[Sca-cooks] Nasty Foods...

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Craig Jones. wrote:
> ""(So, what was the worst SCA dish y'all have ever come across at a
> feast?)
>
> The worst dish I ever redacted (at a cooks guild night) was Tangut
> Lungs (ASFTQ).  Cubes of Boiled sheeps lung smothered in a very bitter
> green sauce composed of Leek juice, Ginger Juice, Pepper, Butter,
> Flour.
>
> I boiled the lung too long and use too much leek juice.  It reminded
> of chunks of liver flavoured marshmallow in a diesel-based sauce as
> bright as green M&M's.

Hmmm, liver-flavored sponges in anti-freeze. Yummers. But you seem to be
on the right track insofar as preventative and curative measures are
concerned. Yes, lungs are spongy, and there are some basic preparation
methods that other cuisines use to minimize the livery flavor and firm
them up. Whether or not the Mongols or Chinese of the period would have
used anything like these methods, I don't know (Lookit me, Ma, I'm
Vehling-ing!)

But, the theory of a biter sauce on a livery-tasting dish isn't really
unsound: for example, at one place I worked we used to sell grilled
calves' liver with a sweet-and-bitter sauce of cream, brunoise-cut
carrots, and angostura bitters. It really wasn't bad. The liver was
sweet with a touch of bitterness anyway, balanced by a bit more
bitterness from the grill-marks. Then the sauce had more or less the
same characteristics, but instead of these being viewed as deficiencies
to be corrected, you realized that the dish was _supposed_ to be sweet
and bitter, and it all became somehow pleasing to the palate. Especially
when the liver was not cremated.

> A poor redaction that was so bad that the nicest comment on the Guild
> Comment Sheet was simple - "Vile.".  I've been threatened with
> physical harm if I ever try the recipe again...

Harumph. Buell and/or Anderson mention that this dish is a
characteristic Uighur dish and still popular today. How bad could it be
if properly prepared? I'm not saying it's necessarily something I'd want
for every meal, but if it has survived this long and, as is implied, is
more or less unchanged, it must hold some redeeming value.

"[55] 'Tangut' Lungs

"Sheep's lung (one), leeks (six chin; take the juice), flour (two chin;
make into paste), butter (half a chin), black pepper (two liang), juice
of sprouting ginger (two ho).

"[For] ingredients use salt and adjust flavors evenly. Submerge the
lungs in water and cook. When done baste with the juice and eat."

Do you want to give us your redaction? A couple of points occur to me
right off the bat.

European cooks usually beat the air out of lungs before cooking; they
hit them with a rolling pin or a mallet until most of the air is out and
the lungs are flat. They can then be parboiled, cooled (and sometimes
pressed to firm them up and expel the last of the air and any cooking
water), then trimmed, cut up, etc. Now the recipe doesn't specify how
these are to be cut up, but it seems evident that they eventually are.
Note that you start out with one lung and then  they are referred to in
the plural. Besides, it makes them easier to eat. I mention this only as
a possibility, though. Could there be some preparation Yuan cooks might
be familiar with, that the recipe doesn't mention? It might be worth
finding a modern version of this recipe.

For a powerful liver-type flavor, or rather, to limit or eliminate it,
it looks as if the cooking water might be salted as much as necessary
(hint, hint) to draw out various bitter fluids from the lungs, after
which that water is thrown away, and the cooked lungs sauced with the
ginger/leek sauce. I've had, for example, chicken or duck livers in
ginger and scallion oil sauce in modern Chinese restaurants; that has
always been pretty good. This doesn't sound too far off.

Did you use sprouting ginger or regular ginger root? That would make a
big difference. You might also have gotten some bitterness if you used
too much of the green leaves of the leeks. Is there any reason to assume
the leeks referred to are the (usually) big ones called for in European
(or even other Australian) recipes?

> Luckily it never made it to a feast.....
>
> Drakey,
>
> ps.  Those in Lochac..... I still have another 2 sheep lungs in the
> freezer..... run, run for your lives.....

I still say it doesn't sound any worse than most of the other lung
recipes I've seen. No worse than, say, a spleen recipe... and I'm not
really helping matters, am I? ;  )

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