The cultural relativity of meat

[ursamajor]

On the last day of NaNo, my friends list said to me, "UPDATE OR I'LL SHOVE YOU UP A TREE."

*twinkles* *preens* *counts the earwormed* Congrats to those finishing NaNo, and Hanukkah Sameach to those who celebrate! Tis the season for sufganiyot, fa la la la la, la la la la!

hyounpark has been celebrating NaMcRibMo. I'm kind of glad that's almost over, too, though I suspect he'll make it a national movement the next time it comes around. >_>

Hooray, lazy Thanksgiving. Slightly overcaramelized the veg and spilled twice as much fivespice as I meant to into the sweet potatoes, but the turkey came out perfectly, and Hyoun loved the cornbread even more. Win.

Thanksgiving Menu:

* Maple slow-cooked turkey breast - just the two of us, don't need to try to wrestle a gigantic bird into the miniature oven of our tiny kitchen in the eaves :)
* Cranberry-Asian pear chutney - a regular from Kay Chun that's been on almost every one of my Thanksgiving tables since 2001? 2000? Whenever I saw the Asian American Thanksgiving article in Real Simple.
* Cider-roasted root vegetables - beets, butternut squash because they were what we had, but this goes well with any and all root veg. Also a Kay Chun recipe.
* Custard-filled cornbread - Marion Cunningham via Molly Wizenberg; I also like Heidi Swanson's update with quinoa
* Fivespice mashed sweet potatoes - boil sweet potatoes, melt butter, add fivespice to the butter, mash sweet potatoes with the fivespice butter
* Beet greens with bacon - fry bacon, saute beet greens in rendered bacon fat, chop bacon and mix back into sauteed greens
* Lemon-ginger mousse - a Joanne Chang fave.

And a loaf of rosemary garlic sourdough bread for Friday's leftovers ;)

*

So way back in October, on our first night in Toronto, we hopped the Dundas streetcar out to The Black Hoof, a charcuterie restaurant in Trinity-Bellwoods (according to Flickr, at least). (Toronto, can I just say how much I love your grid of streetcars downtown? Though the whole "step off into traffic" thing was more than a bit terrifying the first time! Luckily, the "DON'T PASS A STOPPED STREETCAR OR OUR MOUNTIES WILL STOMP ON YOUR CAR" thing seems to be pretty well-ingrained into Toronto drivers' minds.)

I started things out with beef tongue on brioche:

Tongue is a relatively new meat to me. I used to think the idea of eating tongue hovered somewhere around mildly repulsive. After all, it was such a big, chewy thing, at least from my own experience of my tongue, and aside from color and size variations, cow tongue looked enough like human tongue that I wasn't particularly interested in eating it. But in my teens, I also hadn't yet realized just how much I would come to find the foods a given culture eats the most intriguing part of my travels.

8/8/23: Mom: "Oh, you've always liked tongue, you and your brother both! Grandma just called lengua estofado 'special meat.'"

So a couple of years back, I was sitting at the bar of the just-opened Hungry Mother, perusing the menu to evaluate its Southernness for a potential date with Hyoun, and a tongue-on-toast appetizer caught my eye. Tried it, loved the taste and texture (similar to roast beef, but more tender), and from then on was a convert. It's part of what's convinced me that given the right preparation, I'll eat and enjoy just about anything. It's why I keep trying with brussels sprouts and being mightily disappointed every time; no matter how much ~caramelization~ or whatever, still tastes bitter!

There was even a night when Hyoun was on his way home from a conference in Connecticut, and he offered to pick me up something from Rein's. I glanced at the menu, and decided I wanted a tongue Rachel. Hyoun orders it for me. The deli guy blinks at him for a couple of seconds - I mean, Korean guy walks into a deli in small-town New England and orders the most eclectic combo on the menu? - then splits into the most ginormous grin ever, and declares, "I like you!" And they slipped an extra piece of halvah into the bag for me, too. ;)

And last week, when we were visiting Hyoun's cousin in NYC (the one whose wedding we went to at 삼청각), we went to 강서 and I got the 혀믿 구이. It was a bit closer to salami than roast beef in texture this time, but it was Korean BBQ, where you grill it yourself at the table. Everyone else ordered the typical 갈비; I cemented my "food adventurer" status with the cousins, and I got to try yet another culture's interpretation of a certain meat. Win.

*

But at the Black Hoof, tongue wasn't the most unusual meat I ate that night.

I've eaten my share of raw beef in my time - the Ethiopian kitfo; the better-known-in-the-West steak tartare.

The horse tartare at The Black Hoof was delicious. Rich but not overwhelmingly so, slightly sweeter than tartares I've had previously, almost creamy, but still with enough structure to identify individual bits of meat. It has made me curious to try 馬刺し at some point, though that was not on the menu at the 居酒屋 we went to dinner at the following night.

I'd forgotten that tartare included a raw egg, though, so hyounpark passed on that particular dish. Not to worry; there was marrow on toast and an excellent charcuterie plate and a simply divine ice cider that I need to figure out how to get a bottle of:

I'm not sure I have anything particularly insightful to say about a meat that is established as "normal food" in one culture while being considered taboo in another culture - but glass_icarus linked me to vi's Gross, Weird, Inedible and troisroyaumes' Seven Things, and I recommend both pieces heartily, even if you skipped what's behind the cuts for this post.

It's just - I've been working myself up about this entry for a couple of weeks now, worried about harsh external reactions because the meat I ate in Canada comes from an animal that is idolized as a pet in mainstream American culture. Even in the course of *writing* this entry, I built up walls and provided warnings well beyond what I usually do when I blog about food, because I don't want to host a discussion consisting of "Ew, you ate $US_culturally_disapproved_meat? Nasty!" But at the same time, if I'm putting up these defenses, will the people voicing those opinions get far enough into reading to realize how rude they're being, and how classist or racist it makes them look?

*

I was talking with a newly-pregnant friend of mine last night, and we got onto the subject of what foods one can eat during pregnancy - and all I could think about afterwards wasn't the foods that I could (not) eat during those months of pregnancy and breastfeeding, but what could I best do to encourage my future offspring to be as open-minded about food as possible, and to give them as much experience with as many different food cultures as possible? (I don't have any magic answers. I'll let you know how I did in a couple of decades.)

When we were growing up, my mom was the primary cook of the family, and at home, we ate dishes like meatloaf and spaghetti and mac-and-cheese, with fishsticks on Friday - a very middle-America Catholic diet. Filipino food was what her mom cooked, and we would eat things like pancit and adobo "at Grandma's house" for holidays; when Grandma stopped being able to cook, holidays were spent at the Hong Kong Flower Lounge, and instead of siopao, we learned to order bao. But it still wasn't "everyday" food for us, and sometimes, I envied my relatives for whom it was. I was already enough of an outsider at school - if I had "weird" enough food that I liked, maybe it would be enough so that I could be left alone to read my book at lunch.

On the other hand, because of my mom's choices in marrying Not-A-Filipino ("She married him because no good Filipino boy would have her" was the narrative spread around), our family was already ostracized from the San Francisco Filipino community. So for a long time, I was perfectly sanguine claiming nothing but blood from my Filipino heritage, especially after I ditched Catholicism - because at least my half-blood status made me "interesting" to white people rather than "untouchable" to Pilis. It's only been the last few years I've decided that even if I am "merely" hapa, that I still want to claim the parts of the culture that *do* resonate with me. Food is the obvious place for me to start. :)

It's interesting for me to compare with Hyoun - he came over to the States as an infant, and his mom cooked almost-exclusively Korean food growing up. They were in the middle of Tennessee, so they would order out pizza and go to steakhouses and eat at fast food chains. But the usual nightly meal was based on 밥 and 반찬. So when I make beans and franks for dinner, or some other American dish I grew up with, Hyoun finds it ... bemusing.

In the last couple of weeks, though, I was introduced to an American home-cooking dish similar to one I grew up with: elbow macaroni, ground beef, and tomato sauce all put together into a casserole with chopped-up green bell peppers. (My family's version omits the bell peppers.) We called it "Macaroni Casserole." The other Americans? Particularly the Midwesterners and Northeasterners? Call it "American Chop Suey." Which, amusingly enough, means something else entirely in India.

And now I really, really, really want an Asian Food Writing Carnival.

[A version of this will probably show up on Camberville Chow at some point, particularly because I never did write up the Filipino Night they did at Ole last spring. But this got looong. :) ]

Comments

[eva]

Oh, very interesting entry, especially about the different foods and cultural issues! My experience with American cuisine during my time in the US was quite limited, as both my host family and the guest lady's mother each made only one "real", non-premade dish during the whole several weeks: "ham" with a dark sauce and mashed potatoes (which probably were premade, too). Everything else was fast food, which is really weird if you come from a home where there is a full meal including vegetables cooked each day, and where you can go for weeks without a meal repeating itself. I went home with the distinct impression that there was no such thing as American cuisine, but I've long suspected that it was more the family I ended up in.

I'd not have a problem with horse. I might perhaps try something a bit "easier" like sausage or similar, but I would definitely try it if I get the chance. Our French neighbours eat horse meat, and in some German regions, particularly Bavaria, people do so as well. Generally, I try more or less everything, because you never know which nice things you didn't know about. There's now so much food from other countries here that you wouldn't have found twenty years ago. The best restaurant in my town by general agreement is a Thai restaurant. I often find things in the sauce that I can't identify without asking, like for example small balls that were lotus flower seeds.

The most "unusual" thing I've eaten so far is probably kangaroo. There's a Chinese-Mongol restaurant over in the next town, and one of their offers is a buffet where you can select all kinds of raw meats and vegetables and a sauce and have the cooks roast it right there. When I made my way through the meats and discovered the kangaroo (not exactly a native Chinese/Mongol animal of course), I just had to! It wasn't that impressive, actually, more like somewhat dry beef, but at least I tried it.

[pauamma]

Mmmm, horse meat.

[ursamajor]

It was delicious! But I admit I'd be a little intimidated to try to prepare it at home (well, that and there's nowhere I'd be able to get it here, anyway). Do you make it at home, or go out and have somebody else prep it? What kinds of dishes do you have with it?

[pauamma]

Here, you can get horsesteaks and ground meat from specialty butchers (fewer and fewer of them, alas). I haven't tried other cuts, or even heard of eg, horse ribs/chops.

Re preparing, you can do what you'd with any lean, slightly gamy meat. Broil it direct or after marinating it, grind it for tartare, etc.

[ursamajor]

*nod* When I hear "gamy," it instinctually makes me think venison, even though I know deer's hardly the only game in town. But venison with juniper berries and/or in a red wine braise generally shows up on at least one or two fall menus around here - and you just reminded me to check the Flavor Bible for possible ideas :) (Deer gets four columns out of six in a two-page spread; highlighted ingredient pairings: juniper berries, onions, pears, pepper, stocks, wine. No big surprises to me. *G*)

[azurelunatic]

cleverthylacine introduced me to the phrase "deer and beer" when she discovered that Fuddruckers has venison. Mmmm, burgers.

[ursamajor]

See, my other association with venison is the singing animatronic animals at ... oh man, I forget the name of the place, but it's a small chain local to Boston, and they just closed down half their branches a month ago. Brainfart. But an amusing one, at least.

[ursamajor]

Ooh, I'd be interested to try kangaroo at some point! But I'd want to try it as done by a culture who have eaten kangaroo historically, such as the Aboriginals - they seem most likely to have the traditional meat-preparation knowledge passed down across generations. Likely, this means I'm not going to be eating kangaroo until I get a chance to visit Australia ... unless the local Aussie meat pies shop that opened up this fall decides to run a kangaroo special ;)

Man, I feel bad for you and your experience with American home-cooking, though - when I did a student exchange to Kassel one summer in high school, I was introduced to NUTELLA. I'm just sorry I was already a vegetarian at that point, and in retrospect, would have loved to try more of the traditional meat dishes being served. I feel like going out to eat (or getting take-out), rather than cooking at home, has become a more and more common thing to do more and more frequently in the States over the last couple of decades, but I don't really have hard data to think about it more effectively, and some of it could just be class migration.

[eva]

Haha, Nutella - I know people who go through a glass of that per week!

[ursamajor]

*looks innocent* Oh wait, it's chocolate and hazelnuts. *looks proud instead*

[jeshyr]

[Food is totally a fandom! And totally weird!]

I just wanted to confirm Ursa's main point about cultural relativity by pointing out that here in Australia Kangaroo meat is only mildly more "weird" than beef/lamb/pork/chicken. It's available at least as mince in major supermarkets now, although it wasn't when I was growing up 20 years ago.

And if your kangaroo tasted like dryish beef it was probably (a) tasteless and (b) badly cooked. It usually tastes quite a lot stronger than beef, and you have to cook it carefully to avoid dryness because it's very lean.

On my personal weird-things-I-ate list at the top is frog's legs, which I ate in a French hotel in Singapore of all places!

I do think I'd have a problem personally with eating the meat of species I personally perceive only as pets (cat/dog, basically) but I don't mind others doing so, and perhaps if they did so in my presence I'd get enough used to the idea to try it. And canibalism doesn't appeal... but aside from that I'd be willing to try most things!

I did not grow up on a farm but spent significant time on relatives' farms and grew up in interface area between city/country so raised chooks and had pet rabbits and the neigbours had bees and one had a sheep (yes, just one!). Have helped raise poddy lambs and calves while at relatives' farms too. I'm fine with eating all those meats, it's just the things-I-see-only-as-companion-animals I think might be hard.

Interesting, I've never had venison. I imagine I could get it if I tried hard enough but it's uncommon here because we don't have deer!

(this one talks about hard stuff; the sensitive may want to scroll down.)

[azurelunatic]

My problem is less with eating the meat of a species that has companion animals and more with eating an animal that might have been a companion animal.

I find the idea of cutting short the lifespan of a companion animal distasteful and disrespectful to whoever the companion animal was attached to, and ... it's the expected thing in the culture in which I was raised that when taking a companion animal, one's signing up to care for that animal the best one can during that animal's natural lifespan.

We had chickens, ducks, and geese while I was growing up. We ate some of the chickens and some of the geese. With one exception, none of the birds had been pets; the exception was Dad's rooster who had a leg problem. He needed to be put down for his own quality of life, and it was deemed wasteful to not eat a perfectly good chicken. It was one of the hardest things I've ever done, and after that, there was no more of that for birds who had been pets. (There were no few who started out being adored but were unsuited by temperament to being pets, like the vicious rooster Nemka; he was *delicious*.)

Re: (this one talks about hard stuff; the sensitive may want to scroll down.)

[ursamajor]

Responding to the hard stuff with more hard stuff :)

*nod* Good point - I don't think I could have eaten any of the specific rabbits or dogs we had growing up, but it hasn't stopped me from eating rabbits in general. But as you said, it was part of the caregiving process, and picking an animal specifically to be a companion causes a different sort of attachment that for me, couldn't extend to eating that particular animal.

I'm curious about your thoughts - how you would feel about an animal whom you had as a companion animal. When that animal comes to the end of their natural lifespan (or their quality of life deteriorates sufficiently, though euthanasia might cause consumption issues I'm unaware of as Not A Vet or similar specialist), then would it be acceptable for somebody else to consume that animal? I'm not sure that I could, but I've also learned that my "nevers" get challenged a lot more often than I think they should. >_>

Things I could think of that might affect my own decision - we bury companion animals in a similar manner to humans (though maybe not at quite the same "status-by-location"), so are we dishonoring them more by not permitting their bodies to be put to potential uses after their death? (Are there research labs nearby that could learn from their bodies?) How much of a stranger would a potential consumer have to be before I didn't have to think about a specific person eating my former pet? Would it make a difference if the consumer was another animal, vs. a human?

Re: (this one talks about hard stuff; the sensitive may want to scroll down.)

[azurelunatic]

We did not eat any of the chickens who'd just up and died, regardless of their status as pets, in case they were diseased or had gotten into something toxic. (Miss Aurora in particular, we suspected might have eaten a bad mushroom.) We were never in a financial/food situation where we would have had to consider it. I suspect that if we'd had a bird killed by a predator but not carried off, or road-killed, that depending on how dear the bird was, it might have become lunch. We learned our lesson about eating pet birds with 公鸡, because no one except for Mama would eat more than a few bites, and she was not happy with it either.

I would not have felt bad about allowing someone else to eat that stew, except for whatever problem that person might have had in eating a dish containing a former pet. If I knew that person would have a problem if they knew, I wouldn't feel right about serving it to them.

I would be perfectly okay with donating the body of a companion animal to science, in the same way I'd be okay with donating my own body or parts thereof. However, I suspect that there may already be enough unwanted/unloved/unclaimed strays/ferals being put down anyway to serve the needs of science.

Depending on the size of the animal in question, as well as the manner of death -- a hen is pretty small. A horse is pretty large. The larger and lower on the food chain the animal is -- say if my sister's horse had suffered an injury -- I probably wouldn't have wanted to know, but I would not have been upset at the idea of horse meat winding up in pet food intended for carnivores or omnivores. I don't think I'd be overly upset at it winding up at a restaurant either.

The problem I keep having is, that I was raised such that unless you know how and why an animal died, it's not suitable food. Pets die "of old age", but what specific mechanism of old age killed them? And on euthanasia -- I'm likewise Not A Vet, but my position is generally "Unless I know it's OK, don't eat it".

Hi

[elkay.livejournal.com]

Not sure if I have the hang of authenticating to post here, but...

Just wanted to say I really enjoyed this post! And if you ever come to London, the pub near my house does a *beautiful* steak tartare :)

Re: Hi

[ursamajor]

You made it! And at some point, hyounpark and I totally need to hop over the pond, and you and I can get the steak tartare, and he will give it the hairy eyeball because there's a recognizable egg, and go off and order some other meat-without-eggs. :)

Re: Hi

[elkay.livejournal.com]

They are so lovely I'm sure that they would do him one without the egg, too :) A loose homemade mayonnaise or aioli could be a good substitute.

[trinker]

How on earth did I not re-cross paths with you before this?! And now I have to cross the streams, and get you linked in to a bunch of people you'd probably want to talk to... Off to read some of your other recent posts now.

[ursamajor]

Omigosh, hiii! How have you been? What've you been up to? How big and running-around is little M now? Where are you now?

And yeah, I'm playing around with the kinds of things I talk about more these days and starting to find the right words and the courage to speak up and be less of an "omg I must get this right the first time or not talk about it in public at all" perfectionist. Still shy of doing the wrong thing! But.

[trinker]

Little M is now THREE YEARS OLD, and has been joined by a sister, A, who is now 16 months old. It's been waaaaay too long since we've been in the same vicinity!

More via PM.

[ursamajor]

Awww. Hooray for siblings! \o/

[trinker]

They're just now getting to the age where they're starting to play interactively. M is teaching A all sorts of nonsense words.

[pauamma]

Wait... you know that dubious character? :-)

[ursamajor]

That's it, not sharing my slow-overnight-cooked lamb stew with you anymore. ;)

[pauamma]

*burp* Oh, I'm sorry. Did you expect me to leave some for you?

[trinker]

Shared a meal together, even.

[trinker]

If you didn't have such a delicious-looking icon, you wouldn't think such things about me.

[pauamma]

Is that a threat? :-)

[trinker]

You'd probably manage to fast talk your way out of peril, right?

[pauamma]

I certainly hope so. Or I could use the same method the Lieutenant did when you objected to his attempt to make whipped cream back on that Betnoiran cruise.

[kudzita.livejournal.com]

I really wanted to try horse when I was in Italy on the dig, but everybody else was too creeped out - so I'm jealous. I think growing up eating all sorts of not-stereotypically-American meats might make me less picky about food than I would've been otherwise, though. (My mom had me eating & enjoying Blut-zungenwurst for years before she told me what was in it - and after I found out, it seemed silly to fuss.)

[ursamajor]

They serve it in Toronto - rooooooad trip ;)

Now I'm curious about blood tongue sausage - I've had blood sausage before (as black pudding, morcillo, and 순대), but I've only had tongue sliced thin rather than as ground meat. I feel like blood sausages for the most part have been drier than I expected - after all, there was liquid involved, shouldn't they be, well, juicy? *G*

now with actual para breaks

[anirt.livejournal.com]

About ten years ago, I read a book (http://www.amazon.com/Good-Eat-Riddles-Food-Culture/dp/1577660153/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_4) that argued that many food taboos were actually based in the local ecology. For example, that pork ended up being a religious taboo for the middle-eastern religions because it was not sustainable to raise boars/pigs in that region, and something similar for Hinduism and beef.

I think ecology concerns are often a big part of my own food taboos, so when you said "controversial in the United States," I thought, "ugh, I don't know how to respond if it turns out it's whale meat or shark fins or another threatened species." (I'd read that for shark fin soup the rest of the shark basically gets thrown out. I think that those threatened species end up being expensive, so at least that's not classism, I think. I'll have to spend time thinking about if there's racism in my attitude there.)

So horse meat?

No big deal to me! I love reading about the food cultures you and Hyoun grew up in. You were wondering about having your kids open to other food cultures. We grew up with, in retrospect, pretty boring or bland food. In the Midwest, the non-local food traditions that was strangest to the other kids was actually not that strange: two usual Thanksgiving dishes combined - Pennsylvania Dutch potato filling. (Basically, combine mashed potatoes, celery, eggs, and stuffing and bake.) But my sister and I are now both moderately adventurous and try most things we're not allergic to, which has greatly expanded since our childhood.

The dish my parents called chop suey had water chestnuts and no tomato sauce, but did have noodles, ground beef, and peppers, and I think celery.

I enjoyed the two essays you linked to. I understood that troisroyaumes was talking about life in the Bay Area. Even if I were from the Bay Area, though, "You have to be pretty willfully oblivious to have never tried dim sum or pad thai before" kinda gave me pause, though. I imagine people like me growing up in the Bay Area with the severe allergies that prevent me from trusting restaurants would make enough friends to encounter those foods in someone's home. So maybe in the Bay Area even someone with my allergies *would* have to be willfully ignorant.

(I do love the few home-cooked Chinese and Thai recipes I have been able to have. Sometimes I wonder if it's cultural appropriation done wrong to take Asian recipes out of cookbooks and cut out all the ingredients that I'm allergic to. I mean, that seems like over-worry to my point of view, but maybe there's larger significance to certain meals that I'm not aware of.)