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.

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 :)

[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.

[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.)

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.)