FEBRUARY 2 — For the longest time, I've been trying my hardest to use the word gorgonzola in a story.

Alas, in my 14 years of being a journalist, I have never had the chance to actually use it, even after doing numerous food reviews including at restaurants that were most likely to use the weirdly-named cheese.

(Italian, anyone?)

That odd dairy product, which is described as either "buttery or firm, crumbly and quite salty, with a 'bite' from its blue veining" according to a Wikipedia entry, is somehow absent from the typical Western offering in Malaysia.

I skim through the menus of the many restaurants that I've visited over the years, hoping that I would at least be amused by the discovery of the word in at least one of their dishes.

Always, I'm disappointed.

After having missed out on it for so long, it occurred to me that I could actually buy some and use it in some of my cooking.

And I'm no slouch when it comes to cooking, if my family has anything to say about it.

But Gorgonzola, arguably the oldest type of blue cheese made in Italy, gets me quite apprehensive.

Here is a food product that is lovingly crafted by mostly family-run businesses in the region of Gorgonzola, using centuries-old recipes to create something so iconic.

Which makes me afraid of screwing things up, since so much effort has been put into creating something that many in the Western world have in ample supply.

There's no denying that there is a lot of pride in the creation of such a distinctive product, which demands a great deal of respect and appreciation in its consumption.

Just like how I stare in horror when some noveau rich Chinaman gulps down litres of single malt whisky, just because he can afford to buy it.

That fear of desecrating such a curious, but ultimately distinctive food product, has so far kept me from actually using it in my cooking.

Which got me thinking — are the chefs here also afraid of failing to do justice to such an interesting ingredient?

Or is it because Malaysian diners insist that they won't pay for something that doesn't conform to their (possibly) limited idea of what Western food is all about?

Sure, we in South-east Asia always talk about how the Western palate is bland and doesn't have any of the complexity that is common to our curries and sometimes insanely spicy dishes.

But history clearly shows that it was these same Westerners who took the trouble to circumnavigate the globe in search of new experiences (their colonialist tendencies aside).

Our Asian ancestors discovered the basis of almost everything that drives our modern existence — mathematics, astrology... heck, even basic hygiene.

So why is it that we are now taking instructions on those very things from the people who learnt it from us?

My theory is that we probably felt too comfortable with what we already had, and simply decided that our nasi lemak (which is fantastic) didn't need any improvements.

So obviously there was no need to see if Gorgonzola cheese could actually work with some spicy sambal, right?

The very idea of mixing nasi lemak with Gorgonzola cheese would understandably cause quite a few people to balk.

And not all food experiments come out as rousing successes — take for example deep-fried Mars bars, which despite its wide acceptance in the US and possibly some parts of the UK, I still find disgusting.

But can anyone honestly say that adding Gorgonzola cheese to a serving of nasi lemak positively and absolutely cannot work?

Unless you have actually tried it, I won't believe you if you say it's horrible.

And even if you have tried it, recipes are almost always about how much of something that you put in.

So I guess the only way for me to find out, is to break out of my gastronomically conservative shell and take on that adventure.

I could be wrong, but so was Columbus.

And he ended up discovering what eventually became the most powerful country in the world at this point of time.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.