[Sca-cooks] meat "substitutes"

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Barbara Nostrand wrote:


> As for calling them vegiburgers instead of "grilled texturized
> vegetable protein sandwiches" GTVPS's for short, what is so
> sacred about the word "hamburger" which seems little more than
> a misappropriation of the name of German city.


Well, nothing, except for the fact that "Hamburger", an adjective
denoting [alleged] geographical origin, is used as the short form of
"Hamburger braten" or "Hamburger steak", even in America as recently as
the 1930's. It may actually come from Hamburg, in its earlier,
pounded-cutlet-and-fat form.

  Personally,
> I ask for "fishburgers" on a regular basis and nobody bats
> an eye at the description. All other names for fishburgers
> such as "fishwiches" are generally trademarks of some fast
> food outlet. Similarly, vegiburgers are listed as such lots
> of places. What else should folks call them? GTVPS's?


Vegetable patties?

Again, I think the point that some people are trying to make is that our
ability to create such foods as TVP/vegetable patties should not be used
to feed some perception that vegetables are somehow less valid a food
than meat, to the extent that vegetable products have to be described in
meat terms. Carpaccio, for example, being thin slices of raw beef
(sometimes other stuff such as tuna), traditionally served with olive
oil, capers, coarse salt, and perhaps shavings of Parmaggiano cheese, is
not a beef salad, is it? Even though all you need to do is substitute
greens for the beef to get a perfectly recognizable salad. It's just
kind of silly, is all, and perhaps just a bit... I don't know if
dishonest is the right word... self-deluding?

Now, another consideration is that Buddhism seems to recognize
omnivorism as a more-or-less appropriate diet for people, while still
stipulating that monks and other strict Buddhists abstain from meat.
(Although, interestingly, there seems to be little or no problem with
classifying things like meat stock, dried scallops and oysters, sea
cucumber, etc., as non-meat foods.) Anyway, there appears to be a pretty
well-established tradition of using various vegetable products to "fake"
certain meats, presumably to help acknowledge the idea of Man's role in
the food chain/web and in the universe.

  Now, why the idea of jai/Buddhist Delight wrapped up in bean curd
sheets bothers me so much less than does Tofurkey. It may simply be the
snob in me that says that if you don't have all this pursuit of realism,
you have more time to pursue quality. For example, as a dish qua dish,
I'd pit my bean curd duck, which is more or less vegetarian (I sneak
oyster sauce into the sauce, occasionally) against Tofurkey any day, for
sheer quality. But perhaps pure quality isn't all that Tofurkey is aimed
at: serving different needs, they can't easily be compared.


Adamantius
--
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com

"It was so blatant that Roger threw at him.  Clemens gets away with
things that get other people thrown out of games.  As long as they
let him get away with it, it's going  to continue." -- Joe Torre, 9/98