Offal conclusion to culinary adventure
By Emily Ford |
May 21, 2012, Monday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
I AM on my way to a corporate banquet in a posh hotel in Shanghai. I feel out of place at these things even in England, having recently discovered that I had been using my knife and fork the wrong way around for two decades.
At the same time, I am excited. I have heard that Chinese banquets are legendary occasions, safari parks for omnivores, a voyage to the outer limits of the edible. "Bring it," I think.
On the plane I decided I was going to leave all my dietary hang-ups behind in London. There is nothing worse than the fussy foreigner pushing rice around the plate while everyone else tucks in. "So boring," I think of these foreigners, with all the easy condescension of the untested. "Just eat the damn cow's brain."
Preparation
To prepare myself I read a book by an Englishwoman who trained as a chef in Sichuan Provine. Our problem with Chinese food, she explains, is that we don't understand texture. Gelatinous. Crunchy. Sinewy. These are friendly words, she says, harmless. A little light goes on in my mind.
"Texture!" I think. "That's it! I need to learn to appreciate texture." I am not, by nature, an adventurous eater. As a kid I was so fussy that my parents had to disguise everything of meat origin. At 13 I decided I was a vegetarian simply to take a stand against something, a position I maintained for six years until a trip to Rome, where Italian salami got the better of me.
I envisage my future self, a worldly Sinophile set free from her coddled culinary past, charging into new food frontiers like a chicken breast escaping its vacuum-packed polythene prison.
"What if all these years I've been eating in shades of grey?" I wonder. "What about the rest of the food rainbow?"
I admit that there is a slight tinge of competitiveness to my curiosity. I have found that as well as the expats who won't eat anything, there are those for whom dining exploits are a strange badge of honor. "What's the weirdest thing you've tried?" I hear one say to another. "Oh, you know, dog, turtle, the usual," he boasts. "Silkworms," his friend throws back, nonchalantly. "Yak testicles."
"Yeah, yeah," I think.
The first dish to arrive is drunken pigeon, arranged like a pigeon, complete with wings and tail. Its small head blinks up from the plate as if to say "hello." It is surprisingly delicious.
By the third course I am almost enjoying myself, having navigated sea cucumber and duck tongues with aplomb. Compared with formal dinners I have been to in England, I feel liberated. Burping is allowed. Slurping is positively encouraged. "You can spit the bones out on to the table," a colleague says warmly. There are none of the weird napkin manoeuvres that the British reserve for these occasions.
Then out of the corner of my eye I notice my dining companion spooning something carefully into my bowl. Criss-crossed like honeycomb, it quivers under a thin coating of red slime. A tide of nausea rises up through my stomach.
"What's that?" I ask, straining to sound casual. For all my good intentions, I know that my Achilles heel, my gastronomic bete noire, is the internal parts of an animal. The gooey. The offally. The entraily. The tubular.
"Oh that? Stewed pig intestine," he says. "In blood. It's a real delicacy."
I look around for a way out, but there is none. "Texture," I think. "Texture." I pick up the trembling purple mass with my chopsticks, and slowly begin to chew.
At the same time, I am excited. I have heard that Chinese banquets are legendary occasions, safari parks for omnivores, a voyage to the outer limits of the edible. "Bring it," I think.
On the plane I decided I was going to leave all my dietary hang-ups behind in London. There is nothing worse than the fussy foreigner pushing rice around the plate while everyone else tucks in. "So boring," I think of these foreigners, with all the easy condescension of the untested. "Just eat the damn cow's brain."
Preparation
To prepare myself I read a book by an Englishwoman who trained as a chef in Sichuan Provine. Our problem with Chinese food, she explains, is that we don't understand texture. Gelatinous. Crunchy. Sinewy. These are friendly words, she says, harmless. A little light goes on in my mind.
"Texture!" I think. "That's it! I need to learn to appreciate texture." I am not, by nature, an adventurous eater. As a kid I was so fussy that my parents had to disguise everything of meat origin. At 13 I decided I was a vegetarian simply to take a stand against something, a position I maintained for six years until a trip to Rome, where Italian salami got the better of me.
I envisage my future self, a worldly Sinophile set free from her coddled culinary past, charging into new food frontiers like a chicken breast escaping its vacuum-packed polythene prison.
"What if all these years I've been eating in shades of grey?" I wonder. "What about the rest of the food rainbow?"
I admit that there is a slight tinge of competitiveness to my curiosity. I have found that as well as the expats who won't eat anything, there are those for whom dining exploits are a strange badge of honor. "What's the weirdest thing you've tried?" I hear one say to another. "Oh, you know, dog, turtle, the usual," he boasts. "Silkworms," his friend throws back, nonchalantly. "Yak testicles."
"Yeah, yeah," I think.
The first dish to arrive is drunken pigeon, arranged like a pigeon, complete with wings and tail. Its small head blinks up from the plate as if to say "hello." It is surprisingly delicious.
By the third course I am almost enjoying myself, having navigated sea cucumber and duck tongues with aplomb. Compared with formal dinners I have been to in England, I feel liberated. Burping is allowed. Slurping is positively encouraged. "You can spit the bones out on to the table," a colleague says warmly. There are none of the weird napkin manoeuvres that the British reserve for these occasions.
Then out of the corner of my eye I notice my dining companion spooning something carefully into my bowl. Criss-crossed like honeycomb, it quivers under a thin coating of red slime. A tide of nausea rises up through my stomach.
"What's that?" I ask, straining to sound casual. For all my good intentions, I know that my Achilles heel, my gastronomic bete noire, is the internal parts of an animal. The gooey. The offally. The entraily. The tubular.
"Oh that? Stewed pig intestine," he says. "In blood. It's a real delicacy."
I look around for a way out, but there is none. "Texture," I think. "Texture." I pick up the trembling purple mass with my chopsticks, and slowly begin to chew.
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