Just don’t serve me frozen carrots

There was a time when I would have never blinked an eye when eating a frozen carrot. That was the golden age of school dinners. Frozen carrots were standard fare there. We never thought about the frozen carrot then, probably because we were instead thinking of the dessert which followed, which always seems in my childhood minds eye to be a rich suet pastry jam roly poly with lashings of custard. Sometimes it was a less good dessert such as Frog Spawn (tapioca) or even Semolina with a dollop of jam, but mostly it was the sticky, oozy and sustaining suet puddings that I remember.

You can spot a frozen sliced carrot on a plate even before you’ve tasted it, and when you do pop it in your mouth, its a bit bland and watery. A fresh carrot nicely prepared tastes much better. No question. Any self respecting chef or cook would not serve up a frozen carrot, or a frozen anything for that matter (unless its a dessert.)

It does take a bit of energy to chop up a carrot though (or ‘prep it’ as I’m sure they would say in cheffy circles), and the temptation to cut corners in cheaper establishments must be overwhelming. I’m sure though that chefs and cooks in most big towns though would have access to pre-chopped fresh fare, thus saving them the time and energy. Its probably a tad more expensive too, but I’d suggest to all restaurateurs, cafe food and pub-grub purveyors its not as expensive as having customers not return because you presented a frozen carrot on a plate to a patron.

These days it seems we are completely surrounded in the media by cooking shows and celebrity chefs. The palettes of the population are being educated via TV. We all know how food should be prepared, presented and how it should taste (even though we can’t actually taste the food that is being paraded before us on the telly box). Subconsciously many of us have become foodies and part-time restaurant critics. It must be a real pain in the *wotsit* for restaurant owners. No longer can chefs and cooks get away with sub-standard carrots.

As you might have guessed by this anti-frozen-carrot rant that I was recently disappointed because someone served me a frozen carrot in a place that was not a school canteen. The pudding that they served following the carrots did not redeem their carrots either. It was a limp apple pie that did not have enough lashings of custard. Shame.