Mexican food is mentioned immediately. For me it was NEW Mexican food. In the late sixties I moved to New Mexico, essentially after growing up in NY. I remember like it was yesterday the first time I tasted a burrito from a little dive my friend frequented. Very hot! Pork, beans, fresh green chile. So good. Then a bowl of green. Then a bowl of red.....We had our favorite places for a bowl of chile or a breakfast or chile rellenos.

 

Speaking of which, @Darienne, poblanos would be one of the best choices for chile rellenos because they have structure. Stuffing a Hatch chile is no mean feat; most of the thin long green chiles are too fragile. The problem is that even here, in northern CA, most poblanos are pretty mild and haven't as much taste as the routinely medium-hot ones we used o get in NM. Besides, if you made rellenos with real Hatch chiles your head would explode.

[Anna N]

This.

[Margaret Pilgrim]

Bloody beef.   I was a guest of a school friend's parents at the St. Francis Hotel in SF.   The table ordered fillets.    I ordered mine well done, everyone else, rare.    5 large, glistening, gorgeous steaks arrived, along with my small, shriveled lump of coal.    I never ordered well done again.

[billyhill]

Sounds weird to say it, salt. I guess I grew up in a salt averse house and we never ate out much. I think I got use to it and internalized it in my own cooking. I will never forget a former manager at the expo station setting me straight, "What do I look like, the bleepity bleep bleeping surgeon general to you? I sell flavor, put it in there." It changed everything and got me wondering what else I was missing.

[blue_dolphin]

I remember the first time I tasted pesto.  I brought a huge amount of basil home from the Santa Monica Farmer's market and followed the recipe in Mollie Kaizen's Enchanted Broccoli Forest.

I remember breaking off pieces of ciabatta to wipe out the blender and being amazed at the intense flavor. 

The first batch of pesto each summer brings me back to that little apartment kitchen!

 

[Smithy]

1 hour ago, Anna N said:

This.

 

Anna, thank you for reminding me about larb! We need to revive that topic, don't we? 

 

3 hours ago, Alex said:

 

I liked the story about chorizo, but I suspect that this is an even better one.

 

It's another high-spirits-of-20-somethings story.

 

I spent one summer and fall as a part-time bartender in a pub in York, England. We part-timers were all about the same age and we thoroughly enjoyed each other's company. On more than one occasion after closing we'd hie off to Mick's parents' house and do serious damage to their stock of liquor (pub-sized bottles, purchased from the pub owners with their blessing because Mick worked there). 

 

At some point in one of those parties I developed the hiccups. A bad case of hiccups. Nothing stopped them: not holding my breath, not "7 sips of water slowly" or any of the other remedies I was raised to try. Mick kept insisting: "try my way!" I finally agreed. He took a spoonful of sugar and dripped just enough vinegar into it to turn the crystals translucent. "Take this," he ordered. I demurred: "You *hic* don't expect me to *hic* take *hic* that, do you?" He did. There may have been a certain amount of physical persuasion involved. But I took it. It tasted wildly vile...but the hiccups stopped immediately.

 

To this day that's my remedy on the rare occasions I get hiccups. The day I convinced my now-husband to try it, he nearly threw up after swallowing it. But it worked!

[heidih]

This is 2 foods that dovetailed - mayonnaise and canned tuna.  As a young teen at a beach rental the friend's mom made us tuna salad sandwiches for lunch. My famiy did not know either . The mayo was creamy and brought it all together so magically - I was hooked. In truth it may have been Miracle Whip but close enough. My fondness for canned tuna remains. It also opened up my seafood world. Dad had employees who were avid rockfishermen and woud bring cleaned fillets  into work to sell so mom learned super simple fish cookery. Unfortunately she did not know about tartar sauce which I enjoy with simple seafood preps. These were beautiful rock cod types. Then I married a Panamanian and dove into all kinds of seafood. Learned to clean squid, and oince made the mistake of scaling a large rock cod from fish market in our apartment Oops - stray scales showed up for months...  I remain a lover of seafood (well oysters have yet to impress me - one try and done).

[BetD]

14 hours ago, Smithy said:

Cesca looked at me, grinned and winked. "Don't read the label." 😄

 

…. And this is why I make my own chorizo  😆    Great topic!!!

[Darienne]

 

2 hours ago, Katie Meadow said:

 

Speaking of which, @Darienne, poblanos would be one of the best choices for chile rellenos because they have structure. Stuffing a Hatch chile is no mean feat; most of the thin long green chiles are too fragile. The problem is that even here, in northern CA, most poblanos are pretty mild and haven't as much taste as the routinely medium-hot ones we used o get in NM. Besides, if you made rellenos with real Hatch chiles your head would explode.

Sad to say, Ed returned without Poblanos.  Apparently they are not selling well and the grocery store is no longer carrying them.   Very sad news....

 

Added:  just remembered that friends come fairly regularly once a month to stay over to attend  a gourd (my avatar photo is a large gourd which Ed and I sold many years ago) workshop.  She lives just outside of Toronto...where they would carry Poblanos...and I could ask her to bring me a large amount.  

Edited December 29, 2022 by Darienne (log)

[MaryIsobel]

4 hours ago, Darienne said:

I have a goodly number of first food stories.  I've posted the one about the soft-boiled egg already in the past and I may have also mentioned my Brussels Sprouts and Mother story.  'Not in my house you didn't eat Brussels Sprouts' my Mother said with some pride... Huh  ?????  And what about the amazing Almond Cookies from the now long gone Canton Inn in Ottawa when I was pregnant for the first two offspring.  (Our Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau used to eat there.)

 

But a first with much joy was Mexican food which I had never had until 1984, Ed's and my first trip to the Southwest.  Mexican food had yet to make it to East Central Ontario and I wouldn't give you two cents for what's available now.  And especially for Chile Rellenos.  Oh frabjous joy!  I order them over and over when down there.  Eating heaven.  I've made them once...just too much work and we can't buy the correct chile in our area.  So I buy Poblanos....which Ed is out buying I hope as we speak...last week there weren't any at all and we can get them in only one grocery store...and I'll make a Chile Rellenos Casserole which we will eat next week.  

I love chile rellenos. They are my gold standard when trying a new Mexican restaurant. We are headed to Mexico for 3 weeks mid-January. A condo with a kitchen, so I am really looking forward to the access to all ingredients for everything Mexican. Pico de Gallo every day, ceviche, guacamole, chilaquiles, fresh tortillas... and perhaps a little tequila and mezcal.

[Darienne]

19 minutes ago, MaryIsobel said:

I love chile rellenos. They are my gold standard when trying a new Mexican restaurant. We are headed to Mexico for 3 weeks mid-January. A condo with a kitchen, so I am really looking forward to the access to all ingredients for everything Mexican. Pico de Gallo every day, ceviche, guacamole, chilaquiles, fresh tortillas... and perhaps a little tequila and mezcal.

Oh yes!!! 

 

[Shelby]

I have so many that I will bore you all lol.

 

I was probably in second or third grade living high in the mountains of Colorado--this was in the early '80's.  I had a boy friend.  Ok we had crushes on each other so maybe I should say boyfriend but we weren't into that icky other stuff that goes along with liking someone like that lol.  His mom was and still is, I'm sure, a great cook.  Her mom owned a bakery that would open each summer during tourist season, but I digress.  One morning after playing hard outside in the snow we came inside for lunch.  She had made grilled peanut butter and grape jelly sandwiches.  O M G.  Sure I'd had regular grilled cheese---she and my mom both had the same grilled cheese maker.  I can picture it.  Black and square with a clasp thingy on the end that kept it closed while the sandwich "grilled".  Anyway, the toasted, warm, gooey peanut butter and the jelly.  Pure heaven.  I went home and raved.  I'm sure I drove my mom nuts about it lol.

 

Same mom and dad always threw a huge party on Christmas Eve--very stressful for me because as the night wore on I was always convinced that Santa wasn't going to leave me anything due to me not being in bed!  I was first introduced to a brick of cream cheese covered in jalapeño pepper jelly.  One had red and the other had green.  I thought it was so pretty and festive and OH so good with crackers.

 

Around the same age the principal of the tiny school I went to had a party....don't remember why but it was winter and cold.  Anyway, they made steamed whole, fresh artichokes (I had never seen these wondrous things before!).  A ramekin of melted butter on the side.....the adults would tear off a leaf, dip it in butter, scrape their teeth down and discard the rest.  My mom saw me staring and let me have one...which turned into I don't know how many before the principal and his wife chased me off because it was just for grown-ups.  Being an only child and that I was always included in everything with my family, I felt entirely snubbed lol.

 

To be continued........

Edited December 29, 2022 by Shelby (log)

[weinoo]

Coffee and Marlboro reds.

 

We lived upstairs, in this two-family semi-detached house (Forest Hills, Queens), with my paternal grandmother and my father's step-dad (i.e my paternal step grand father) downstairs - my father's dad had been mugged and killed, in 1926, 6 months after he (my dad) was born.  Upstairs:  2 bedrooms, living room, bathroom, kitchen and "dining room."  There were no bars on the windows at that time, which was from 1955 - 1964, when we made the move to Nassau County - sans my grandmother and grandfather, who then rented out the upstairs to new tenants.  

 

 

As my grandmother was so young when her husband was killed, she had to go into the work force, and my father was basically taken care of by his aunts, until joining the Navy in like 1942. She remarried, and they lived in this house until the both departed.

 

Anyway, they were great coffee drinkers and smokers back in the day; the whole family was, a matter of fact. So when we moved upstairs, my grandmother basically adopted me as the son she really never got to raise, and her routine was lots of coffee and Marlboro red cigs. I drank my first real percolator coffee down there (probably at the age of 12 -18 months, and never looked back.  As for the smoke, well - I was a smoker for quite a few years, but gave it up  a long time ago. As for coffee...well, they'll have to pry it out of my cold, dead hands.

[heidih]

@weinoo your coffee & cigs post reminds me of the Serious Eats about the connections we have with "bad coffee". I grew uo with percolkator coffee as a kid dragged to the ladies "Kaffeeklatsches". The best thing was watchinng that coffee bubble thing in the glass bit on top.   https://www.seriouseats.com/the-case-for-bad-coffee

[weinoo]

9 hours ago, heidih said:

The best thing was watchinng that coffee bubble thing in the glass bit on top. 

 

No, the best thing was the buzz from the caffeine and second-hand cigarette smoke.

[gfweb]

Mexican chorizo in a breakfast joint in San Antonio in the 1970s.  Brand new taste

Edited December 30, 2022 by gfweb (log)

[Tropicalsenior]

When I grew up in the Midwest all of our beef was cooked to crispy critter state. My father's philosophy on beef was if it is brown it is cooking, if it is black it is done. My future husband and I went to dinner with friends and he ordered a rare steak. I was appalled until he offered me a taste and I tasted real beef for the very first time. I've never wanted steak any other way since. After we married we moved to California and I learned to love all kinds of different food that I didn't even know existed.

[BetD]

Artichoke…. one of the strangest looking things I had been faced with on my dinner plate in my 7 or so years. What was I supposed to DO with it? Wait, I get a bowl of butter as well??  And I don’t really eat most of it??? Hey, this is fun!  YUM

[Darienne]

Pulled pork. 

 

Pork, except for overcooked pork chops, was never part of my eating life.  Then, one day in Ohio, at a gourd festival while Ed shopped for gourds (which as a bystander is less exciting than watching paint dry), I meandered over to the food truck area.  Now as an innocent Canadian lass, I had never in my life eaten anything from a food truck.  We didn't have them in Montreal or Ottawa when I was growing up and then when after we got married, they were never in our snack bracket which took many years to get beyond the stage where we brought our own sandwiches.  All of which is to set the scene for this Canadian to actually buy a pulled pork on a bun.

 

I thought I had died and gone to heaven right there and then.  Life for me changed forever and to this day I always have pulled pork on hand for myriads of edible causes.   My favorite recipe is Puerco Pibil as done by Roberto Rodriguez, who wrote, directed, produced, photographed, scored, and edited Once Upon a Time in Mexico, a truly violent and appalling film staring Johnny Depp and Antonio Banderas, except for the banana leaves and Habanero peppers which we can't buy in East Central Ontario.        

[lindag]

14 hours ago, weinoo said:

 

 

As for the smoke, well - I was a smoker for quite a few years, but gave it up  a long time ago. 

Glad to hear this.

Coincidentally. I will have been free of cigarettes for 25 years ad of Jan. 4, 2023!!!

Best thing I ever did for myself.