A New-Found Nemesis

Grilled goat cheese salad. It sounded absolutely lovely, little rounds of goat cheese crusted with hazelnuts and lightly toasted under my broiler, served with mixed greens and balsamic vinaigrette. . . mmm, who wouldn't love that? Apparently me, for one. I was well aware that some people have an aversion to goat cheese, but a lot of people also have an aversion to squid tentacles and blood sausage. I've conquered those, no problem. For a girl whose eating habits sometimes rival those of Andrew Zimmern, goat cheese seemed like a fairly innocuous thing to experiment with. Not only was I not the least bit nervous, I was practically bouncing through the supermarket the other day, so very excited to be trying something new.

My excitement quickly dissipated when I took that first taste. I had sliced the cheese into neat rounds and decided to pop just the teensiest piece into my mouth. Mmm, that's actually pretty darn good! Or so I thought. After a delay of about two or three seconds it hit me, and I mean really hit me! Something so foul, so appalling, I knew immediately, after years of seeking out the most disturbing of eats, that I had finally met my match. Of all things, goat cheese!

About now I'm sure you're wondering, what exactly is my dilemma? I mean, if I don't like it then I don't have to eat it right? Oh, if only it were that simple! I have a rule, you see, and that rule is that even if I violently dislike something, I must keep trying to eat it until I learn to appreciate it. You'll see me at the Sizzler salad bar loading up on fried okra, desperate to overcome my abhorrence of mucilage (still yuck), or cooking many other things I'm not fond of again and again (and again and again and again if necessary). I do this because I am absolutely and utterly convinced that each and every food has a key, an ingredient which so perfectly compliments it that all of the many good and wonderful things about this previously unsavory morsel are instantly revealed in astonishing clarity. With beets it's sour cream, with saffron it's roast lamb, and for peanuts it is coconut milk. Each of these is a food which I have in the past despised and now love immensely. In fact, for the first twenty years of my life peanuts were my arch-enemy. If it wasn't for an intense bout of temporary insanity and a truly morbid obsession with a recipe for grilled chicken with thai peanut sauce I would never have known that peanuts are in fact my very favorite food. Weird, huh?

You'll find a lot of weird here, and if you choose to proceed, I must warn you, I'm not a foodie (or foodsnob, whatever). If you put an heirloom tomato in front of me I'll eat it and gladly, but I don't spend my time wandering the local farmer's market searching for the perfect Green Zebra. Instead I roam the ethnic markets looking for the odd and the obscure, something I've never seen or tasted before. What I'm all about is plumbing the depths of human food culture, spanning millennia and the globe to find all that is unique and beautiful about this strange phenomenon that is cooking. From the delectable to the downright disgusting, it's all right here, and I've probably already eaten it.

Now, about that goat cheese . . . If anyone out there has any suggestions as to how I might unlock its special tastiness, I'd love to know. I would ask my dear friend Jeannie, she loves the stuff, but Jeannie was raised on goat's milk. That's childhood indoctrination, and at thirty years of age I fear it's just a little too late for that with me. So if anyone can think of anything, anything at all, please, help me!

(Also, if anyone knows of any way to stop my fiance from coming into the kitchen while I'm cooking, washing his hands, and afterwards drying them on my behind, those suggestions would also be much appreciated.)