Read Online Does This Taste Funny? A Half-Baked Look at Food and Foodies by Michael Dane - Free Book Online Page B

picture one of the product guys at a meeting
saying,
    “Yeah,
I’m on board with the real fruit, but here’s another direction we could go: we
take the fruit and whatever boring ‘real’ flavor it has and we add more flavor artificially !”

    By contrast, the label
on this organic pasta may be the ultimate example of truth in labeling. Much
more than the nit-picky specifics of what the ingredients are, I just
want to know that they’re ‘real.’
    Nothing ruins a nice
dinner like finding out that your food contains fictional ingredients. “I can’t
eat this! It’s eight percent Flubber!”
    Given the American
psyche, I’m sure there will be the inevitable backlash, when it becomes hip and
trendy to eat as badly as possible. Americans will be all over it.
    After all, people bought
Jolt Cola (“All the sugar, twice the caffeine!”). Who’s to say you won’t start
seeing chips advertised with extra salt?
    Or maybe Dunkin’ Donuts
will start adding trans-fats to their pastries. You’ll be able to order
a hot dog and say, “Heavy on the nitrites, please!”

My Dinner with Marjoram
    In my first couple
years of cooking, I’ve been willing to experiment with almost anything on the
shelf. Granted, my relationship with coriander isn’t as close as we’d like, and
I’ve only flirted with bay leaves, but in general, I’ve tried to be even-handed
in my spice-ifying.
    I once used sage in a
dish simply because I hadn’t used it for a few weeks (turns out
it doesn’t work very well on ice cream).
    My point is that a cook
should stay on good terms with all the herbs and spices in the pantry,
and not become too attached to any of them.
    Which is why I was
taken aback the other day, while reaching for the rosemary. Behind the
rosemary, in the back, with no label and a cap that had never been removed, I
saw a container of marjoram.

    And then I was hit by
the realization that, over the last two years, in preparing hundreds of dishes,
I have never used marjoram.
     
    While I was fawning
over flashier jars, I was ignoring something that was considered downright medicinal by Hippocrates.
    And according to some historical botanists (botanical historians?) the ‘hyssop’ referred to in the
Passover story was actually marjoram!
    Not impressed yet?
Well, marjoram was also name-dropped by Shakespeare in Sonnet 99: “
And buds of
marjoram had stol'n thy hair . . . 
(o
ut of context,
that
makes
it sound like
marjoram
is
some sort of depilatory
, which

I’m fairly sure it isn’t).

    looking at this, i realize i may have
    smoked a lot of marjoram in college
    I couldn’t call myself a
cook until I had used everything on my rack at least a few times.
On
the other hand,
I need to feel comfortable with a
new ingredient, so we arranged to meet.
    At the start of the
interview, I must say that marjoram was a bit defensive, but as we talked more,
she loosened up.
    Unfortunately, all audio
from the interview was lost, so I’ve had to reconstru
ct
the conversation from memory, but I assure you, this was an actual conversation.

MARJORAM:
THE EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW
    “Before we get
started…what would you prefer to be called? Can I call you Marj?”
    “That’s
fine . . . Just don’t call me oregano. It’s really irritating how often
people mix us up – sure, we’re the same genus but c’mon, we’re ENTIRELY
DIFFERENT SPECIES!
    Anyway,
I’m obviously milder and sweeter than oregano. The only thing we have in
common is the antioxidant thing, and that’ll be passé soon. ”
    “You’ve made it clear
that you want to distance yourself from your cousin, but isn’t it true that
oregano used to be known as ‘wild marjoram?
    Aren’t you, in fact,
trying to have it both ways? Isn’t it your hope that, if someone runs out of
oregano, they might reach for you instead?”
    “That’s
outrageous! Look, I’ve always been open about my family. I don’t deny that my legal name is ‘ Origanum marjorana,’ but that’s not how I