[Sca-cooks] OOP? Raw meat...

[Elaine Koogler]

I did eat Steak Tartare once...in Hungary, oddly enough.  We went to the 
restaurant in our hotel...it was a spa dating from the turn of the 
century located on the Pest side of the river, and the restaurant served 
traditional Magyar foods to the music of a traditional musical group.  
It was very tasty, but, in light of all of the scares back here, a 
little unnerving.  The good news is that I suffered no after effects!

Kiri

Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius wrote:

> Hullo, the list!
>
> I can see how magnificent my timing is, with all the mad cow 
> discussion, but I happened to be reading Hammett's "The Thin Man", and 
> there was a reference in it that got me thinking...
>
> For those who've never read this or seen the movie, it's about a 
> wealthy married couple, the male half of which has retired from his 
> job as an agency detective (something like a Pinkerton agent, I 
> guess), to manage his wife's railroad and mining interests. He's more 
> or less forced by circumstances to investigate several murders, and 
> also seems intent on drinking himself to death along the way, but then 
> this was published the year Prohibition ended, so maybe that's not so 
> surprising.
>
> Anyway, at one point Nick and Nora Charles are a bit peckish late at 
> night when their hotel kitchen is closed, and telephone an all-night 
> delicatessen for sandwiches and coffee. Nora orders a chopped raw beef 
> sandwich with lots of onion. (I _think_ the line appears in the movie, 
> too.)
>
> Now, for those of us who have never eaten steak tartare, and who have 
> nightmares about sashimi and erroneously refer to it as sushi, this 
> might come as a bit of a shock, but perhaps to food-types like us, 
> more especially because, as far as I know, there's not a huge 
> well-known tradition of eating raw meat, except for things like... 
> let's see... you got yer steak tartare, you got carpaccio (invented by 
> an American in Europe in the 20th century), you've got Korean and 
> Japanese versions of beef sashimi, raw kibbe (lamb) in places like 
> Lebanon, various tales of hunters eating deer and boar livers raw, in 
> thin slices on bread, and one raw beef recipe that seems pretty close 
> to steak tartare, but named differently, on the menu of Luchow's 
> German restaurant in 1950's New York. I think Ethiopians have been 
> known to eat raw beef.
>
> As far as I know, that's pretty much it, but the Raw Beef Lucullus at 
> Luchow's (pronounced "LOO-khov's", BTW) is probably the closest to the 
> tradition of Nora Charles' 1933 raw beef sandwich. And if Hammett is 
> to be believed, this is something you could get at a New York City 
> deli (back when delicatessens were primarily German gourmet-food 
> shops, I suspect) at 3AM. I've also heard of people (admittedly, 
> mostly of German ancestry) speaking of eating raw, chopped meat (often 
> pork, too!).
>
> So the question now becomes, how much of a tradition in the Western 
> World, outside of the wealthy  eating Steak Tartare at The Four 
> Seasons or some such, existed? Does anybody remember a parent or 
> grandparent, possibly one who would sneer at fancy presentations with 
> egg yolks and capers, grossing out the kids by eating raw meat on rye 
> with maybe a few pickles?
>
> I'm just wondering if perhaps this kind of thing was more widespread 
> fifty years ago than we'd like to believe now, or have been told. 
> Comments? Info?
>
> Adamantius
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