Emma’s food pet peeves: things that aren’t things
I eat often, a lot and with great pleasure, and then I regularly notice things. Usually, they’re positive things, but it also often happens that something irritates me endlessly. Whether that’s justified or not, sometimes I just need to vent. Hence this column: Emma’s food pet peeves. This time, my frustration with things that aren’t things.
It’s almost impossible to go online without coming across the necessary healthy recipes. I like that when I’m looking for a recipe for tofu or steamed aubergine for Monday night. A less pleasant side effect is that the internet has become a breeding ground for one of my biggest pet peeves: things that aren’t things.
Cauliflower rice
I’m talking about spaghetti made from zucchini, tacos made from lettuce, or the thing that hurts me most as a rice lover: cauliflower rice. Twisting a zucchini into strands really doesn’t make it pasta. You make a taco with a tortilla made from cornmeal. Would you rather roll your ground meat, chicken or whatever in a lettuce leaf? Be my guest, I do it sometimes too because it’s absolutely delicious. But please don’t say you’re eating a taco. Because you’re not.
Watermelon cake
What shocked me most was the ‘cake’ supermodel Doutzen Kroes gave her child on their birthday last year. Cutting a watermelon into wedges and calling it a cake is something that should never be allowed to happen. Not even if you’ve draped a few cubes of mango and some probably equally healthy pink mush on top. If this is what you get on your birthday, what do you eat for the rest of the year?
https://www.instagram.com/p/BIf1jMLhZSU/?taken-by=doutzen
Meat substitutes
And why do vegetarian dishes always have to be compared to something meaty that they resemble? Bacon made from mushrooms or ‘pulled pork’ made from lentils. Why? Aren’t vegetables and plant-based products simply delicious in their own right? I really don’t understand it at all.
Cucumber bruschetta
Other things I can’t stand: chocolate mousse made from avocado, cheesecake made from tofu, beet carpaccio, pizza with naan, tortilla or cauliflower as the base, and risotto that isn’t made from rice. I also once came across a recipe for cucumber bruschetta. Look and shudder.
https://www.instagram.com/p/40t2CdJeTr/?tagged=cucumberbruschetta
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