Once, when I was a home-alone teenager, I did something disgusting to a mackerel. I should probably be ashamed. Given that I buried the evidence, I don't really need to own up. But I'm not ashamed, not now anyway. In adulthood I realise that the thing I did to that poor little fish, the way I sautéed it with tomato puree, and mango chutney, with hoisin sauce, a splash of soy and, you know, a bunch of other stuff, was entirely necessary. Yes, the end result was horrible. I violated that mackerel, as only a teenager can. Yet it had to be done. For I know now that, in pursuit of good things to eat, we must not fear the disgusting; the truly disgusting is a risk we must always be prepared to take.
I've been thinking a lot about this, because of an experiment under way in my house. My nine-year old, Dan, asked my wife whether it would be possible to make green bread. Easily, she said. Together they made a loaf of bread and put green food dye in it. Hey presto: a fresh loaf of bread that appears to be suffering advance stages of acute mildew. Eating it was an interesting sensory experience. Next he wanted to try making Marmite bread. They went for two types: one with the Marmite diluted in water (which retarded the yeast slightly), and one marbled with Marmite. The latter could have been awful; it was brilliant.
And so began their blog, Dan's Amazing Bread Factory. Every other week or so they stare disgusting in the face. Most of the time they come away smiling. Dan loves shepherd's pie. So how about potato bread rolls filled with a braised minced lamb filling? My they're good, a kind of Yorkshire answer to Chinese char siu buns. Peanut butter marbled bread? OK, but the crust went a bit flaky. And then there was "indeterminate green soup" bread. The soup is what we make with leftover veg at the end of the week. To me the loaf smelt like a rotting compost heap, all sweet decay and methane. Dan liked it though. He gave it two thumbs up on the thumbometer, the blog's scoring system. There's no accounting for (bad) taste.
That's the point. True innovation in the kitchen depends on the taste of the person doing the innovating. Recently I found a cheap jar of the Chinese condiment XO sauce. I mixed it with honey and used it as a glaze on pork chops. My family wanted to know why I'd made pig taste of fish. XO sauce is full of ground-down dried shrimps. It has a deep savouriness. It has the kind of whiff you'd imagine coming off a salted anchovy's sweaty armpit, if anchovies only had arms. I tried to use big clever words – "umami" and "pungent" – to describe the taste. My wife used smaller words – "rank" and "how could you?" She was right. Fishy pork shouldn't be anybody's idea of a good night in.
But look, I tried. I gave it a go. I took the risk. I still think I can make it work. A little less XO in the glaze, more honey and soy, a smack of chilli. I know there is greatness to be found there somewhere.
Meanwhile, downstairs in the kitchen the boy and his mum are working on chocolate milkshake bread. He does love a good chocolate milkshake, made with Nesquik obviously. That, a pint of semi-skimmed and a white bread dough. I have high hopes for this one.
• For more from the Observer Food Monthly's summer special see this Sunday's Observer
