[Sca-cooks] A curious question about the rotted meat mythos

Kimberly Vallance tibbles74 at gmail.com
Wed Mar 12 23:12:53 PDT 2008


 Actually this is rather uncalled for and rather mean.
http://icecook.blogspot.com/2006/01/how-to-prepare-hakarl-rotten-or-cured_17.htmlis
a link from a blog from someone in Iceland by the way her other site
http://www.isholf.is/gullis/jo/Seafood.htm has some recipes for other
Icelandic foods. She even uses the term rotten.  Most research that I have
been able to do thus far talk about the gravel method.

I didn't say run it will kill you. I was asking if this sort of thing could
be where some get the medieval folks ate rotten food. I try most things at
least once before crossing them off the list of what I will eat. Though I
may go ewww that is gross I still try it. I am not fond of feta unless it is
what my Greek friends get, I don't like bree or blue cheese *blue cheese
being in the top ten of ok that is just nasty* But because of how I have
been able to find it described *the process at least* I was curious if this
sort of food helps to continue the myth.

As a child we processed a lot of our own meat and I eat things that my
husband describes as just not right. It is not xenophobic superiority it is
just out of his norm. Not everyone grew up on fresh cows milk and venison,
squid, lots of different fish and many multicultural foods. To my Estonian
friend fried pork skins are just gross and not right, but to me they are
yummy, yet some of her dishes made me shiver. Bottled Herring in some kind
of sauce.

The only thing that I strike straight off my list of ok have to try it once
is bugs. Though my uncle is rather fond of a few.  As someone who grew up in
a multicultural family with dishes ranging from American to Vietnamese and
everywhere in between, I find your reply to be in poor taste. I am not
knocking them for having this dish, but for me it is unusual and like I said
I was wondering if this helped to permeate the myth about the rotted food of
the past and heavy spices. Corned Beef is done in a brine, which I have done
as well as smoking and drying. Hell technically fish sauce is rotted in the
process and in Andrew Zimmerman's defense he likes a type that cant be sold
here in the states and one my Uncle likes though he can not get it either.
Though how they make it was rather fascinating. Cat Hai was the name.

And one last site http://www.food-info.net/uk/qa/qa-fp172.htm


Anne
<snip>

>
>
> It's generally described by most non-Icelandic authorities (at least
> the ones not concerned with the question of rottenness) as resembling
> ripe Brie or Camembert. Maybe it's that we don't have enough of the
> right vocabulary in English to express differences between beneficial
> aging, intentional fermentation, and downright putridness, but I do
> think there's a tendency toward this sort of xenophobic superiority
> that leads us to describe things as rotten with no attempt to
> distinguish, say, haakarl or khli from something that's genuinely
> putrid garbage, while pretending [or experiencing genuine] ignorance
> of the bacterial action in foods like corned beef or salami. Whoa,
> watch out folks, that corned beef's fermented! Stand back! It could
> explode in a shower of disease-bearing maggots at any moment!
>
> Adamantius
>
>
>
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