We all have foods we're not a fan of, but may from time to time retry them on the off chance that maybe you were wrong, and liquorice is in fact a delicious treat that you've finally come to appreciate (spoiler, it will always taste terrible!)
Over the years I've learnt to appreciate lots of foods that I previously wasn't a fan of, and every time it opens the culinary world up just a little bit more for me. There are however, some things my palette still refuses to enjoy. Some of them are pretty easy to avoid, but there's one that's often hard to escape from...coriander.
Coriander (or cilantro) is very much one of those love it or hate it herbs, and for me it's always been on my hate list. Anytime I eat something with the scourge of a leaf hidden within it, my joy from that meal soon turns to sadness, and I have to hope after pulling it all out it hasn't imparted too much of its flavour onto the other ingredients around it, so I can somewhat enjoy the rest of my meal.
But you know what? I'm tired of coriander ruining my food!!! I want to eat a pho and not have to take out all the coriander! I want to enjoy a salsa at a restaurant that has hidden coriander in it rather than having to leave it on the side! I refuse to let coriander dictate what I can and can't eat any more!
The question is though, is it even possible to go from hating coriander, to liking it (or at least tolerating it)? I think it might be...
People talk about the soap gene, and that when they taste coriander, they taste soap. Personally I've never experienced a soap taste from it. Instead I just find it a horribly overpowering flavour that seems to mask every other flavour within a dish. Due to this, I feel like there's a small chance I can learn to, maybe not enjoy, but at least bear the taste of coriander since it doesn't have that soapy taste to me.
I recently started this journey accidentally with the purchase of some Mexican beef taco flavoured Doritos for the world cup.
Upon our first bite the overpowering taste of coriander took over our mouths, and since both my partner and I don't like coriander we thought well, that was that, and shoved them into our snack drawer until a time we could give them to someone else. A week or so later though I had an idea...why not use these crisps as a way to try and finally learn to somewhat appreciate coriander.
And so every once and a while I would take a couple of the Doritos out the bag, and eat them while thinking, mmmmm coriander, I loooove coriander, delicious! in the hopes I could trick my brain into enjoying them more than I really was. It took a while, but I did eventually manage to eat the entire bag.
So the question is, am I converted? Do I now appreciate, or even love coriander, and put it on all my meals? Truthfully...no...However! I didn't hate eating them as much as I imagined I would, so silver linings and all that 😆
I don't see myself ordering coriander laden food any time soon, but I do plan to occasionally get myself crisps, or salsas, or similar foods with lots of coriander in them, and eat them here and there like I did with the crisps. My hope is that, by micro dosing coriander, I'll one day be able to enjoy a meal that happens to comes with coriander, rather than be sad that another meal has been ruined by copious amounts of that damned leaf...
I'll keep you update on my coriander journey!
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