Alec may have the pie gene, but Joffre definitely got the "acquired taste" gene from both sides of the family. To his father's consternation, Joffre is hard-pressed to finish an ice cream cone before it melts in a puddle at his feet, but he scarfs down tofu, spinach, sushi, avocado, olives, boiled eggs, eggplant, shrimp, squid, onions, raw peas and beans, and a host of other foods that would make your average preschool McDonald's junkie squirm.
Even I was taken aback a couple of weeks ago when we had company over one afternoon, and Joffre asked for sushi. I said no, that he has to ask in the morning if he wants me to make sushi, and he replied, "then I can have some blue cheese?" Sure - go for it. I cut some blue cheese up and put in on a plate, and he started scarfing it down. Ever the gracious host, he offered some to his friend Marcus, who looked absolutely stricken at the prospect.
But the real kicker was last week when I made osso buco. I cut up some of the meat, and ladled it and vegetables with sauce over some rice on Joffre's plate and called him to the table. He looked at it, shrugged, and walked away. So I said in my most dramatic voice, "Joffre! Come look at what's on my plate! It's amazing, you won't believe it!!" He came running. I showed him the shank chop, complete with big ring of bone in the middle. I handed him my fork and got him to tap the bone. "It's a bone!" I said. Then I took the fork and scooped some marrow out of the bone:
J: "What that?"
M: "It's called 'marrow.' It grows inside bones."
J: "It for eating?"
M: "Definitely!"
J: "I try it."
He ate all the marrow out of three bones, and asked for more. When I said there was no more, he whined and tried to convince me I could make some more right then.
I've never been so proud!
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4 comments:
Hee!
(And marrow - ew. I guess my tastes aren't as cultivated as Joffre's... but I'm mightily impressed that you were making osso buco, how very restaurant-chef-like!)
Oh, man, you don't know what you're missing! We went to a military museum in Sterling last year, and they had a 19th century officer's mess kit on display. It included a marrow spoon. http://www.silvercollection.it/pagina82.html I was so jealous. Marrow's goooooood!
A favourite restaurant in Kaohsiung (which mom and dad got to eat at when they went to visit me) was "New Freedom Goat." Goat restaurants are very thick on the ground in southern Taiwan, and they all offer the same standard dishes: various goat parts either boiled in delicious "Dang-Gui" broth, or fried. After sampling the fare at many locations I found one that I especially enjoyed, both for the quality of the food and the friendliness of the proprietors.
One of the best items was "Dang-Gui Big Bone Soup." Two knuckles were served in the broth, along with dipping sauce. There was plenty of meat on (and almost falling off) the bone, and the tendon and cartilage in the joint itself was softened to just the right texture for chewing. And of course, the large leg bone held plenty of marrow. Chopsticks are almost ideal for removing marrow from bone, but the preferred tool is a drinking straw. The first time this was suggested to me I thought it was a joke (along the lines of "foreigners can't use chopsticks" or perhaps "let's see what silly things we can get the foreigner to do"), but I later saw other patrons using this method. And I can assure you that you've never truly enjoyed marrow until you've slurped it out of a goat's leg bone through a straw.
The menu (of this and of all the other restaurants I ate at during my first months in Taiwan) offered practice for me to use my dictionary of Chinese characters and learn new vocabulary. Having so thoroughly enjoyed the marrow in the big bone soup (which I first ordered before I knew any Chinese at all; I just pointed dumbly at the largest pieces of meat that they had), I was very pleased when I discovered that one could order fried marrow as its own dish. I rehearsed the pronunciation, and asked for it on my next trip. The owner's wife (a mail-order bride from the mainland) asked "sesame oil or onion explosion?" without batting an eye. I went for the sesame oil.
When the owner came out from the back, he was much more surprised than his wife. He explained that the dish was not really for regular consumption; it's normally eaten more for its medicinal properties. And by his gestures, I understand that it is not taken from the large leg bones, but from the spine.
As for the dish itself, I enjoyed it but I doubt I'll ever order it again. Spinal chord actually does taste more like regular marrow than you'd expect. The first bites were pretty much what I'd hoped for. But you can have too much of a good thing. And this was way too much bone marrow in one sitting for anyone to handle.
After learning of my adventurous palate, the owner tried some other dishes on me. The goat tripe was tasteless both fried and in soup, but I drew the line at the "Fried Goat Immortal Fruit."
It struck me as odd that these restaurants serve only certain parts of the goat, leaving out other obvious ones. In addition to regular meat, you can only get knuckles, ribs, tripe, marrow, and testacles. What about liver, kidneys, lung, intestines, and my favourites (at least for pork and beef) the heart and tongue? I meant to ask the owner about this, but never got around to it. Kailing's dad also loves these goat places, so I'm sure he'll have an explanation.
As soon as I read the post about Joffre and the marrow I thought of Steven, as I remember watching him suck marrow out of bones with great gusto and satisfaction at some point in his young life. So I am very pleased that he has weighed in on the subject. On a more serious note, we have been extremely cautious the lest few years about eating any bone marrow from our wild game. As a matter of fact we de-bone the dear meat completely and do not cook any of the bones with it. I am not sure if there is any scientific substance to this cautionalry practice or not, but trhe whole idea is too avoid parts of the animal that could harbour any chronic wasting (mad cow) type pathogens.
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