For another dip into the East/West basket, which contains the midweek columns I write for The National, Abu Dhabi, I chose a subject close to the heart (and probably doing the heart no good in the process): my love of potato crisps. But only if they're crisp-flavoured ...
The effects of poor dietary habits are evident everywhere.
Even so, there is growing public awareness of the need for healthier eating and I like to think I do my bit. If a salad is placed in front of me, I will eat it even if it would not be my first choice. Increasingly, I prefer seafood to red meat; I eat green vegetables, drink tea and coffee unsweetened and put tins back on supermarket shelves if sugar is among the ingredients.
But while I also avoid most fast food, I do have weaknesses and the most obvious of these is for potatoes. Boiled new potatoes are pleasant enough (I draw the line at mashed potato because it reminds me of school), but I fall especially for chips, sauteed or roasted potatoes and, most of all, for crisps. Readers who learned their English outside the UK should imagine my list starting with fries and ending with what they call chips.
In passing, it is worth saying the British invention of fish and chips, despite its modest reputation, is –when properly prepared – a dish as glorious as any cooked by Michelin-starred chefs. Well, perhaps I exaggerate. But it has been enjoying a spot of rehabilitation of late and may now be found in quite respectable restaurants.
Yet I am even more of a sucker for crisps. There is one qualification: they must be plain. If the world were filled with crisps tasting of salt and vinegar, cheese and onion, barbecued chicken and the rest, including even hedgehog, I would never eat another one. For me, the crisp has to be crisp-flavoured and nothing more. When crisps of uncertain origin are offered at dinner parties and receptions, I limit myself to a nibble before helping myself, if reassured, to more.
One of my more irrational fears is that since my tastes are all too often minority ones, plain crisps will eventually die out. I have already seen the signs. It is not uncommon to order a cold drink and look around for a quick snack and find only flavoured varieties on sale. In my days covering Irish affairs, the worst thing about the old road from Belfast to Dublin was not the risk of bomb alerts but that in every shop along the way, there would be packets of crisps in all shapes and flavours imaginable, with the exception of the only sort I wanted. In my local supermarket in France, it is impossible to buy plain crisps unless you take a whopping great packet – very unwise, I find – or a pack of six in regular size.
Every rule is made to be challenged, however, and I did recently come close to breaking mine. A few complimentary crisps arrived at my cafe table. They turned out to be of Dijon mustard flavour. After identifying the taste, I went so far as to eat two more crisps before abruptly pulling myself together and pushing the bowl away.
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