03.11.09
Two Ingredients I Love Here
Every time I go to a new country, I like to visit the restaurants of course. Getting a sampling of the local flavor is the most important element for any chef to know he has really “experienced” a new culture. But the other place I love to go in different countries is the grocery store. Seeing what they consider to be “normal” fare says so much about the real cultural divide that exists between myself and people of other nations.
For example, I once found myself in a grocery store in China with a close friend - who spoke Chinese thankfully - and was helping me to navigate the aisles to find ingredients for a dinner I was cooking for them. The live turtles in the fish section were an interesting change from the norm, and the wall of different styles of rice baffled my mind that only knew of three or four different varieties (at the time). But it was in the meat section where the real differences abounded. Wrapped in packages for general consumption were chicken feet, duck tongues, and an odd package that looked like a long thread of Silly Putty.
This was beyond my ability to make a guess of an identification, so I held the package up to my friend and asked him what this possibly could be. He squinted at the writing on the label and in the best English he could muster said, “Pig’s… back?…”
 No, I couldn’t find a picture of a pig’s spinal cord - so just imagine them underneath these pigs’ backs. They’re in there… |
I looked again at the package, and I knew I was not looking at pork back meat, or “meat” as we Westerners think of it of any kind. So I asked, “The back? Really? Like here?” while pointing to where back muscles are located.
“No,” here he said, and ran his fingers up my spinal column.
“Spinal cord? This is a pig’s spinal cord?!?” I asked in disbelief.
“Yes, that’s it! How do you say that again?…”
Needless to say, that was the oddest food I think I have ever observed in any grocery store personally. But it was a great lesson in what different cultures can make use of in their home kitchens.
But now I find myself in England. The land where disparaging remarks about the national cuisine are manifold. Who would think there would be any unique offerings to the culinary world in the grocery stores here? Well, I am here too report that there are. Not counting some of the great overlooked foods of England - the awesome cheeses, the great butter, the wonderful jams, marmalades and chutneys - and some of the amazingly forgettable ones - black pudding, haggis, overly stewed tomatoes - there are two foods I have found in the grocery store here that I think are amazing additions to cookery, and ones I wish were more available back in the States.
 It comes pre-packaged! How great is that? |
1. Bacon Scraps. Sure, it’s not exactly hard to turn strips of bacon into smaller bacon pieces - this is why we have knives in our kitchens. But this is all about using the spare pieces that aren’t strips in the first place, and selling them to us at a reduced rate. So now I get the same effect for less money spent. I can render out bacon fat and make crispy bacon bits for a dish with no guilt.
Forget using only olive oil, I can make almost any dish with bacon flavor for cheap now! It’s almost like I’m wasting money by not throwing bacon in there!
 When I die, I think I want to be embalmed in bacon scraps… |
Though keep in mind that most bacon here in the UK is made from the back of the pig - not the belly. (They call our belly bacon “streaky bacon”.) And they are usually not smoked either. So while it may not be “bacon” as we think of it, it still has a fabulous flavor, and makes anything taste better. That is why a pig is indeed a wonderful, magical animal. 
 Don’t you just want to dip a spoon in it and eat it like pudding? |
2. Duck Fat. Again, it’s not like this is impossible to come by in the states, but to see it openly sold in the grocery store, that is not nearly as common in the US. You’d have to go to a specialty grocery store to have even a chance of finding it. I bought this tub photoed here at a small “in city” version of my local grocery store - on the same shelf as the butter, right next to the goose fat. To have it that readily accessible for common use is a beautiful thing.
Making savory pie crusts with duck fat instead of butter is how God would make a chicken pot pie. To make omelets with duck fat is to enjoy a breakfast that could make you achieve orgasm in two bites. And homemade duck confit is not only more economical, it’s just freaking wonderful as duck confit is arguably the greatest dish on the face of the earth.
So there is no question I enjoy going grocery shopping here. Back home I thought of it as a chore, but here I love the opportunity to buy other great ingredients. But how sad is it that I’m mainly excited about new types of fat I can get my hands on?…
Stumble it!
jamy said,
March 12, 2009 at 12:17 am
So, when I was in London back in December, I had occasion to do some cooking. I decided to try out your recipe for Brussels sprouts and I went looking for bacon at the Tescos. Now, I knew from ordering bacon in a restaurant that what the Brits call “bacon” isn’t what we Americans call bacon. (Or, apparently what Kiwis call bacon.) I ended up choosing the streaky bacon. It was close but not quite–which I gather is because it wasn’t smoked.
The recipe came out pretty well but I think I needed to boil the sprouts just a little longer. My companion was sufficiently impressed and ate them right up, even though he’s the kind that had always hated sprouts. Bacon, of whatever variety, does make everything better.
Chef Matt said,
March 12, 2009 at 7:52 am
jamy - Glad those worked out for you! (For those of you just reading these comments, you can find the recipe he’s talking about here.) Indeed, the hardest part of this recipe is boiling them for just the right amount of time. Too little, and they will be crunchy and raw in the middle, too much, and they will be soggy and taste like sulfur. Generally, they are harder to blanch when they are large, so my solution there is to blanch them for what I think it right - you just start to get that sulfur smell off the water - and then take large ones out and quarter them instead of halve them. The result is you can cook them through better.
But isn’t it amazing how this recipe makes people who think they hate Brussels sprouts gobble them down? I give credit to the bacon for sure, but the fact is, when cooked right, sprouts really aren’t that bad at all!
Barzelay said,
March 13, 2009 at 5:39 pm
Hi Matt, Jeanette and I spent a long vacation in Italy and Greece a few months back, after we took the bar exam. Those bacon scraps were also all over the supermarkets in Italy, albeit not called bacon scraps. The grocery stores were all like tiny versions of Super Wal-Mart–they all sold clothing, electronics, etc. in addition to food.
We also hit up some farmers’ markets, notably in Bologna. I began feeling the produce, as one might in the U.S., and the vendors got PISSED. Apparently, in Italy, one does not touch the produce until one has purchased it. Even the produce sections of many grocery stores had a person working there who would grab everything and bag it for you. Weird. At the farmers’ market, it took me three or four times of being scowled at or worse before I finally figured out what was causing it and stopped touching anything.
In Athens we went to a butcher’s market. There were maybe 25 stalls in it, each one a different butcher, with various goats and lambs hanging in every window (along with a few chickens, primals of beef, and various cuts of pork). It smelled the way a butcher’s shop ought to, and the bloody concrete-floors got frequent hosings throughout the day. In front of each stall was a big butcher’s block and wizened, hairy Greek man wielding a gigantic scimitar-like knife that he’d use to cut the goats and lambs to order. These knives were seriously huge, like 18″ or more. They got a kick out of the rare Americans who weren’t too squeamish to enjoy the sights of their market.
Peggy Finarelli said,
March 14, 2009 at 1:47 pm
You can get these bacon bits at the Mennonite Market in Bedford, PA. In fact, when we went shopping there with some of our British friends, that’s exactly what they bought!
Eize said,
March 16, 2009 at 1:10 am
This reminded me of the time I visited my sister in Virginia. She took us grocery shopping one day, and I was surprised to find the stuff I saw as regular Filipino kitchen supplies in the Exotic section.
Me: “OMG, the sampalok (tamarind) flavor is exotic!”