Mission Delicious

Eat five types of food I’ve never tried before

This provided an interesting evening, as I am both an adventurous eater and a terrible cook. Thus, I stuck with the narrow category of “new foods I could prepare without accidentally killing myself." This accounts for the absence of shellfish and flambés. The foods are as follows:

Paneer

This one came up after my roommate told me we had to use his Groupon at an Indian restaurant for dinner tonight.  Chili Paneer was on the menu and it sounded like a food I had never eaten. This is a blurry picture of it I took on my hand-me-down cell phone:

Paneer is “…an unaged, acid-set, non-melting farmer cheese or curd cheese made by curdling heated milk with lemon juice or other food acid.” It is also freaking delicious. I mean, it’s basically a classier version of the cheese curds you get at the state fair, but you get to eat them in a nice restaurant instead of on a bale of hay. Also no greasy fingers or ugly babies with face paint glairing at you while you wait in line.

Anchovies

I bought the rest of my foods at a health food co-op I’ve never felt cool enough to go to before. The only anchovies they had came in a fancy glass bottle. The lack of a tin with an old timey peel away lid felt like cheating, but I persevered.

The Internet told me the best way to eat them was on bread or crackers with hot sauce and a splash of lemon juice. This was kind of not bad. A bit of an acquired taste, but between the sweet, spicy, salty, and overpowering fishiness of it, I could see myself maybe trying it again for a bet. I also tried one au naturale. It was unpleasant.

Edamame

For the uninitiated, these are fancy pea pods where you can’t eat the casings. They usually show up next to your appetizers at fancy pasta bars.

They taste pretty much like you would expect large pea pods to taste. As an added bonus, the casings look the same after you eat them so you can offer them to people as a mildly hilarious prank.

Grits

I impressed my roommates by talking in a southern accent for half-an-hour while I prepared these. These also win my award for least appealing looking breakfast food.

The box informed me that grits should be seasoned with “grated cheese, soy sauce, honey, herbs, spices or seasonings of choice”, which seems oddly specific and then vague. I tried soy sauce, honey, and brown sugar. Somehow the blandness of grits overpowered everything.

Artichoke

This was my most ambitious effort. I learned how to use the steamer, and then I steamed it.

The first bite didn’t live up to the hype. It’s a lot of effort just to scrape a bit of plant matter off the bottom of a leaf. But the lemon butter sauce made it awesome. Artichokes are my new awkward dinner party appetizer offering.

Tomorrow: Meditate for an hour.