I used to be a picky eater. There was a time in my life when my parents actually had to coax me into trying orange chicken and pad thai, two foods that I love today. There was also a time when my parents and super-adventurous-eater brother would eat Vietnamese food for dinner, I would have my separate plate of what was probably really boring food.My palate has expanded since then. I love cooking and eating all types of ethnic food: Indian (one of my favs), Ethiopian, Malaysian, Argentinian, Cuban, Korean, Greek, Morrocan, and yes, Vietnamese.
But while I have ventured out to try all different types of fruit, vegetables, and types of "land lubber" meat, I still have a fear of seafood. Doing a psycho-analysis of myself, I've come to the conclusion that I am afraid of eating seafood for the following reasons:
- Seafood smells. It just doesn't seem right that you would eat something that smells bad if taste is so closely linked with taste (or at least that's what they told us in intro to psych).
- A lot of seafood still retains the shape of the original animal. My favorite kind of meat is chicken breast, because you can't tell that it was a chicken. You can't tell beef was part of a cow. You can't tell that ham or bacon was part of a pig. But a mussel looks like a mussel, a crab looks like a crab, and a shrimp looks like a shrimp. Moreoever, I've seen too many fish come out whole to disconnect what's on the plate from the animal.
- Related to #2, growing up and going to Asian grocery stores, I would see fish, lobster, and other seafood stuffed in murky tanks or lying out in buckets of ice. It was not a pleasant, or sanitary, sight. (Similarly, I didn't used to eat duck because I saw them hanging in the window in Chinatown).
2 comments:
I count myself as a fan of seafood. I highly enjoy tuna sashimi with rice, along with various other types of sushi when they're available. Grilled whitefish, boiled or grilled shellfish, I like them.
I highly recommend trying to find a high-quality, local fishmarket. I'll bet there's a website that gives a list, perhaps with comments and ratings. In a few seconds, I just found this and this, for starters. Google ftw.
I highly recommend finding a place that will sell either shelled or at least deveined shrimp. For a while now, the local Costco has sold deveined and cleaned shrimp by the pound, and my family and I have had good experiences with it.
Good luck. :)
You're going to eat Flounder???
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