Spilling the beans about the bad taste food fads
Let’s be clear: I’m not equipped to present top Gear – and if anyone wants me to sign a piece of parchment in my own blood saying I don’t want to, then I will.
especially since I drive like Mr Magoo, know absolutely nothing about cars and have no interest in them either.
On the other hand, this could be the fresh new direction the BBC is looking for, now that Chris evans has stepped off the show. Failing that, I’d like to throw my hat in the ring for superfoods: the Real story, where cheery Kate Quilton, who looks like a lost member of s Club 7, gets to globetrot around the world, finding out if red wine, coconut water or argan oil can turn us immortal.
I’m no stranger to faddy superfoods; celebrities I interview are often fascinated by them, so in my time I’ve been fed doll-sized portions of sushi by Colin Firth, popped edamame beans with Oliver stone and been encouraged to drink vile algae gunk by Mel Gibson.
By way of a cultural exchange, I’ve tried to tempt Denzel Washington with tunnock’s teacakes and taken tablet with Dustin Hoffman.
However, I was especially intrigued by talk of natto, briefly extolled by superfoods as a traditional Japanese food made from fermented soybeans.
Kate had a brief encounter with natto by dining with a bean-loving Japanese family, but left me none the wiser about its place on the dinner table.
Australia has Vegemite, Mexico has corn smut and scotland has haggis. How bad could natto be? Apparently the only source of a certain enzyme it is full of protein and is said to help prevent cancer, reduce blood clotting and reduce the effects of aging on the body.
When you live in a country heaving with health crises such as heart disease and diabetes, this perks your attention.
It turns out natto is quite hard to get hold of. A tour of the local specialist Asian supermarkets drew a blank. even Marks & spencer, which once tried to sell me crisps flavoured with gold and Prosecco, denied all knowledge of it.
In the end, I found a mail order company who despatched £2 sachets overnight in a special cool bag that arrived first thing in the morning, with the urgency of a heart transplant.
Actually, this was good timing since natto is a favourite Japanese breakfast, with raw egg, soy sauce and mustard, on top of rice.
Opening one of the sachets, I had to coax out my first taste. On the plate the beans are brown, but surrounded by a white, mucus-like stickiness. When stirred, this leaves a spidery web of white stuff, like an alien in a science fiction movie.
this may be the most appetising and delightful thing about natto. superfoods’ Kate had mentioned that it smells like strong cheese. It does not. On contact with the air, it smells of death and goats. It has the texture of slug custard.
In short: it shifts guga, a dish of gannet contributed by a Hebridean pal that tasted like duck stewed in cod liver oil, into my number two of Challenging Foods. One thing life has taught me is that things mostly taste better after a little mild effort. Alas, this does not apply to natto.