I'm Just Mad About Saffron

I’m typically a bit vague, describing how I plan on plating a dish from our soul food kitchen. It’s deliberate. Not malicious. But absolutely deliberate. Typically, I don’t know how I am going to finish a particular dish until I get the full picture of everything else being ordered. And so I don’t want to commit a priori in writing, something that might not make sense later on when it’s crunch time. I’d also rather ask for forgiveness after the fact then for permission on the front end. Chalk it up to vanity and ego. I dunno.

Anyway, this story hinges on a text message I sent a guest just prior to delivery. Hey, dear sweet wonderful guest of mine, how are you doing.(I know. It’s a southern thing.) I was planning on plating your sous vide chicken breasts with a little bit of rice seasoned with saffron. Just checking to make sure that’s OK.

NO. NO SAFFRON.

Not, thank you so much, but I’d really prefer if you kept the rice plain. No, much appreciated but I don’t think my kids would like saffron all that much. No, glad you touched base but unfortunately my husband is on a strict diet and can’t have foods seasoned with saffron. None of that. Just NO. NO SAFFRON.

And, as it turns out, if I ask people in advance if I might season with a bit of saffron, oftentimes the answer is a strong negative. However — and you know this is coming, right? — however, if I simply go about my business and use a bit of saffron to season one of my dishes, the overwhelming response to the dish is positive.

I think in this new brave world of identity politics which we inhabit, we need a word for the “ist” that characterizes an unfounded prejudice against a particular aromatic of which we might not even have a personal experience. Herb-ist? Aromatic-ist? Spice-ist?

But beyond the linguistics here is perhaps a more profound issue. How is it that we come to abhor certain tastes or ingredients even when we can’t necessarily identify them in blind taste tastes? Where does that bias come from?

I have disliked from an early age the taste of licorice. And that has carried over, at least in my head, to an aversion for anything in that same family: Arak, dill, aniseed, pastis, tarragon, ouzo, etc. etc. But at least part of that list of things to avoid was simply in my head. Some of those things I absolutely adore, despite my avoidance of them for decades or more.

Just goes to show you. Not sure what. But it just goes to show you.

I still don’t get what anyone has against saffron.