The Great Sago Debate...

PART 2: Sago (Do you love it or loathe it?)

Dear Naomi

I trust this finds you well on a glorious spring morning…

I can’t pretend that this week’s recipe filled me with joy: the letter spoke of all the things we hold dear about this project, but the reality of cooking something I actively dislike took me down a whole rabbit hole of taste, smell, and neurogastronomy (who knew that was even a thing?)

Which, in turn, took me back to primary school in the Midlands of England in the 1960s. The smell of the polish on the pond-green linoleum floor was intermingled with another green smell, cabbage. Not finely shredded and combined with lots of other flavours, but alone, unaccompanied by anything, and boiled to within an inch of its life.  The longer cabbage is cooked, the more sulphurous the smell. I rest my case.

We’re not even in the dining room yet. Initially, the smell here was often of wet jumpers: Derbyshire winters were long and cold.