Cookaholics Bulletin Board

Last week in the Wall St. Journal there was an article on eponymous chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten. It was a mildly interesting interview, but one thing I found humorous was this:

Although it's difficult for me to have faith in someone who also says: I prefer cocaine. It gives me energy without holograms. (That's what the LSD is for).

Kidding aside, are there ingredients that you feel are completely overrated?

I'll start: yuzu. I've read about it so many places so when I stumbled upon a bottle of yuzu dressing I thought I'd give it a try. It was meh. Maybe this particular dressing wasn't great, I dunno, but it certainly wasn't the transcendental experience I hoped for.

edit to fix speelin

Beans in chili comes to mind...

Sometimes I just can't help myself...

Polenta. (I know, I know) but when I was a kid, we called it corn meal mush.

Bacon! I will never understand why people think this stuff is so great!
























Wait a minute. April Fools isn't for a couple of months yet.

Polenta is da bomb, especially since it made it to the list of 5 Things My Kid Will Eat.

Pancetta, to me it tastes like bacon that's been hurked back up.

I use bacon for just about any recipe that calls for pancetta. Most of the time I get a funky "locker room" aftertaste from it. Now prosciutto, OTOH...

Two of my very favorite foods - polenta and bacon. Couldn't live without them!

Oh, and Todd...you better watch out...

Proscuitto (the texture, ugh, it just seems raw to me)
Pomegranate.
Acai -why fly in "blueberries" from the Amazon, just seems like a waste when every region has their own version of a blueberry.
Balsamic vinegar - it just seems to be on things where either it does not belong, or it's just regular tasting sour vinegar dyed dark.
Chai everything.

Not to be blasphemous here, but I will be glad when bacon is no longer the little darling. It reminds me of Guy Fiere.

Lastly, too much cheese. Cheap greasy yellow cheese cheese on everything (again, Guy style). It just seems to add fat and calories to everything, and it's hard to get away from. I like a good cheese or cheese on some things but it is just way overdone in our culture.

I am usually underwhelmed by whatever is the "hot" new seasoning of the week. Some guy in CA is using raw wild fennel pollen, some place in NY has found a secret special spice blend from some hole in the wall in Cadiz, some one is writing about the oil from the trees in the backyard of their great-grandfather's second cousin-it makes me go meh.
Truffles were probably transported to their current status when getting them was harder-conspicuous consumption at its finest.
I try not to expect transcendence when trying new foods.