This is a Public Service Announcement. Today’s episode of LGR will be 100% Foodiness™ free for your protection. This is a special edition of LGR, harkening back to the days of Why We Cook, my first HRN show. You’ve been warned.
If you listened to last week’s show, “Tales of Foodiness™ Fishiness”, you heard the story of my young years, and summers spent fishing on Long Island for bluefish, flounder, porgies, and other species found in Long Island sound. And as I think mentioned, in the way that time distorts memory, it seemed as if we caught and ate bluefish every single weekend of my life, from approx. 1969-1981, which was probably not quite the case, but nonetheless….childhood exaggerates memory. A lot of bluefish was consumed.
And…it was probably overcooked, because that’s how people ate fish back then, overcooked. My parents discovered some recipe for bluefish called “Greek style” which involved baking it whole, covered in thinly sliced onions, tomatoes and green peppers, and liberally sprinkled with dried oregano. They were not terrible cooks, but it was the 70’s…enough said, amirite? So in making Greek-style bluefish, in order to not turn the fish to dust by totally overcooking it, you had to take it out before The aforementioned topping vegetables ever really cooked enough, so you had kind of semi-overcooked, dryish fish, with thinly sliced onions, green peppers and tomatoes that were just kind of halfway cooked, steamy and soft. A raw onion, pepper or tomato is fine, and a properly cooked any of the above is great…but anywhere in between?…Just thinking about it now is making me kind of depressed, and I may have to go lie down for awhile after the show.
Food are cooked along a spectrum of doneness, and I’ve realized, that along with all the other spectrum disorders, this is a real, very serious, but highly treatable problem. So today, we evaluate, diagnose, and address, Doneness Spectrum Disorder.