Why Expensive Food Doesn't Taste Better || Olivia Abrahmsohn (Taste Expert) || S06E04

0:00I love truffle, but as it's become so quite expensive, but also on every dish ever, I had pasta not that long ago, truffle pasta, and it was really crap. I've sort of trained myself to enjoy truffle. I do find it's a little bit... You can mask a dish. It's a flat flavour. It's a one flavour pony. Yeah. You put it in and then the dish tastes like truffles. No, it's overpowering. It's overpowering and quite one-dimensional. And I think because it's got the expense sort of halo over it, I feel like it doesn't pull its weight. How would you enjoy truffle then? How would you elevate a truffle dish?

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2:21So a slightly different one today, but we have the amazing taste expert who is Olivia Abramson speaking all about taste. Now, we are all obsessed with how things taste. Obviously, we won't be eating them, but there is so much, you know, chalk talk in F &B about how the product has to taste amazing before you sell it. The product has to taste amazing, but what is taste? What is the kind of, what are our mouth, what's our mouth and our taste buds learning like I don't know so this is where I brought Olivia in today so Olivia tell me about what you were doing before you got into being a taste expert um and yeah how your kind of journey led to where you are um thank you for having me here um well I guess uh growing up I was always really interested in food and I was very exposed um to a lot of different foods and spices and uh different flavors just because my mom was an amazing cook and I went to summer camps of cooking and uh just had a very um lucky exposure to it and I used to always put weird and wonderful flavors together if there was a buffet I would put my dessert on my plate at the same time as my meat because I just liked to be able to control the different flavors I was able to get.

3:38I love tapas-y type meals where I can just sort of play with what I feel is right in a bite. And I actually was in, I went to a, on a trip to the west coast of America and I went to a lot of wineries and I wasn't expecting to because I was quite young at the time but I could describe some of the flavors that the connoisseur was asking us what we what could you taste in the in the wine this wine what could you taste in this one and I was saying all sorts of things like barbecue sauce and a hickory and and almonds but roasted and uh cut grass and things that were felt very familiar to me and she said I think that you should go into the food industry or have do something with taste.

4:33So I was actually studying science at the time and I got really interested in nutrition and after my nutrition degree I did a master's and realized a lot of people were going into being dietitians and working in hospitals and I was like I just have this fascination with what food is doing to the body and how I can work in food and I ended up working I could only work for like a healthy company because that was the values that I held and I ate by and I wrote a long list of companies that I'd like to work for that inspired me and Innocent was at the top and I yeah I landed a job there. Doing what was your first role?

5:19I was a product developer assistant I actually applied to be the product developer with five years experience and I said I've got if you can if you have a good apple crumble recipe what give it to us we'd like that so I cooked an apple crumble all weekend just like trying to perfect the recipe and I got a friend to mock up the label of an innocent smoothie as like you know the nutrition of me and I was like because if I didn't have the experience how was I going to stand out and I delivered a hot apple crumbled to them on a Monday morning and they happened to have their products team meeting um on a Monday and they ate it and they called me straight away and they said we don't have the role that you've asked for but we've we've got an assistant role amazing because I had no work experience it was the most incredible place to learn processes to learn uh the quality of ingredients from farm to how it ends up in in the bottle after the end of the shelf life you would choose the harvest window the perfect harvest windows of the flavors of each ingredient and every batch that came from the farm we would taste it was a very high quality very detail orientated high process business and I learned I mean I couldn't be more grateful for all of the all of the learnings that I took from there and then on to Jo or was there one in between then I um went and worked in a company called rebel kitchen oh yeah it's your brands um and because I was taking all my innocent learnings and they were a smaller company I could bring all my process learnings and and build a team where there wasn't one and uh set up factories with good quality and best practices in different countries and yeah had an incredible four years there developing their range and then I was freelance for a few years I've been freelance sort of intermittently between larger contracts.

7:35And Joe and the Juice just popped into my life. And I had the right credentials exactly matched for what they were looking for at the time. They didn't have any product development member or team or anything in there. And they'd been around for 20 years. so they definitely needed some expertise from external sources and I just fit in and I hired a team and redeveloped the the menu and which was an incredible challenge because it was a global brand with over 300. So you were in charge of the global? Global rollout so close to 400 stores thousands of juicers to train on recipes so that was a whole different ball game of learning food service learning how to create a recipe that's easy for people for for young juicers who'd be behind the bar in scandinavia that i didn't even meet face to face but i had to just make it as simple and easy and reproducible as possible yeah my gosh so were you in charge of the old sandwich fillings because I feel like they come out and they're like trends like everyone's like making their own like tuna cardos at home yeah it went viral that tuna yeah spiced tuna tuna cardo that was delicious though yeah so we did a sandwich we did the egg cardo sandwich nice it was great and some of the other recipes were tweaked and checked and changed and all sorts and you wouldn't necessarily know it but there's a lot of things that happen behind the scenes of course of course oh those arnies are so good yeah And now you are a freelance taste expert.

9:20So working across a few brands, helping them with the taste of their product. Yeah, so I'm a product developer. So I develop the recipe in the kitchen and then can do everything from ingredient sourcing, factory sourcing and upscaling to get it on shelf. and just one thing that I am really really conscious of is taste and there's no point in creating a product just for creating it or just being semi-okay with the output because if you're going to create a tasty product I mean if you're going to create a product you want customers to be like oh that was so good I want to come back or just remember it as being a good experience yeah because you're not going to get repeat and what I really try and do is so I think I try and get my clients to have an aspiration to get an award of some kind I also judge for the Great Taste Awards and some other award panels and I really can understand what a judge is looking for um and so try and also develop with a great taste in mind um because i just think if you're going to be having a smoothie or having a sandwich why can't that be the best experience for you rather than just a reproducible or commercially viable even though that totally needs to be taken into account um it's like how can we get the best flavor as one of the key criteria god it's so fascinating when you like dive deep into it because you know i'm i'm my taste buds are i'm very lucky i feel like they're quite educated palettes over here but more in the sense of like if i have a sandwich from the supermarket versus like the we're so spoiled living in london the sandwich shops here like you know the salt beef sarnies oh god my favorite things in the world is a salt beef sandwich and you know you just when it's like made properly in like a kind of little store or deli yeah it's so different to going to and then you taste a supermarket egg tuna whatever yeah like this is foul yeah and so what i would do is someone might take a mango period if someone's creating say a tropical smoothie they might want a mango pineapple maybe some passion fruit I will taste eight different suppliers of mango puree I want to be know I want to know it how smooth is it how creamy is it what flavor notes am I getting am I getting tobacco notes which is slightly negative cheesy notes which is can come into mango purees slightly negative or am I getting more floral notes am I getting uh sort of almost yeah a perfumed mango the sweetness the caramelized flavor and i'll taste eight of them side by side and choose the best one yes the best one might be the most expensive but how can we work with it maybe even in a combination so that i'm elevating the mango in the best possible way so that's the cheesy nobody those are often the cheapest because they use a variety of different varieties so they use a blend um which can be cheaper to do that and i will try and find the most commercially viable but also delivering the best quality yeah so it but it takes a while to do that and a lot of people don't put the effort in or are not detail orientated so sometimes you know i've been told off being too detailed but actually sometimes the details matter um and they certainly make it a taste.

13:23It would be great at running a business together because I'm not in the detail. So like you could be all the detail and I could be just the other part. Oh, I'd love to be that. That would be true. That would be true, Virgo. What's the biggest like taste myth that you wish people would stop believing?

13:45I think that you have to be an expert in order to express yourself in taste. I think a lot of people think that, oh, if you're a wine connoisseur, that's when you can talk about cut grass or how, you know, there's a slight leather taste to it. But I think we can train our taste buds how to be a little bit more in tune and use words to describe things because we can widen our library of words that we use sometimes we just say oh that's good or that's nice and what does that actually mean you know does that mean oh am I getting more lime or less lime am I getting more of those perfume passion fruit notes or not is that but good doesn't describe it so i really uh when i train people because i train people how to taste and i take them through sessions where i look at their lowest threshold and and really um activate their lowest threshold of taste across their different taste stimuli that's just for one of the senses but i do across all five senses um but when I'm training someone how to taste I'm I want them to start building a library and you can only do that by being more present to the spices in your cupboard you know what does cinnamon actually smell like what does it taste like because then as soon as you you lock it in it's then a point in your library that when you taste a wine that might have a chemical composition that's similar to cinnamon you can then reference it like oh I just got a bit of cinnamon in there because otherwise if you had never tasted cinnamon you wouldn't know that it did taste similar so it's about building a huge library and there's never an end and that's the beautiful thing there's never an end to the library of words and I use it as moments to be present and mindful it's like a little micro moment of meditation and we've got all these we've got all these buds on our tongues these little receptors that are able to pick up little stimuli that are dissolved in our saliva all the time and there are moments where we can you know when we're when we're eating things and it's and the food is in around our mouth that is a such a moment to be as present as possible to these these buds that can pick up um flavor we're so used to just going like you know eating really quickly and not like saving the time thinking these about this i'm going to have dinner tonight and i'm going to eat everything with the thought of being like what does this actually taste like yeah because when your mind is in the oh is it is it peach or is it pear or is it is that olive or thing it can't be in how stressful are those emails in a day So what the myth, I think, is that I have to be a taste expert in order to taste food well.

17:03Or I don't know how to taste. You know, I probably rubbish at tasting. But actually, I think we're all hidden experts. Just sitting with these dormant mouths that could actually awaken. So I'm on a mission to awaken people's taste buds. Absolutely. I want a party hat for everybody. Oh, my God. Yes. Love that. and we were speaking earlier about how much I hate bananas like they are foul in my opinion yes do you think I could train myself to ever enjoy it it's I mean there would be a lot of science research that you could look into that would be I'm sure more factual than the summary I might give but it has been shown that with repeat exposure you can have a slightly more enjoyable experience they say I mean it really differs but say eight to ten times you'll then have a more pleasurable experience also you can do things yeah because like olives for example some kids don't like olives but if you or vegetables but if you yeah expose there is it's almost like almost in a micro way as well could be a way to try and uh deliver that that flavor um almost like in a um like what's it called when you try and immune yourself to it um yes i know what you're saying Yeah, so you could perhaps repeat exposure, which can help build a tolerance to that particular flavor profile or stimulus.

18:44Yeah, but some people who really hate bitter, it could be because they are super bitter sensitive. Yeah. And so it really differs for different people. And some people have got a phobia of things. So, you know, it could be your banana could be because my friend's got a banana phobia. And I think she said that her sibling smashed a banana in her face when she was young. I had my rucksack. It's caused a trauma. So that's a slightly different emotional connection to it than a taste. That was great. Yes. What's the weirdest thing you've ever tasted, but it like blew your mind and you were like, wow.

19:29Well recently I came across this awesome guy called Robin who has actually created the Fermenters Guild. He runs a company called Koji Kitchen and he's just created this slow sauce that he's very into fermenting and he lives in Scotland and he's used the oats in Scotland because they're a huge quantity and fermented them the same way as the Japanese do miso rice and miso. So he's created an oat miso, which is, honestly, I tasted it. It was unreal, the depth of flavour, then the crunchy, almost porridge-like consistency, but just adds a really interesting, so it was a really weird experience. How would you use that product?

20:25It's similar to miso. You can put it on tofu, you can put it in stir fries. Yeah, there's so many different uses, but it adds a really interesting, very intense depth of flavour and umami, which is always hard to achieve. Umami. Let's talk about umami because it seems to be everyone's talking about umami. Totally. What is umami? umami is it's basic taste so just like you've got bitter sweet salt but why do we only know about umami in like the last five years because we've always known about salt and sweet yeah it's it's not something that has been spoken about i don't i don't know exactly why it suddenly come out but it's always been around because it's naturally found yeah in mushrooms and parmesan and broccoli, tomatoes.

21:23That's why a tomato, you know Bloody Mary, tastes so good on a plane because our thresholds are higher for taste on a plane and so you get more umami. So basically umami can be detected by all over the tongue and it is a really intense but it can give a very long and deep flavour and a lot of Asian cooking uses MSG or enhancers which is a more lab made monotodeam glutamate but a small amount goes so far to deliver flavour and so it's an easy hack to deliver flavour but a lot of companies now are using a natural form like grinding mushrooms and putting it in chilli oil instead of putting MSG in so that they can deliver that length of flavour.

22:21Interesting. Yeah so it's always been there but and it's just less known but it's almost more explosive and more intense than some other basic tastes. I love it, I love umami, I love Asian cooking and that's where I tend to kind of have it, like if I'm doing like gochigang, the fermented bean paste right? I've made the stir-fry of that for and I remember being like wow that's umami. Yes. Like that had an oomph to it than just like soy sauce. And it's a depth, what I quite like is even in a dressing that I'm trying to make or a dish I'm always thinking about this the different elements that can work together to form my perfect bite and sometimes that sweetness saltiness bit of acidity maybe a bit of warmth like to activate some trigeminal nerves so that's like almost not a taste it's an experience but I'm looking for length of flavor and umami is a really lovely way to just trail along in the distance yeah and carry on the bite for a long time.

23:33I love it, I think it's such a nice flavour. It's so great. And why is it that we crave things that are like junk food versus healthy food? I mean one, one, generalising here because I actually do crave a lot of healthy food but why does the general population tend to crave more like crisps and cakes yeah because because fat salt sugar activate dopamine and that is the happy chemical that we're all craving and kind of addicted to so it's a really fast and quick way to deliver that happiness straight away also there's a lot of satisfaction instant gratification that comes with the crunch of a crisp the the mouthfeel of fat you know crunching on a carrot is certainly less enjoyable you know for yeah but why is it still a crunch it's still a crunch but the crunch of a the the fried fat and the carbohydrate that then is broken down by the saliva in your mouth so good and the salt is just and your lip goes white oh yeah and then the salt that instantly because usually a crisp or a chip is covered in the salt that's surrounded in it it's just such an instant hit whereas carrot doesn't have it's not high in salt it's just quite bland in flavour it can really be dressed well it's not to say that high fat sugar and salt is the only way that we can be addicted to the food because you can get really you can do a lot with the health with healthy food like you can create a delicious bite with healthy carbs with healthy ingredients to deliver a perfect mix of a bite that is almost as quenching but there's a little bit of work and thought that needs to go to because the convenient stuff is the stuff that is cheap easy and very high gratification.

25:56And it's manufactured to want us to keep going back. Totally even the sound of a crisp packet is part of the experience. So how much does smell come into it as well when you're tasting a product? Hugely I mean smell and taste equal flavour and so generally one might sniff before tasting yeah and that's almost a protective mechanism yeah to stop us having something that's off yeah as and also it can already activate your salivary glands and your digestion before you've even eaten it eaten the bite so it can be a useful tactic but also it's so part of flavour if you don't want to taste something pinch your nose and swallow it you know that's that's what we were told to do and if you want if you've got a cold don't you won't be able to taste and your food might feel taste very bland i mean a lot of people knew from covid yeah that was mental how many people lost i lost my taste i was mourning it i was doing taste exercises every day what's a taste exercise smelling all sorts of different extracts and different smells to try and awaken it and I was having to have very crunchy food and very hot spicy food to give me the the the try to because my trigeminal nerves which are all over your tongue your face which pick up you know cooling menthol and also warm and and hot and bubbles of champagne and all sorts of different feelings I I was using that to overcompensate for the fact I couldn't taste.

27:39It was very upsetting. Because I had a friend actually and she lost her taste buds but then when she did eventually taste, everything tasted vile. Yes. So like she said her words, it tastes like I'm meeting a dead person. Yes. I'm not sure how she knew what a dead person tasted like. No, maybe she has experienced that. I mean, we hope not. But that's quite mad that everything she then had tasted so foul and like vulgar yeah yeah gosh no not for me I love eating I found that I I got so unexcited by my meals you do when you're ill though don't you yeah what's the point yeah and I realized how excited I got for every meal before like I'd wake up excited for breakfast and go home from work excited for what I was gonna make for dinner so without that yeah it's very boring so awaken your taste buds everyone please please go and do that please and what's the most would you say like overrated sort of ingredient in food right now that's like a big trend that you're like oh this isn't actually well do you know what even though i've i've sort of trained myself to enjoy truffle I do find it's a little bit you can mask it in it's a flat flavor it's a one flavor pony yeah it's a you know you put it in and then the dish tastes like truffle it's it's hard to sort of match truffle yes you can put it with parmesan or something but like it's hard to match truffle with no it's overpowering it's overpowering and quite one-dimensional and I think because it's got the expense sort of halo over it it it's um I feel like it it doesn't pull its weight it's interesting you say that because I love truffle but as I've like as it's become so like you know what it is now which is quite expensive but also on every dish ever yeah I had pasta not that long ago, truffle pasta, and it was really crap.

29:54And I just thought, all I'm tasting is truffle. There's no thought into this at all. You just literally put truffle and cream and almost, like, mixed those two things and shoved it on some pasta. Yes. It was boring. And, yeah. And because, talking of trying to get things commercial, because people are wanting a very expensive ingredient to be more readily available, then they just make flavourings out of it. and so a lot of the time you're having truffle it's just a flavoring it's not even necessarily from truffle so how would you enjoy truffle then how would you like elevate a truffle dish oh you're asking me on the spot i i mean i haven't i i haven't experimented to try and really see what it could match up with other than mushroom maybe a green veg maybe a carb maybe a parmesan to lengthen the flavor so parmesan really works because it's sort of like a truffle it's such a hard flavor to really pin down yeah it's so standalone it's so standalone and it's so it doesn't it's it's almost like a top note of mushroom and mushroom usually delivers a very deep note so it does go really well with more you know with a roasted or fried mushroom and I understand why it's put with risotto as well because those are such a good marriage and then Parmesan naturally fits in with that and gives that really lovely deep flavor as well so yes I can see why it goes in that standard meal but in terms of pairing it with other things that could be an interesting experiment you know just like where have we not not put it because it could it work in something um sweet could it work in something uh yeah slightly rogue maybe breads yes yes we should try something where it's what can we take because chocolate cream isn't too bizarre but we haven't done it with sugar to make it like a sweet cream.

32:10I mean truffle porridge, like I could really imagine like you know maple and truffle like bring me newness with truffle is what I'm saying. And if you could ban one flavour combo what would you ban?

32:36do you know what birthday cake yes what is that it's just what is that i don't understand birthday cake i see it in all of it it's talking about that it must be that tray bake thing you had at school that just classic vanilla i don't understand what birthday cake is it's sugar i find this about red velvet it's chocolate cake dyed yes yes with a cream cheese frosting yes what red velvet is not a flavor. No, no. It's chocolate cake dyed red. Yes. But everyone's like oh I love red velvet and I'm like what do you mean? But what does it taste like? I never understood that. What do you mean you like red velvet?

33:17I totally get that. It's chocolate cake dyed red. It's chocolate cake. I find that, yeah. Birthday cake is what we see so much stuff about birthday cake don't you? There's like birthday cake cookies and like. But mostly in the protein world and that's even more confusing. Yeah protein world. It's like okay I'd like to. With those little colourful dots. Those little colourful dots. The confetti. And I'm like, I don't understand. If I'm trying to get protein and I'm a, you know... Gym bro. A gym bro, do I really want to be eating a multicoloured birthday cake flavoured? It's not my birthday. No, it's our...

33:57It's very odd. Good, do you know what? I'm with you on that. Thank you. do expensive foods actually taste better or do we have like truffle do we have like this preconceived oh because it's expensive even if we don't really like it we probably wouldn't say well i think there's as i said about the halo effect something's expensive i think there's a there's already an anticipation of that it might be of a more premium quality but i think expense comes so much more than just taste it could be where you've sourced it of course it could you know it could be how ethical it is it could be if it's got organic certification it could be there's so many different things that could make it expensive other than just tasting better so it might not actually taste better but it might be just more expensive um and some some places have a designated region of producing things and so say champagne but it doesn't mean that though someone some other wine producer couldn't create a exact replica but it just can't be as expensive or called champagne so therefore it might be given a different price tag and then that might create a perception of it must be less good so I think it's all about I think we have gotten into a pattern of if it's more expensive it must taste better but I don't think that's necessarily true I think there's a gap yeah saying it that suddenly filled in by oh it's expensive therefore it must taste yeah right and the brands that you work with and they might be a kind of a founder generally my listeners are entrepreneurs and like early early stage founders but also through to you know later stage founders and even selling what would you say to them when they're coming to like you know MPD launches or they're even developing their first product what would be like your biggest piece of advice for them?

36:14Don't just let the factory develop it. Yeah spend time. Spend time on your development process spend time thinking about values of your company what ingredients actually fit within that how are they sourced what quality do you really want to put in because what you put in come is put out and be there be present in the process you know understand how the product is made because if they're using a really high temperature in the factory and that keeps dulling down the taste of the product and the colour is starting to go brown because they've used a process that needed to kill the bacteria but has impacted the quality.

37:02Be there and understand it and know what they're doing so that you can really tweak what needs to and yeah I would just I would be present to the full MPD process. I don't know if that's... No, definitely. I think you need, I think especially if you're, I mean, taste is so key. You have what? The minute someone tries your product, you've probably got three or four seconds to make an impact with them. And if they don't like it, they're not coming back. It's brown and separated. Be present over at shelf life. What happens to it? It's not a done product. It's not a plastic reproduced product. product it's a living breathing mix of ingredients that have their own shelf life and their own interaction and their own seasonal journey and their own journey over shelf life so be present taste it see what happens over life see what happens from batch to batch how does that change definitely that's another thing actually that you might not foresee is how factors might change exactly and what would you say would be like a trend that you seem to start to emerge that might become like really big in the next kind of six to months for a year i think you touched on it before i think it's umami okay i just am seeing the word play out in sauces in ice cream I just saw a yeast extract and beer ice cream being made.

38:30But it's not called yeast extract and beer ice cream, is it? It was umami ice cream. Right, so they weren't yeast. It's sort of like a marmite-y. Yes, but calling it yeast, I think, would hurt the public. It's a weird word, isn't it? it was the flavor profile was for a sweet item that was creamy had a new marmy in the title yeah so i'm seeing it come through way more especially in some challenger brands was sort of becoming a bit more michelin yeah in the more basic products like That, amazing. Dressings and sauces and jars and... The dressing that I love at the moment is all dressed up, Tessa.

39:19That miso tahini one. I could drink that. Yeah, I could too. I use instead of Caesar because I don't actually like Caesar salad dressing. I prefer that. Miso is an umami. So I think people are cottoning on to we're becoming a bit more sophisticated in our palate. so we the umami does give a length as i was saying which is more sophisticated because you're you're you're sort of looking for a bit of length sometimes like wow that's still going that that that taste is still going how amazing i can i can pause for a second because it's still happening yeah i can really enjoy this whereas some of the more basic tastes like salt and sweet sort of can end quite quickly unless you maybe caramelise the sugar which can give more depth.

40:08You know like there are ways of giving more depth but umami is quite a deep flavour that lingers quite a long time on the tongue. And say you've got girls coming over for dinner tonight, what would you cook them? Do you know what, this might seem basic. that but I love chicken Marbella what's chicken Marbella chicken Marbella is the most Venn diagram balance of all the flavor profiles okay put together in a dish so you almost don't even need starter or dessert. What is it? It's chicken with olives, capers for like the saltiness and almost a little bit of umami but then you're getting chicken like the umami from the chicken and the salt and the skin.

41:08Apricot, oh sorry not apricots, I lied. Prunes, so you get this deep caramel sweetness. Red wine vinegar so there's this elevated acidity and almost like evaporated deliciousness. Yes I love that you use deliciousness too because I do that. And when it's all put together it's just... What do you have it with? Rice and you can dress up your rice you can jewel your rice you can herb the rice crunch roasted nuts over it um and uh greens just gorgeous greens and sometimes a zest a bit of orange over the greens but it it's such a perfect you're welcome i've never heard of this at all it's absolutely delicious and it's an old recipe that my mom used to always make is it famous in marbs i'm gonna have to come back to you i don't Can we say that?

42:13Yeah? Why is it called MyWayah? Should we change it and call it like Mallorca? Yes. Or like Miami. Yeah, Chicken Miami. Yeah, and just like slightly change up. Or you might be moving to Hackney. We can call it Chicken Hackney. Exactly. TBC. And obviously taste is more than just flavour. It's crunch. It's texture. It's all those bits in between. Because actually, like, thinking about myself, I have porridge a lot, I love porridge because it fills me up for so long. And I have to put like peanut butter, I have to put yogurt on it, I have to put nuts, I have to put seeds, I have to put maple syrup, I have to like completely, it can't just be oats and milk.

42:51Ugh. Although sometimes at prep when I'm in a run I have to put honey on because I've got, there's nothing else available. But yeah, I have to like, it's heaped with texture and granola actually sometimes as well. That all comes into play. Like... I'm so impressed by you right now. Really? Does not everyone else shove loads of stuff on their porridge? I don't think so. I mean, for me, that's called layering of flavour and texture. Yeah, I can't. You know how you sometimes adorn yourself with different jewels and a belt and you might have a little waistcoat over a t-shirt? I'm styling my porridge.

43:32You are layering and styling your porridge. I struggle with risotto, and I now know it's because I can't have just one mush. I understand. I have to, if I'm having risotto, I need, like, not a chimichurri, but, like, something with something on top to, like, give me something else. Because if it's just, like, chicken risotto or mushroom risotto for, like, the entire dish, I just, I need the texture. I totally understand. Yeah, I never would order a risotto. Yes. Unless I'm home making it, and then I top it. well that's why certain cuisines really uh work for me because when i recently did a trip to mexico and fully immersed myself in all of the food culture and to learn about the different salsas a lot of people think that mexican food is just all hot uh but when you go there actually things are pretty good like the base is pretty mild and then you get to add different on top a different crunch on top and maybe a dollop of cream which adds some cooling to it but the salsas that adds the you know the spring of the sparkle of heat and the corn that is adds the crunch you've just got so many texture so many colors that you can pay it's a canvas that's that your plate is a canvas that suddenly you've become Picasso by the end of the meal and you've chopped it and you're so satisfied because sometimes very satisfying to have all the different flavors and then each one can each bite can be slightly tailored yeah so you never get bored and you feel so satisfied um but yes so sometimes having soup for dinner can be very unsatisfying no I couldn't I'd have to have some crunchy bread or something on top totally i can't believe i've done this on an empty stomach this is the worst podcast i've ever i'm starving you is your mouth yeah completely i'm done i need i need to go food um thank you so much i've learned so much about taste i think you're right about it's it's not just the first initial thing you think and you feel and you taste it's it's actually sitting back in the process of kind of enjoying and what actually does last so at the end of this evening I'm gonna totally think about that and kind of think about the flavors that I eat.

45:58And I'm telling you you will have a mindful moment, you won't be thinking about anything stressful. No. You'll be in. I'll be in my food. You'll be in your food. Oh goals. Don't eat with anyone tonight. No sit alone. Sit alone and sniff and look at it and and feel it and taste it and enjoy it before you even pick up your next bite. Thank you so much Olivia.