Not all cooks eat everything. They also have phobias and manias. They are humans. The rejection or preference for certain flavors can have a multifactorial origin that depends on genetic, cultural (culinary preparations or socioeconomic level), emotional and psychological factors (punishment or reward system), or availability, which can act throughout the life cycle of people. This is explained by the professor of the Department of Biology of the Faculty of Sciences of the Autonomous University of Madrid, María del Pilar Montero López, who cites as an example of genetic determinants the sensitivity one may have to a bitter taste, generally “the one that “it generates more rejection.” This is due, among other reasons, to the possible relationship between the bitter taste and the presence of toxic or poisonous substances in some foods. Among those that are rejected by people who have a greater ability to detect those bitter or less pleasant flavors, according to Montero López, are Brussels sprouts, broccoli, cabbage, yucca or cilantro. On the contrary, the sweet taste is more pleasant in general, “perhaps also due to a memory of our evolutionary history that relates foods rich in sugars with a large and rapid availability of energy,” adds the teacher, who emphasizes the importance of carry out nutritional education work, to try to encourage healthy foods to be consumed by people who are not used to consuming them, especially young girls and boys, among others, even if they do not find them very pleasant at first.
In addition to genetic load, socioeconomic and psychological factors, tastes modulate throughout life. “This happens with children, who reject bitter and acidic flavors, such as coffee and beer, when they are small, but as they grow they correct their preferences. All this is modular,” explains Elena Romeo, researcher in sensory analysis at the Basque Culinary Center (BCC) Innovation. Because as knowledge about food increases and new products are tried, the range of preferences opens and people tend to eat almost everything. Although there are things that you don't like because they remain stored in your memory. “The social context is what makes us change, and erase a bad memory or a bad experience,” says María Mora, researcher in the same area at BCC Innovation. And she points out that, for example, the liver is a not very pleasant organ meat, with an unfavorable texture, but that over time you can come to like it. The same as cauliflower, which is associated with an unpleasant odor, and which, although it can be impregnated in a person, over time or when the way of cooking is changed, one can come to like it. This is where the psychological factor comes into play, “since there are people who manage to overcome that first impression and even venture to try the unknown,” point out the spokespersons for the aforementioned institution.
We have asked 19 Spanish chefs what foods they hate.
Pepe Solla
“I don't like garlic or red pepper. I use them in the kitchen. I love making ajada, which also smells very good, but I don't like it. The green pepper, on the other hand, fascinates me, but the red one is too sweet for me,” admits the chef at the Casa Solla restaurant in Pontevedra.
Begoña Rodrigo
The cook and owner of La Salita, in Valencia, does not like sweets: “I didn't even eat them when I was little. I only make one exception, with lemon cake and chocolate, but I don't eat cookies, donuts, or anything like that.”
Diego Guerrero
“I didn't like cauliflower when I was little. Even when I smelled cauliflower in the doorway, I only hoped that the smell wasn't from my house. I climbed the six floors thinking about that. And now I even make a dessert with cauliflower flower,” confesses the chef and owner of the DSTAgE restaurant in Madrid. He also doesn't like “pink sauce and calimocho.” [bebida que consiste en una mezcla de vino tinto y refresco de cola]”.
Eduard Xatruch
He is one of the creators of the Enjoy restaurant in Barcelona, along with his partners and also chefs, Oriol Castro and Mateu Casañas. He has a hard time thinking of something he doesn't like, although he finds his phobia: “I don't eat blue cheese, but I use it in cooking. “I don't know how to find the value in it and it's something that doesn't excite me.”
Paco Morales
“I like everything, but I reject what is fermented in the refrigerator. When I was little I didn't like the green beans my mother made because she didn't remove the strings. And her recipe, with natural and sautéed tomato, is delicious. Once I choked, now she removed the strands, and now I eat beans,” details the owner of the Noor restaurant, in Córdoba.
Nino Redruello
The multifaceted chef at the head of the La Ancha group, which brings together different concepts, such as Fismuler, Las Tortillas de Gabino or The Omar, hates the wasabi: “It's something I haven't liked since I was a child, although I take it from time to time. I have always been a good eater. When I was little, when I came home from school and my mother asked us what we had eaten, I always said that I had eaten very well.”
Ricard Camarena
“I can't handle organ meats, but above all I don't like liver. It was something he couldn't stand as a child. I can't handle hedgehogs either. My stomach is closing. I can eat them, but I try to avoid them,” says the chef and owner of the restaurant that bears his name in Valencia, Ricard Camarena, who also has other more informal concepts in the same city, such as Habitual, Canalla Bistró, or Central Bar.
Joan Roca
The oldest of the Roca brothers assures that he eats everything, but it has not always been like this. “When I was little I didn't like lentils, but now I love them. What I would never eat, as happens in some Asian countries, is dog. I have eaten unexpected things, but this is a cultural issue,” says the chef at El Celler de Can Roca, in Girona.
Dabiz Muñoz
“Raisins, I can't handle them. And look, I like panettone, but I can't handle raisins,” admits the DiverXo chef, who also has a well-known dislike for onion in potato omelette.
Dani Garcia
The chef from Malaga, co-owner of the restaurant group that bears his name and which has just entered the Kharis Capital fund, with an injection of 44 million euros, hates coconuts. “I do not like. When I was little I ate, as best I could, a coconut that had chocolate in it, and I couldn't swallow it. It's something I hate, although over the years I have made chocolate French toast with coconut.”
Fina Puigdeval
“I eat everything, but if there's one thing I don't like, it's rabbit. My mother never cooked it, and my daughter Martina [Puigvert, también cocinera como ella] “He had one as a pet, which is why I can't eat him,” concludes the owner of the restaurant Les Cols, in Olot (Girona).
Javier Torres
He is one of the twins from Cocina Hermanos. He claims that he doesn't like melon. “My body doesn't tolerate it, and I would like to be able to take it in the summer and like it, but it's impossible.” He is not the only thing: “I don't like pork liver either, something my grandmother Catalina gave to my brother Sergio and me when we were little.”
Paco Perez
The owner and chef of the Miramar restaurant in Llança (Girona) became fond of a vegetable as a child: carrots. “In the school cafeteria they forced me to eat it and I couldn't handle it,” says the gastronomic advisor of Wine bar, at the Arts hotel in Barcelonathe restaurants La Olivera, Shiro by Paco Pérez and Celler 1923 Wine Bar, inside the Peralada hotel (Girona).
Jesus Sanchez
Very emphatically, the chef at Cenador de Amós, in Villaverde de Pontones (Cantabria) and head of the Amós restaurant inside the Rosewood Villa Magna hotel in Madrid, assures that “I don't like woodcock at all.”
Nandu Jubany
The Catalan chef at the head of Can Jubany, in Calldetenes (Barcelona) and owner of at least a dozen other restaurants, as well as a croquette factory, assures that he eats everything, but that he remembers a trauma as a child: “I didn't like it.” “no semolina or cheese.”
Pedro Sánchez, from Bagá
He is a reference in Andalusian cuisine, and has turned his Bagá restaurant, with capacity for about eight diners per service, into a gastronomic destination in Jaén. He also has some phobia with some consequences for his clients: “In my case I can't handle beans, neither raw nor cooked, and I don't work with them for that reason. In Jaén they are also very typical, but I avoid them.”
Hilario Arbelaiz
The master chef, who for 53 years was in charge of the legendary Zuberoa restaurant, in Oiartzun (Gipúzcoa), also has a obsession with a vegetable: cucumber. “I don't like the taste or the texture. We grew cucumbers in the farmhouse garden, but we gave them to the animals. “Not even trying them.”
Susi Diaz
The cook and owner of the La Finca restaurant, in Elche (Alicante), hates “brains, but all animals.” And she is convinced of something: “I have never tried them nor will I ever try them because they give me a little yuyu”.
Diego Gallegos
“What I haven't been able to eat since I was little is pork, chicken, cow, or pigeon liver. I can't even smell it,” explains the chef at the Sollo restaurant, in the Reserva del Higuerón, in Fuengirola (Málaga). What's more: “In restaurants I ask that, please, they don't put it on a tasting menu. “My mother-in-law makes a very good garlic goat, and the offal-like meat is something she takes away from me.”
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