I used to hate it but now I love it

[marezion]

A thread on least favored condiments got me thinking about foods we detest, and how tastes change over time. For me, eggs were always a no-fly zone. Once upon a time, the mere smell of an egg, hard-boiled, scrambled, fried or otherwise, was enough to make me gag.

Strangely I am now a big fan of the eggs over-very-easy and A1 combo, especially with a nice juicy skirt steak and some greens and maybe a couple of fried sausages.

Or eggs benedict with extra hollandaise, or quiche...

So I got to thinking about how I went from having this thing with eggs where if I so much as thought about them, I felt ill, to thinking about them as a dream meal item on the subway playing the Fantasy Breakfast game every morning on the subway going to work with my boyfriend. (Popular choices include oysters rockefeller and ribs and boudin noir and foie gras. People get the wiggins.) Anyway, I was wondering if people would like to join my very first eGullet thread and share their culinary love stories.

I still have a big problem with uncooked celery...

[tommy]

i was just talking about this the other day. not sure if there's an old thread on it as well.

for me, it took me some time to develop a taste for raw fish, raw oysters, and blue cheese. now i can't get enough. this all came to me in my late 20's.

at this point, i'll eat and enjoy just about anything. an exception being oily strong-tasting fish.

[melkor]

There are a lot of foods I still can't stand to eat, but duck and wild mushrooms have definitly moved from the yuck category into the yum category. I've been buying ducks at the farmers market each weekend for the past few weeks and cooking them every way possible, it's my new favorite food. I changed my mind about morels after finding them at the farmers market and deciding they really couldn't be that bad - I still can't stand most mushrooms, but damn are morels good.

[cakewalk]

Olives.

[KatieLoeb]

Beets!!! As I child I absolutely LOATHED them. Thought they tasted like dirt. My mom used to try "sneak" them into my salads and everything would turn purple and I'd whine: "Mo-oommm! There's beets in here!!!" "No there aren't sweetie..." at which point I'd show her one impaled on the tines of my fork and she'd give up, only to try again several weeks later. My mom was big on the iron rich qualities of beets and tried her damndest to get them down my gullet.

Fast forward to age 23, when I spent a month on the French Riviera doing a college "Summer Abroad" program. Supposedly learning about film and art history in Cannes and the environs, really learning to drink, eat and flirt with foreign men. Many Nicoise Salads later I am crazy about beets and still am. Go figure...

[mikeycook]

I always hated zucchini and other summer squashes. However, after trying zucchini blossoms for the first time earlier this year, I am becoming a convert.

[JAZ]

Beets. My Dad always had a big garden while I was growing up and always grew beets. I tried them a couple of different ways, but hated them. I didn't eat them for years. For some reason, I tried them a while back and now I adore them. And I deeply regret missing all those home grown beets I could have eaten back when I was a kid.

Oh, and mayonnaise.

[marezion]

Taste is a funny thing. As a child I remember loving oysters, duck, pate, stinky cheeses. My parents and grandparents are Spanish and my house was filled with wine and olives and gorgeous sauces. On the other hand, the concept of Baloney and processed American Cheese in a sandwich was incredibly foreign and gross to me. I remember sitting in the lunchroom in my Catholic preschool drinking hot black bean soup from my My Little Pony Thermos and wondering how the heck those other kids could choke down 'ants on a log'??!! Eugh.

I hated raisins, celery, hot dogs, eggs, grape jelly, tomato soup... But give me a scallop and I was yours forever. Nowadays I can enjoy the occaisonal dog, tolerate raisins, love a fried or poached egg and guld the creamy tomato basil soup from the deli. How did I get here? Well, the eggs at least owe something to the Citrus Benedict from Telephone Bar on Third Avenue, right around the corner from my NYU dorm.

[tryska]

onions were the bane of my existence all through childhood. (especially sucky when you are indian)

anyways....i remember the day distinctly - it was 1999 i was then 28 years old and for lunch i craved a cheeseburger with raw (RAW of all things) onion.

that's when i realized i had become a grownup.

[marezion]

Melkor- most successful duck preparations, pleeeze?

Also, I found that peeling, dicing (large dice) and roasting turnips, parsnips, beets tossed with olive oil and S&P and thyme and a smidge of honey in a hot over for three quarters of an hour makes a lovely side dish with very little of the tie-dye effect beets are known for.

[Rachel Perlow]

You beet former loathers should read Varmint's latest missive.

[bloviatrix]

I find it amazing how many of us had problems with beets when we were kids. I'm another one.

I remember my parents eating borscht. I loved the magenta color, and thought the bright pink it turned with the addition of sour cream was pretty, but the taste made me gag. Three years ago, Blovie and I were in London and had dinner at a vegetarian restaurant. One of the salads they served was beets and granny smith apples. I decided it was time to re-taste the beet and found that I liked them. So now, I've re-embraced the beet. (As I type, I'm in the processing of making a pot of borscht)

[foodE]

I always loved beets and still do.

Things I hated but now love include olives, chinese food, capers, onions, eggs, sandwiches of any sort.

I'm still working on cultivating a taste for seafood and shellfish, but no luck so far. I have tried it over seven times, I'm sure, but, with few exceptions, I still don't like it. Sorry, Jeffrey Steingarten.

[melkor]

Melkor- most successful duck preparations, pleeeze?

It's still a work in progress but so far:

Mighty Duck (Alton Brown) - excellent way to render the fat, good crisp skin, very overcooked duck.

Braised Duck with Glazed Shallots and Honey Sweet Potatoes (Jacques Pepin) - great sauce, legs/thighs were excellent, breast meat dry and somewhat boring. Shallots were very very good. Used butternut squash instead of sweet potatoes - also very good.

Breast of Duck with Port Wine and Figs (Sara Moulton) - Great sauce though it would be better suited to quail, overall the best so far.

Duck Confit is still in the fat in the fridge, I'll probably have it over the weekend.

[Bicycle Lee]

mushrooms for sure.....and shrimp....

truffles too, actually. I remember my mother got some white truffle oil about ten years ago and I thought it was the most disgusting filth I had ever tasted....Now I can't get enough of it...

Zucchini still isn't my favorite, as with yellow squash, but I tolerate them...

what bout the OTHER way around? Like things you used to love but now hate...

Cream soda...I used to suck it down...now it makes me sick...

[Steebles]

I only learned to love blue cheese this year.. and I'm 46 years old

[melkor]

what bout the OTHER way around? Like things you used to love but now hate...

Cream soda...I used to suck it down...now it makes me sick...

Packaged chocolate/plastic coated donuts from Entemann's... Yick.

[tommy]

I find it amazing how many of us had problems with beets when we were kids.  I'm another one. 

i still loathe the ones that come in that can, all red and icky. for that matter, i still loathe spinach in that can as well. those cans from the 70's had a way of taking something perfectly wonderful and making it into mushy disgusting nastiness.

[marezion]

Things you loved but now cannot stand seems like a pretty good topic too!

Only, I can't think of any

Edited September 26, 2003 by marezion (log)

[Basilgirl]

I used to hate spinach unti a few years ago. Fresh baby spinach + lots of garlic + extra virgin olive oil + hot pepper flakes (+ sometimes a little anchovy melted into the oil) =

[Steebles]

mmmm fresh spinach qualifies for me too

I adored cherry pie as a kid until my grandmother got wind of it and literally (figuratively) drowned me in cherry pie one summer. I still avoid it.

She meant well though

You gotta watch what you tell grandma :)

[elyse]

Have you seen the "Were you a picky eater thread?"

By the by, I have too many to mention.

[canoodle]

Cooked green bell peppers for me. Tasted like iodine to me...or what I imagined iodine to taste like. I have always liked raw bell peppers and cooked red bell peppers. If someone put a tiny piece of pepper in a dish and removed the pepper, I could tell if the dish had at one time contained bell pepper. I recently found out that if I roast and skin the peppers..that taste disappears. Hmmmm..must be in the pepper skin. As an aside, my father said his mother loathed bell peppers also- said they had a funny taste. I wonder if it is a taste receptor that runs in families?

I still loathe stuffed bell peppers, but can tolerate lightly sauted peppers and peppers on pizza.

Zuchinni- I am able to tolerate it in small amounts.

Things I used to love but hate now: fig newtons blech

[FistFullaRoux]

Took me a while to grasp the concept of the cheese burger. It was either grilled cheese, or it was a hamburger. Pick one.

Others are mustard, mushrooms, and blue cheese. Now, I could put them all on the same bun and be a happy camper.

Stuff I loved but don't anymore: Lima beans, white bread, pimento cheese spread, and canteloupe. Although the last one is sort of my fault. There were 3 really good ones in the garden, and I was hungry. You do the math. That was 15 years ago, and it scarred me for life.

[marezion]

Things are starting to come back to me:

I was thinking that I really used to pass on all cauliflower preparations, but am now going through some kind of cauliflower phase. Roasted, pureed, soup, hmm.

I never got the Fig Newton thing. My parents used to feed the halved fruits to me off the grill with white Colombian cheese. By contrast the cumbly biscuit and brown jelly filling seemed very bad indeed. Also, Vienna Sausages.