Say cheese
A confession
Summer is finally here in Brussels which means I’m swanning around in my favourite linen shirts, eating endless pan con tomate and my stomach has predictably become an iced-coffee-absorbing black hole.
The caffeine-induced anxiety produced by the last gave me an opportunity to explore one of my main sources of food-related anxiety: coagulated milk proteins. It explains why I get nervous about catered work events, have trust issues around sandwiches I haven’t seen being made, and probably will turn down your invitation for a raclette every winter.
If you know me well, then you know what’s coming. If not, this is a bit of an embarrassing confession.
I don’t like cheese.
Actually, it’s worse than that. I can’t eat it. Not in a ‘I have a legitimate, health jeopardising reason to avoid this food’ kind of way, but in a ‘I am disgusted by the very thought of eating it’ kind of way.
It always feels like an embarrassing disclosure. I care a lot about food, and like to think of myself as fairly adventurous when it comes to eating. I’m never happier than when I’m sucking the juices out of a prawn’s head, or eating frito malloquín (basically sautéed bits of offal with vegetables and generous lashings of black pepper), and I was always more than happy to follow along with my Dad’s excitement about lamb’s kidneys while my siblings looked away in disgust. But cheese defeats me.
Growing up, I wouldn’t even touch the stuff. I lived in fear of unexpected slices of cheddar in sandwiches, surprise shavings of parmesan on salads, rogue crumbles of feta or gratuitous mozzarella when eating out. Cheese always felt like an unwelcome interloper lurking on the sidelines of my otherwise happy existence, threatening to ruin everything (by which I mean a meal) by its mere presence. I am still not over the trauma of biting into what I thought was an egg mayo sandwich at a school event only to discover it was actually cheese mayo.
Now that I’m in my late twenties, I’m less afraid of the surprise appearances that fuelled my childhood nightmares, and more haunted by the kinds of invitations where cheese is centre stage: cheese and wine nights, fondues, raclettes, where I am faced with the option of making up an excuse and skipping it altogether, or showing up and having to explain to everyone around me why I’m just nibbling on bread.
These are all more or less practical issues, which I find can generally be resolved ad-hoc. But they have a decidedly existential dimension. I’m acutely aware that what might have been forgiven as a childish foible aged 10 feels increasingly like an embarrassing character flaw now that I’m grown up.
But maybe I’m projecting. One of my less appealing personality traits is the fact that I have no patience for people who are picky eaters. I know how it feels to dislike a food so much that I feel physically incapable of putting it in my mouth. But God forbid anyone else feel the same about a different food that I happen to enjoy.
In order to tolerate my close friends I have to ignore the fact that they too have inexplicable dislikes spanning oranges, bananas, coffee, clementines, coriander, crustaceans, mushrooms, black pepper and white chocolate, to name a few.
A friend used to keep a list of foods people didn’t like in his notes app. It irritated me because appearing on that list felt like a black mark against my name. He was well-meaning and did it to make sure he didn’t accidentally serve anyone food they wouldn’t eat. But it felt like he was judging me, keeping tabs on my weaknesses, or comparing me to other more or less fussy friends of his. It rubbed up against my perfectionism to be reminded that I too had to be tailored too, and that my preferences were not the norm.
The true difficulty is that my inability to stomach the idea of cheese is not just a source of embarrassment or frustration: I’m worried it is actually essential to my sense of self, to the extent that I’m not sure if the revulsion I feel about the stuff comes from actual disgust or some primal fear that I would somehow no longer be me if I started tolerating cheese.
Friends and family have claimed that my hatred of cheese is deeply out of sync with my food-obsessed Francophile personality, but I actually wonder whether it’s not the most me part of me: the hidden thread that makes me who I am. I could forget how to speak French, stop baking, stop buying overpriced bottles of artisanal hot sauce and sucking the juices out of prawn heads, but I would still be adamantly avoiding cheese wherever I went.
This is also why I feel awkward admitting that now, in small doses, there are some cheeses that have become acceptable to me as I have matured. Mascarpone: inject it into my veins. Parmesan on pasta: fine. Burrata: yes but not too often. Mozzarella: passable if not dry and stringy. Cream cheese: with salmon, on a bagel. Like any picky eater, there are exceptions to these exceptions, and I reserve the right to refuse parmesan, burrata or mozzarella simply because the vibe is off on a given occasion and I got the ick.
Perhaps I should see my dislike of cheese as an important reminder that we are all unpredictable and messy and human and have preferences that reason cannot account for. I certainly don’t think the rest of you are wrong for liking it. But a small part of me does go a bit mad trying to work out who I would be if I did like cheese. The idea turns my stomach a little bit.
In lieu of a conclusion, I will leave you with a reminder that most cheeses have just as high if not a higher carbon footprint than a lot of meats, so maybe my aversion is just my way of taking care of our fragile planet.
Baker’s dozen
13 good things from the past few weeks
Made some banging courgette pasta. The key was shit tonnes of olive oil and low temperature so they became very soft and silky.
Was at OR Coffee at Jourdan at closing time and was given a free pastel de nata and a slice of rhubarb crumble tart.
Had a few nights in Palma visiting my parents. I arrived before them so had a full day to work from the terrace (sea views were surprisingly great for concentration), and ate some very good things, including, Sollér prawns, arroz negro and my favourite sabor anchoa olives.
I have (finally) bought a bike! It will be ready this week and I will probably be talking about it all summer.
I’ve been catsitting my favourite feline friend again, which means I’ve been able to spend the recent spate of hot evenings sat on a gorgeous terrace watching the sunset. The last time I catsat here, Queen Elizabeth died, so I have high expectations.
I’m reading (and loving) Dan Saladino’s Eating to Extinction - would highly recommend to anyone interested food history and culture and how they intersect with the environment.
Inspired by the above, I’ve bought some einkorn flour and have been experimenting with cookies and cakes using this ancient grain.
Tried some delicious small-batch bread and a flan from Miche France - it’s only open twice a week but well worth a visit if you’re Bxl-based.
My guanciale man at the market gave me an extra chunk of the stuff for free because it was the end of the piece. Carbonara-à-gogo.
Celebrated my friend’s 30th with an amazing dinner at Otäp and then a funeral for her 20s featuring a black cake made by yours truly.
This lovely newsletter from Rebecca May Johnson about supermarket doors really spoke to me. I love how she observes the everyday.
Shon Faye writing about the burden of cooking in this wonderful piece in Vittles is incredibly touching.
I have started watching Ally McBeal and am totally totally hooked. Why did nobody tell me about this before?