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The Dominion Post, Morgantown, W.Va., Bill Duff Real Flavor Column: Experiences Shape What We Like to Eat

Posted on: Wednesday, 11 January 2006, 09:00 CST

By Bill Duff Real Flavor, The Dominion Post, Morgantown, W.Va.

Jan. 11--I REMEMBER EATING at a restaurant on the French Riviera overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. I, being half Italian, ordered not French, but Italian food. It was green lasagna and I remember asking the lady who owned the establishment what she made it with. To my surprise, there wasn't anything in it different from what my mother used, except there was no delicious tomato sauce.

This brings up the question: What makes French cooking any better than Italian cooking, or Japanese better than Mexican, or Irish better than Czech? The answer is simple enough: your taste buds! Yes, believe it or not, you are the sole judge of what foods are the best and what foods are not. Everyone has his own favorites and these foods are his favorite because his taste buds react positively to different types of foods. These types include sweet, salty, bitter, sour and fatty. Depending on the type of cooking you were raised with, the levels of these tastes in foods will dictate what foods you like best.

For example, I was raised in an Irish/Italian household. Most of the time we ate all different types of pasta. Yum! But we also had plenty of chicken potpie, roast beef, mashed potatoes and gravy, and lots of soup and sandwiches. Being that my mother and not my father made these meals, they were not only tasty, but set a precedent for tasty meals to come. My grandfather, however, also was able to serve our taste buds with one of his favorite meals: meatloaf, mashed potatoes and coleslaw. Yum!

So, as I eventually ate my way through Europe, I realized that not only was I prejudiced by the cooking I enjoyed at home, but that there was a certain standard to be achieved throughout the world to meet the high standard of cooking I was accustomed to at home.

This is not to say that the many "new" foods I tasted throughout Europe were measured only against the tastiness of my mother's cooking. I was able to accept new foods without prejudice and add a whole new library of tastes to my taste receptors. Some foods took a few bites, some only one. But, all in all, my mouth was the final judge. No gourmet review or a panel of experts was needed to tell me that what I had eaten was good. No, my palate was able to distinguish and tell my brain what was exquisite, or what was not.

I have come to strengthen this theory by inviting friends over for dinner and preparing some of these "new" tastes for them and observing their responses to them. I have also learned there are a lot of "bocca bellas" (picky eaters) out there and no matter how you prepare a certain feast, they are not going to like it. But, who would not like fresh asparagus wrapped in deli ham covered with a savory cheese sauce and baked in the oven for 20 minutes? Who would not allow their taste buds to scream for joy after eating a delicious cordon bleu? How about chicken paprika and knedlicky (Czech dumplings) drenched with a sour cream sauce? Or wienerschnitzel, fried breaded cauliflower and fried cheese?

And the same is true with wine and alcoholic beverages. I have drunk many a cheap wine and scores of mixed and neat drinks, but I know which of these are truly tasty. I drank a red wine made in a monastery in Hungary that was truly the best wine I have ever had. I drank a homemade Slivovice from Czechland that was truly extraordinary. For me, these tastes form a memory that makes each successive drink a suspenseful excursion.

When it comes to food and drink, what is the difference between the gourmet and the home-cooked? The final evaluation for each of us is, I believe, our own experiences with food. And these experiences should continue by our exploring new foods and drinks whenever we can.

BILL DUFF is program coordinator for distance learning at WVU, a wine enthusiast and a member of The Dominion Post Food Panel. Contact him at food@dominionpost.com.

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Dominion Post, Morgantown, W.Va.

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Source: The Dominion Post (Morgantown, W.Va.)

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