[Sca-cooks] School Food OOP

[Phil Troy/ G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach SableSwanHerald at aol.com:
>Likewise, there was once a disaster in the school kitchen which necessitated
>the substitution of some suspicious-looking slices of a "mystery meat roll".
>Sounds like a recipe for disaster, right?  They were *delicious*.  Never
>repeated afterwards while I was there (this was in Alaska).  Once some of us
>were brave enough to try them, we were again doing deals for the french fries
>or overdone creamed corn or whatever the side dishes were in exchange for the
>meat rolls.

I'm put in mind of one of the mystery meats that is a traditional
component of the Vietnamese banh mi. (There's another name; I forget
what it is.) It's a throwback to French colonialism, but apparently
many, many people in Vietnamese cities, and in Vietnamese communities
in, say, America, find it essential to take a break at midday from
whatever it is they do, and have iced coffee (classically perked
through a drip filter directly into a lower compartment containing
sweetened, condensed milk, and ice), and a mystery meat sandwich. The
sandwich traditionally seems to consist of a split French crusty roll
(acknowledged by many of European ancestry to be as good as, or
better than, French equivalent rolls; furtively-whispered rumors of
some rice flour in the dough abound) spread on one side with mayo,
some kind of pork liver pate on the other, slices of a mysterious
head-cheesy mystery meat, and an equally mysterious, whitish,
homogeneous, fine-textured pork roll. This is topped with shredded,
pickled carrot and/or pickled white radish, cucumber shreds, lots of
cilantro leaves, and optional shredded hot chile pepper.

Mystery meat or not, I'm trying to find a major flaw in this overall
plan... I recall now that I've actually seen these meats, frozen and
labelled in what seemed to be Vietnamese or some other SE Asian
language, in Asian grocery stores, and never knew, or even wondered,
what they were for. There are supposedly meatless versions, but I'm
not sure what's in them, if not simply mayo and the shredded
vegetables and cilantro leaves. I've also heard descriptions of other
mysterious meat combinations.

There's a chapter in John Thorne's "Pot On The Fire" devoted to the
mysterious banh mi, but I have no idea if this is the sort of thing
that would turn up in a Vietnamese cookbook or on a restaurant menu.
There does seem to be a certain Web presence for info, though.

Adamantius