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Last night I had fish and chips for dinner. No plates, no cutlery and nothing but the cat to wipe my hands on. I teamed it with a glass of Aussie red from a bottle that'd been open a day, maybe two. Tasted all right. Sure it was a little greasy and the wine a little rough, but knock me down if twenty minutes later I wasn't satisfied, warm and the cat a little shinier.
And while I'm not a complete food and wine heathen, this isn't a one off example recalled for effect. Some of my most treasured meals, I am now led to believe, could've been better. A few years ago, I spent a year up north, living the easy life in a big old house in Queensland. I lived with a couple of others who enjoyed a drink and a feed as much as the next person. Dinner time for us was way more than a meal in that house. As the moon got higher and the stars brighter, we'd rally together for the nights feast. Working around the huge bench in the middle of the kitchen, it was more an event than a chore. With tunes pumping out the windows and the warm sea breezes wafting right back in, we'd prattle on about the day's events and shoo the dog away until an hour or so later, we were sitting down to a glass of something rough and a plateful of something else. To us, those dinners didn't need a single extra thing. It was the easiest way to dine; there were two types of wine - red or white - and only one price, under ten bucks. As far as food went, well hell, if it would cook in a wok, on the barby or go with pasta, we were living large. We still talk of and treasure those moments. But tastes change, especially with the acquisition of knowledge. Never again will meal times be peppered with such carefree and reckless gastronomy. These days it's all about gaining hoards of information about every wine and its perfect food match. We're desperately trying to change what we already love, and in doing so, we're leaving behind one of the most blissfully ignorant moments of our consuming lives. See, now when I go to buy or prepare a meal, I'm more aware. Maybe even worried. Suddenly there's a little more responsibility. There are rules; what temperature to serve the wine, which colour comes first, are the vegies in season, the wine OK? Is it good enough? It makes you wonder if the extra concern makes for a better meal than something that, according to the rules, is poorly matched. I look back on those dinners in the big busy kitchen and no amount of knowledge will tell me they were bad. But when I taste food with wine that gets along swimmingly, drink wine that I truly love, and feed friends with a meal that works, it doesn't feel half bad either. In fact, I love that too. Like anything in life, once we know what's beyond the usual boundaries, it's harder to go back and enjoy what we once reveled in. With each limit we push, each paddock fence we jump, each new taste we fall in love with, we learn to forget what was once fine. We have to leave things behind. This is no reason to stop exploring. Without new tastes, flavours and sensuous discoveries, our lives would simmer down to a dull and flavourless existence. But while we should never stop learning, we shouldn't always be so afraid of what we don't know. You see, while knowledge may indeed be king, sometimes, ignorance really is bliss. Andrea Frost |