100 YEARS OLD AND STILL SOMEWHAT RISK-AVERSE...

LIFE is full of risks. If one enjoys a good meal, it is also full of the potential for culinary adventures, but the idea of blending risk with good food had never really occurred to me until an investment company invited me to have a meal for which the menu was dictated by my responses to a questionnaire designed to measure my attitude to risk.

The company was Investec, who earlier this year launched an online investment service, Click & Invest, in which individuals’ investments are geared to the level of risk they are prepared to take with their money.

So if not money, why not apply the same technique to food? Are you a safety-first, bacon-and-egg and roast beef sort of person, or would you try something more exotic such as durian fruit for breakfast and fugu fish for lunch (which carries the slight risk of paralysis and death)?

Personally, I thought the questionnaire I filled in did not give me much opportunity to express my foodie personality: I’m definitely a durian and fugu fish sort of chap, but this is a symptom of culinary adventurousness rather than risk-taking. In aspects of life other than eating, I am thoroughly risk-averse. I never participate in dangerous sports (or non-dangerous sports for that matter); I do not drive; I cross roads cautiously; I do not pat animals with sharp teeth and I wear sensible clothes. So when I was assessed as having a “moderate riskappetite”, I felt a little disappointed.

I suppose it was fair enough, as I have a zero appetite for physical risk, but a high risk-appetite for unusual foods, so I suppose it works out on average as “moderate”, but when I was served with rabbit crumble with langoustine, wild garlic and Jerusalem artichoke, I was a little surprised and disappointed. I’d have much preferred the allegedly very high risk crocodile fillet with crispy crickets, or even the high risk pithivier of partridge, wild duck and pheasant.

I love ordering menu items containing words I don’t understand or foodstuffs I’ve never heard of and I think a “pithivier” satisfied that criterion. I believe it’s some sort of puff pastry pie, but I’m not sure.

Actually even the supposedly low risk squid ink battered cod with cassava chips and wasabi mashed peas sounded more adventurous to me that my rabbit crumble, even if it was just a variation on fish and chips.

Actually, I’m being a little unfair as it was a neat idea adding langoustiones to the rabbit crumble, though I think the meat and seafood was a little dry and might have benefitted from a drizzle of jus made from reduced game stock and white wine (or “gravy”, as the risk averse call it).

The whole experience got me thinking about the true nature of risktaking in the kitchen. Personally, I find using sharp knives is quite enough physical risk for me (and I bear the scars to prove it), but surely exotic menu choices reflect adventurousness rather than risk-taking. Risk-taking involves eating foodstuffs that are well beyond their eat-by dates, and I proudly confess that I do a lot of that.