Bread. Rice. Pasta. Potatoes. The names alone inspire nothing but boredom and that slightly nauseous sensation you get just before the onset of a stitch. Starchy, stodgey, staple foods that in all honesty, we could all do with a bit less of in our lives. I mean, what are they really good for? Sustaining us against starvation is a thoroughly over-rated attribute in the age of the Amazon Kindle, the sustainable teak Chaise Longue and the Olive Oil tasting party chez nous in Tuscany. It’s time we did what any reasonable, bourgeois-minded person would do, and replace them with more marketable alternatives!
And what alternatives! These days you can hardly step into a humble delicatessen without falling over the piles of hip, replacement staples available. And with nearly the same carb content as your dull old pie and mash, these exotic newer models needn’t result in you wasting away from malnutrition. From your classic cous cous (discredited, now that I hear they have it on the salad bar in Pizza Hut, but still a joy with a nice quail tagine and a glass of chablisse), to the dirty hipster of the grain world, quinoa (pronounced ‘Keen-Wah’- say it how you imagine Montezuma might have talked) the options are many and varied. Frankly, there is no longer any excuse for living off over-done fusilli and Lloyd Grossman sauce, so quit complaining and dive into the rich and multi-textured world of alternative carbohydrate sources with us. You will not be disappointed.
Staple #1: Quinoa
Lewis says: Although a recent Guardian article has forced me to accept that quinoa no longer fits with my personal ethics, I was prepared to shred a tiny piece of my soul for the sake of a last hoorah. I don’t know if it was the salad box we served it in, or the cries of raped Amerindians I had ringing in my ears as I ate it, but quinoa doesn’t do it for me anymore. It’s certainly exotic and versatile, but taste-wise? Save it for the Llamas. 3/10
Katie says: More importation! Having read the same Guardian article, I was preparing myself for a sweet farewell. But these delicate husks of heaven won’t be leaving my diet anytime soon. And neither should they leave Western supermarkets. If we plough on in our Western demand, perhaps we will inadvertently provoke a new pulse, the monolith of quinoa being too expensive to sustain. And perhaps it will be even tastier, or more versatile, or contain even more amino acids! Fellow gastronomes, if you care about your mouth, your health, and the future of the world of superfoods, I must urge you to beat down any namby pamby Guardian-quoting liberals and buy as much of this contentious grain as possible. 8/10
Staple #2: Cous Cous
Lewis says: I can confirm that this was indeed, cous cous. Little else to say really. Those little North African grains are just so, well, 2006. I’ve probably eaten my own body weight in cous cous six times over, and can now feel nothing but indifference towards it. The heady, mid-noughties days of cous cous orgies are long past. Really it’s just a sort of dry porridge that people happen to sometimes serve nice sauces with. 4/10
Katie says: Shit porridge. Inedible, passé and not really as versatile as it makes itself out to be. A rare instance where the less exotic substance of rice would have been preferred. And I don’t mean Basmati, wild or black rice but the bog-standard Tesco variety! That’s something. 2/10
Staple #3: Butter Beans
Lewis says: I prefer the term ‘Cannellini’. Butter beans makes them sound like something people in Middlesbrough might serve with fish fingers. And that, fellow gastronomes, can never be a good thing. That aside, I have a childhood aversion to over-sized pulses that disqualifies me from commenting. No Score.
Katie says: Tearing off a crisp outer shell I wrap my tongue around the succulent flesh of these gorgeous beans. I suck the paste out gently and smile to myself, fully satisfied. The sensual experience these balls* of pleasure induced was enough to make me want to write a review that I could later enter into the Bad Sex Awards. Viva Italia! 9/10
Staple #4: Puy Lentils
Lewis says: So we used to have these things called lentils right, and they were dry, and bland, and something that hippy mothers fed their kids. And then we thought, let’s make them black and name them after a French Département, and voila! Puy lentils were unleashed upon an unsuspecting world! Reasonably tasty and a nice accompaniment to either salad or liver. 7/10.
Katie says: Very much fulfils the requirement of ‘staple’. Bland, metallic (tasting), rusty (looking) and generally to be found in boring places, like bad restaurants or offices. Useful enough, but as the cliché of the vegetarian diet, they are too overused to be exotic and too tasteless to really get my pulses racing. 5/10
Lewis concludes: If you take Katie’s word for it, Italians really do, do it better. However, in my honest opinion we should forego all of this alternative staple bollocks and get back to the tried and trusted potato. Maybe it’s the Irish in me, but I would never replace spuds with any of these laughable alternatives. And when you consider that they were originally bred in Peru, for the Inca court, their foody cred goes through the roof. Viva la carbs!
Katie concludes: Will spend next week attempting to come up with a saucy version of “Beans, beans good for the heart” that does not feature flatulence.
*The Egyptians had a strong aversion to beans because of their apparent resemblance to genitalia. And, ‘bean’ also may have been a slang term for testicle in Ancient Greece. (The above tone of my review is therefore not entirely unfounded.)
