WordPress Daily Prompt: Unlikely Pairing

Bacon and chocolate, caramel and cheddar… Is there an unorthodox food pairing you really enjoy? Share with us the weirdest combo you’re willing to admit that you like — and how you discovered it.

What I might find unlikely does not mean that others find it so. Our colonists in the States discovered how to make some sort of paste from peanuts, and they called it peanut butter. It was even exported to their mother country, Great Britain, and the British found it good. It is today still sold in supermarkets, but I have to yet meet a British person that just loves to coat their peanut butter with a thick layer of jam/jelly. The Chinese probably invented sweet and sour which is almost their daily food, but peanut butter is not sour, just savoury, and I do not know who had this brainy idea. Perhaps it was Doctor Pepper, but I have never drank this liquid and up to now I do not believe that it is a great export hit to Switzerland, who knows? Forest Gump seemed to drink it with every meal.

I remember when I left behind the English way to cook and arrived in Switzerland. It did not take long for me to discover that the English way of food was not the be all and end all of the culinary way of life. One of the many remarks I had to accept was “Oh yes, the English pour vinegar on their chips/French fries”. It was how I grew up. Mum cooked fish and chips and to accompany this English way of eating, we had salt, pepper and a bottle of vinegar on the table and would flavour and drench our chips in this acid for taste perfection. It was not just vinegar. There were two sorts. Either you had malt vineagar, or non-brewed. Mum always bought non-brewed. What that was I never discovered, but it was printed on the bottle.

I was now living in Switzerland and discovered that although the Swiss looked down upon the English for smothering their chips/French fries in vinegar, they found it quite decent to serve fish with a portion of mayonnaise. I like mayonnaise, so this was no problem. A Swiss would think twice before serving fish with French fries/chips. They find it a crime to mix two items bathed in oil and so I gradually found that boiled potatoes (with a coating of parsley) were the suitable accompaniment to fish. I have now been married to Mr. Swiss for 46 years and yes, with a woman’s persuasion (he did not have a great choice) he now eats his fish fingers, salmon, cod etc. etc. with chips/French fries. He did not have a choice, although now and again I humour him with boiled potatoes.

I have eaten many foreign dishes and have no great problem. When I know it is genuine I will eat it. I am glad when I know what I am actually eating, whether it is animal, vegetable or mineral. There is a fish dish known as calamares, which is actually squid. It arrives on the plate in rings, deeply fried in a coating, or perhaps not and pure in a salad. I do not really care how it looks. I have tried it and whilst everyone else finds it fantastic, good, great, I wonder what is so perfect in chewing something that reminds me of a tyre on a car. OK, perhaps I get it all wrong, but I am not convinced.

I quite like pineapple with ham or in a coleslaw salad. It is harmless, and complements the meat flavour. I ate pigeon pie in Marrakesh, which is their delicacy. I was reminded of a tomb where you lift the lid and find a collection of bones beneath and some fragments of meat. It tasted OK, and why not eat a pigeon, there are enough flying around. I discovered in Internet it is known as Pastilla. I would not serve it at home, however. Some people might be annoyed to eat such a sweet little bird.

On my first holiday in England after leaving, I was still single and had not yet met Mr. Swiss: I decided to introduce mum and dad to the secrets of the Swiss kitchen. This was a mistake. I really thought they would fall in love with Sauerkraut, having been brought up on cabbage with most meals, but Sauerkraut is not = cabbage. It was not the English taste and so I decided to forget it.

The Swiss invented chocolate; at least they think they did. It comes in all shapes and sizes and flavours. Probably the turnover was decreasing or the powers that be in the Swiss chocolate world had a dream and all sorts of strange mixtures were appearing in the supermarket. I did not realise this as chocolate is chocolate and the packing looks mostly the same. It was a fateful day when I opened a new bar of chocolate at home and found my mouth began to burn with the first bite.

How can you mix chocolate with chilli powder, it does not work. I do not know what bright spark decided to invent this chocolate. It is a crime against the unsuspecting chocolate eaters of this world.

I now rest my case. Oh, it is also a strange mixture to bring a daily prompt at midnight, but all sorts of strange things happen in the WordPress t-shirt world.

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