Sunday, January 18, 2009

Coriandrum

Nothing convinces me more thoroughly of the diversity of the human genome than the people who think cilantro tastes like soap. The virgin queen of herbs, the lissome lovely of the plant kingdom: likened to a cake you use to lather up your ass! It's almost too awful to contemplate.

Why am I not buying more cilantro? Why am I not stuffing my face with the stuff morning, noon, and night, until I turn pale green and emit the odor of a thousand tacos? Ah, my friends, we've come to the fly in the ointment, the beast in the basement, the darkness lurking in the depths of glory like Judas at the right hand of the Lord.

YOU HAVE TO BUY TOO MUCH. That's right: cilantro is a guilt machine. Buy it in those bunches; fret all week about how you're going to wrest that final leaf from its stalk. Inevitably, you fail. Invariably, you toss out precious herbal ambrosia reduced, in its extremity, to a sorry mat of leaves. Pleasure, Janus-faced, reveals itself as burden; joy quickens into dread.

Help me out, here, folks.

3 comments:

Dan said...

One word: chimichurri. It freezes almost as well as pesto, too. Mango cilantro sorbet is also nice, speaking of frozen things.

Incidentally, I find it far more more distressing that certain folks can't taste truffles...now THAT'S a cosmic injustice, if ever there was one.

Anne said...

OOO! Probably too cold for that, though. Speaking of cosmic injustice, I've never tasted truffles, myself...

Anonymous said...

Yes! Soap! I detest cilantro and was never sure what I thought it tasted like, but now I know.