Embracing a bitter pill
Got a sweet tooth? Then we’ve got bad news: Sugar’s days are numbered.
Don’t cry for sugar, though. It got way more time in the sun than most ingredients. Like, several centuries instead of the usual15 minutes. But the sun is setting on the sweet empire as health concerns over diabetes, obesity and heart disease eclipse the power of the cupcake.
What will replace it? Believe it or not, the smart money’s on bitter, especially now that it’s being backed by Jennifer McLagan, the Toronto chef, author and food stylist who has unfailingly predicted the future of food since her 2005 book, Bones, got people back into bone marrow. Fat, her 2008 book, forecast bacon mania and butter love, and Odd Bits, her 2011ode to entrails landed just as “nose-to-tail” became a thing.
Bitter: The World’s Most Dangerous Flavor is her latest offering. And, since vegetables are the new meat and cocktails are starting to show their bitter side, she’s certainly on-trend again.
Some of this is the result of the recent backlash against sugar, of course, but add to this our expanding appetite for novel and extreme taste sensations, including hop-heavy beer, strong coffee and formerly-obscure/now-commonplace ingredients such as bitter melon, kale and chard.
It doesn’t hurt their stock that the superfood camp makes grandiose claims about bitter foods’ ability to help our digestion, cleanse our livers and “purify the blood.”
Our dislike of bitterness is a built-in mechanism to detect foods that might kill us, which, incidentally, is why bitter is a tougher flavour to sell than sweet
These are not claims that McLagan would necessarily make. She grazes medicinal history, outlining the use of quinine as an anti-malarial, some bitter foods’ ability to stimulate the nervous system and the nineteenth-century use of herbs infused in alcohol to cure pretty much everything from paralysis to “softening of the brain.”
And, as the title suggests, the book also explores some bitter foods’ less-than-healthful properties. Many, it seems, are poisonous. Our more-or-less natural aversion to bitterness is a built-in mechanism to detect foods that might kill us, which, incidentally, is why bitter is a tougher flavour to sell than sweet.
But if anything can nudge this esoteric flavour over the hump and into the mainstream, it’s this book. Like all of McLagan’s past books, it’s a gorgeous tome of food porn mixed with delicious and fairly userfriendly recipes (a few of the more obscure ingredients will require some effort to source).
Most importantly, McLagan’s recipes are designed to teach the home cook how to wrestle bitter flavours into more palatable dishes accessible even to the most bitteraverse crowd. The dishes are balanced (Spoiler Alert: duck fat is often the answer), so that even the most bold and pungent flavours are discernible yet not overwhelming.
Like the Radicchio and gorgonzola Pasta, which I cooked up for dinner recently. It was quick and easy — probably 15 minutes from fridge to table — and resulted in an elevated comfort food dish. The radicchio wasn’t lost in the sauce, but it was tamed enough to please a test subject who cleaned the plate even though he isn’t a fan of radicchio. Or gorgonzola, for that matter. Christine Sismondo is the author of America Walks Into a Bar: A Spirited History of Taverns and Saloons, Speakeasies and Grog Shops (Oxford University Press).