Taste

 So I have Covid and it's the old skool strain, the one that robs you of taste. My brother, in a very Higginsish aside, told me he had it a year ago and his ability to taste never fully recovered, which was exactly what I needed to hear.

Being able to taste is very important to me. It wasn't always. I found an old Cheeky annual recently - it's a British comic - with a "this book belongs to" section, which the 9 year old me had assiduously filled in. I list my favourite food as "mince". That was my culinary horizon: Bejam's finest ground cow was as good as it got. My mum had no interest in food - cooking for four children was another chore in a day filled with chores. She famously (in our family, at least) said that she would rather eat a pill than have to faff about cooking things. Eating was a hassle. We grew up on margarine and white bread, sausages and mince. Fruit was a treat and rare. I hated milk and I hated jelly and I inherited my mother's revulsion for fish. Or I thought I did. Years later I was invited to a chef's dinner party, and he asked ahead of time whether there was anything I didn't eat. I replied "I'm not keen on fish or custard", so he cooked a sea bream with a creme brulee to follow. Chefs are like that. You know, pricks. It was, of course, delicious and since then I've adored fish. 

Jelly and custard not so much. But I don't really get invited to those sorts of parties anymore, so it's not  an issue. 

My first girlfriend's family were the first people I met who cared about food. They talked about it. They discussed dinner while they were still having lunch. They went to buy food specially - it wasn't just a case of seeing what was in the freezer and working backwards, it was a mission. They were, of course, a lot posher than we were. I remember lying in the bath having returned from dinner at their house and detecting a strange smell emanating from my body. I'd eaten garlic for the first time. 

I'm a recipe cook. I don't improvise. I'm madly impressed by people who can look in a fridge and combine random ingredients into something edible. My food is planned. Even my omelette is a rip off of an Elisabeth David omelette. (Omelette Moliere, she calls it - and it's SO bad for you. It's also delicious, of course). And also I'm a man, so I think it's a REALLY BIG DEAL when I cook and I use every bowl, plate and knife in the kitchen when I do it. I'm also really impressed with myself - no one is a bigger fan of my cooking than me. When it works - and it usually does - I fight an impulse to photograph the food. I may have it tattooed onto my body. No one in the history of time has ever cooked a chicken in lemon and lavender as well as I have. The chicken would forgive me with tears in its eyes, such is the level of post-mortem care I take with it. You wouldn't get this sensitivity and delicacy with an over fifties funeral plan. 

 It's nonsense, of course. When I go to fancy restaurants I'm going because I know there are people who are REALLY good at this stuff. While fine dining - not something that happens as often as I'd like - I buy food that I don't even recognise, abstract dishes that yield and crunch in secret, delicious ways. I want food I can't cook myself, food that I might not even understand. I want calorific magic, sorbet saucery. 

So losing the ability to taste food is a blow. It's not completely gone, of course. I can taste sweet things reasonably well, though I've never really had a sweet tooth. The stuff that's missing for me, and this is done with cruel efficiency by the virus, is the umami flavours: the dark, rich, fleshy stuff. All the mushroomy meatiness, and the wine-dark gravies, the sea-air savour of a glass of Laphroig. I have only peripheral vision of the tongue, there are still flashes of flavour on the lateral line, sudden stark moments in the wash. But the Massif Central of my taste receptors has blinked out of existence. 

It's been interesting to see what still tastes the same. Lemsip is mostly unchanged, though the chalky aftertaste is less prevalent. Laphroig is just wet heat now. Tea tastes the same but weaker. I had battered fish with mushy peas yesterday: the fish tasted of nothing, the mushy peas tasted off. An orange tasted musty as an attic. My breakfast of grilled tomato on sourdough with a finely chopped clove of raw garlic on top - a favourite - was peculiar. I could tasted the tomato but the fieriness of the garlic was gone. Or rather I was aware of the heat but not the accompanying flavour. If you can't taste uncooked  garlic you're in a bad way. 

I shall continue to experiment with piquancy. I'm very much hoping that my sense of taste will return fully formed as soon as that pink line fades away. I'm getting new teeth in the new year. I'm looking forward to using them for things other than smiling.