Talking Turkey

There's something about the flesh of a big bird that makes turkey unappealing to me. I can't put my finger on it but it's the same aversion I have to big oily fish. I once got sick after eating barracuda while on a sailing trip in the Bahamas and it seems to have traumatized me. Funny how food preferences are shaped by experience rather than actual taste. I hated beets when I was growing up and I think my mother liked them. It must have driven her crazy that I wouldn't touch them only because of a infantile indisposition to color or texture. It was only when I lived in France that I came to love beets. Now I can't get enough of the earthy flavor of those ruby-red crown jewels of root vegetables. I love them in salads, as a soup or as a side dish. One of my favorite salads is made of cubed beets, endive and toasted walnuts. They used to serve a similar salad at the Brasserie Balzar on the left bank, near the Sorbonne, in Paris. Theirs was made with mâche or lamb's lettuce instead of endive. Boy was that good! On Sunday nights there in my youth, I'd start with that salad then have their calves liver as a main course. I can remember it well.....A small piece of lightly crusty-on-the-outside and meltingly soft-on-the-inside liver (another foodstuff I wouldn't touch as a child!) served with sauteed potatoes and a broiled tomato. Yum. Yum. Yum. Dessert was profiteroles....those balls of cream-puff pastry filled with vanilla ice cream bathed in a warm chocolate sauce. THAT dessert I wouldn't have turned down as a child! I'm sure I'd have eaten profiteroles right out of the womb, given my inherent sweet tooth! Anyway, I digress. Getting back to food dislikes, it occurred to me yesterday as I roasted a turkey for a Thanksgiving article, that I really don't like it. I don't hate it and I'll certainly be having lots of turkey in the form of creative leftovers in the days to come but it's not my favorite food. The bird is just too big! More appealing are small birds like chicken, guinea hen, quail, pheasant but turkey?? I'll pass. The only turkey I remember with relish is one I had at my friend, Daniele's, on a visit to her farm in the Southwest of France. I was there at Thanksgiving once and she got a turkey from a neighbor who had raised it on chestnuts. It was small, like a wild turkey, and when roasted over an open spit it literally burst with flavor. Butterball it was not! I'd love to hear about other folk's food aversions and, specifically, where they come from.....What makes us like or dislike a certain food and what are the emotional components? Let's talk turkey!!