You Are What You Eat: Questionable Cultural Cuisine

Text © Robert Barry Francos / FFanzeen, 2021
Images from the Internet
Recipes included in the hyperlinks

You Are What You Eat: Questionable Cultural Cuisine

When I was a whippet of a man, I worked in a theater as an usher. One of the films to play during my tenure was Lucille Ball’s oddly musical film version of the play, Mame (1974). There is a scene in it where Mame invites her nephew’s fiancée and parents to dinner to kinda get revenge for an uncomfortable meal with her racist family. During the dinner, one of the foods that is brought out is, if I remember correctly as I have not seen the movie since, monkey brains (shades of 1980’s Cannibal Holocaust). The nephew eats it with no problem as he grew up with it, while the fiancée is disgusted. This planted a thought in my head, which is as follows:

Every culture has at least one food that just about every other culture will find to be gross.

For example, I grew up in a middle-class Jewish household, where a regular staple was a cold cut that was made from cows’ tongue – also known as beef tongue – though we just called it tongue. It was delicious, and I was shocked to find out that the Italian kids at school were completely taken aback by it. I did not understand, as it was yummy on a sandwich with some mustard spread upon it.

Over the years, there were other foods that I would eat regularly that made people cringe, such as schmaltz, or rendered (clarified, or melted) chicken fat that was refrigerated and then used as a spread in the same way as salted butter. This is what was originally meant by a schmear, before it was appropriated as a description of spreading cream cheese. Mel Brooks once proclaimed, I believe it was on the “Tonight Show,” the number one killer of Jews is the food they eat.” This is an example why. In the old shtetl days, Jews ate chickens every Friday night for the Sabbath, and it was natural to use whatever they could, so schmaltz was used on bread. A friend of mine in college was repulsed by the idea of it, so I brought it in on a slice of bread, which she hesitantly ate, and her eyes grew big and she said, “Wow, this is amazing!”

My mother was well aware of the lack of healthiness of the product, which she would make herself, and we almost exclusively had it the week of Passover. My favorite way to eat schmaltz was if you quickly wet a matzo sheet, give it a schmear, and then spread some course salt (also known as koshering salt) over it. Man, as a kid I could eat that all day. As I grew older, I probably have not eaten it since the early ‘70s, but still remember the taste.

 

What surprised me was how reviled gefilte fish was outside of the Jewish household. All it contains is ground deboned carp, whitefish, and/or pike. We would eat it with horseradish, starting with the red kind, moving up to the stronger white as we got older and our tastebuds matured a bit.

 

Going in the other direction, speaking of fish, I never understood the appeal of the Norwegian (mostly) dish called Lutefisk. As Wikipedia  accurately describes it, “Lutefisk is dried whitefish. It is made from aged stockfish, or dried and salted cod, pickled in lye. It is gelatinous in texture after being rehydrated for days prior to eating.” It is then either boiled or baked and is usually served around Christmastime. I had it a couple of times, and could not get past the gelatinous texture. I had to have some bread to force it down. Not because of the taste, but the consistency. To be fair, I also revile the gelatin that forms in the jars of refrigerated gefilte fish, which my parents loved. Yet I like gelatin pudding. Go figure.

 

There are a couple of easy ones, the foremost being that Scottish mainstay Haggis.  And what exactly is Haggis? It is sheep’s lungs, liver, and heart, mixed with beef, and encased in a sheep’s stomach, and then cooked. It is one of the rare foods that is actually illegal to import to the United States, though it’s fine to make it on your own. From what I understand, it is a bit hard and time consuming to make (have you ever tried cutting up a heart? They are tough, man). I have had haggis a couple of times – I believe it was a North American abbreviated version – and it wasn’t too bad; I actually liked it, but it was a tough chew if I remember correctly. I have eaten beef heart before (not fond of it because, again, of its tough texture), and I love liver; lungs are something for which I am not familiar.

No recipe for this one: in parts of Asia, it is common to eat household pets like dogs and cats. Cats are more for “medicinal” reasons, but dogs are regularly served. In fact, just in August of 2020, Kim Jong-un of Korea ordered citizens to hand over their pet dogs to be used for food. Obviously, there is no PETA in that country. When I was a teen, there was a local Asian take-out restaurant (86 Street and 21 Avenue, in Brooklyn) that was shut down for selling “pet meat.” They used strays for beef substitutes to unknowing patrons, in order to save money, a theme right out of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (“What I call enterprise / Popping pussies in pies / Wouldn’t do in my shop / Just the thought of it’s enough to make you sick / And I’m telling you them pussy cats is quick”). To be honest, I never ate from there.

 

Southwestern North America has its own variety of food that makes people from elsewhere wince, namely prairie oysters (also known as Rocky Mountain oysters). For those who do not know, these are the castrated testicles of bulls. They were ordinary around a cow pie fire in the old West while moving herds, but it’s less common now, but still considered a delicacy in certain parts of the country. In fact there is even a recipe collection by Ljubomir Erovic called The Testicle Cookbook. Apparently there are lots of different ways to cook them if you have the – er – balls. Never had them but I may if they are the deep-fried versions.

There are plenty of other what some may consider strange foods from around the world, including mealy worms, chocolate covered ants and grasshoppers, deep fried butterfly wings and shark fin soup. I have never tried any of these, but my uncle once brought my brother and I a can of the chocolate covered bugs (both kinds) when we were tykes. We opened the cans, but we couldn’t bring ourselves to eat them.

 

What cultural foods that others are turned off by that you love? Perhaps the dreaded Canadian-invented pineapple pizza? For me, for example, I love pizza Napoli (with anchovy). Feel free to add your own in the blog comments.