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Roast Fido, Ikizukuri, and other offbeat delights

Opor ayam; although my wife’s version was on the bone. (Image by Tresia Hoban from Pixabay)

25 Oct 2024

In this piece, the author continues an exploration of food choices and methods of preparation in a life lived abroad. What was consumed in order to serve his country’s national interest; and is it true we can really judge whether one man’s meat really is another man’s poison.

In a previous article on the terror of the toxic fugu fish, I promised that in my next article I would explore the Japanese lunch box, the way previously foreign foods worked their way into the Japanese diet, the mysteries of “ikizukuri” cuisine, and the challenges of being a judge at sake tastings. Further, we would explore what must never be served to one’s employees and colleagues at a thank you dinner.

But first, the recent dog-eat-dog political environment in America demands a digression to the culinary furore that has come about from Donald Trump’s slanderous charges about the diet of Haitian immigrants. In his vilification of immigration into the US, beyond Trump’s general charge that migrants are mental patients, murderers, thieves, and drug dealers, Haitian immigrants legally living in Springfield, Ohio, were accused of absconding with the town’s puppies and kittens to serve as ingredients for Haitian stew pots.

Inevitably, because this has become one more example of Donald Trump’s poisonous bloviating, we need to make it clear that there is zero truth to the charges.

This is the first time I can remember that fraudulent culinary information has been a part of a presidential campaign. More usually, culinary issues in election campaigns were anodyne slogans like Herbert Hoover’s in 1928, saying “A chicken in every pot.” (In 1992, President George HW Bush, during his unsuccessful run for reelection, had been ridiculed for his astonishment over supermarket check-out scanners and his ignorance of the costs of common grocery items, but Bush never derided any food items. Earlier, Bush had touted a love for the dubiously nutritional value of deep-fried pork rinds, just as Ronald Reagan was well known for his love of jelly beans.)

While puppies and kitties are not being consumed in Springfield, Akron or Middletown (JD Vance’s hometown), there are some places on the planet, mostly in East and Southeast Asia — where canine flesh has traditionally been consumed as part of the cuisine. In our first world societies, we tend, smugly, to feel queasy or worse over the idea of consuming what we see as four-legged members of our households. We give them names, and we feed them food formulated for their metabolic needs. They get grooming services and even designer clothing.

Pointing out the inconsistencies in such Western ideas, a Japanese acquaintance once said to me, during one of the bilateral contretemps over Japanese whaling, that foreigners were logically and intellectually inconsistent about animals. His point was that we protested against the inhumanity of whaling, yet almost all of us, save for vegans or vegetarians or those with religious reasons, had few qualms about consuming the flesh of cows, chickens, venison, sheep, seafood, ducks, or goats and pigs. (One curious footnote in the history of commercial whaling for protein is that it got a boost after World War 2 by Allied occupation authorities who became concerned about the scarcity of protein for the Japanese population, and who saw whale meat as a key supplement.)

Thus something like the philosophical division regarding various land animals as food also applies to cetaceans. Instead of seeing them as giant containers of protein, Westerners anthropomorphise them because of their behaviour and intelligence. When they are on display in Sea World, we give them names. We create films, television documentaries, and books about their wondrous lives — and, crucially, about the threats to their survival as species.

This larger question thus is more conflicted regarding dogs and cats. How in the world can we countenance consuming Fido, Bruno, Fifi, Jock, Mr Mistoffelees, or Jellylorum?

But once, many years ago in the Batak people’s region of North Sumatra, I was invited to a traditional feast, the centrepiece of which was a roast dog prepared like a sheep on a spit. While the Batak people are divided between adherents of Islam and Lutheranism, there is also a substrata of traditional beliefs and customs that predate the introduction of either of those faiths.

As a junior diplomat, I had been schooled in the understanding that one should be polite to one’s hosts and sample any cuisine offered at official functions — no matter how unusual it might seem. Enjoy the experience, or learn from it. At the very least, one should at least look like one was enjoying such delicacies.

Reportedly, among the Bataks, there was a high value placed on a canine dinner feast. Such a meal had an even higher value — and a sweeter taste — if the pooch had dark fur, and a still higher value if it had been obtained stealthily.

I have no idea what was the breed of choice, but I can still remember it resembled very tough, very chewy venison, with a distinctly gamey taste, despite having been smothered in a sauce laced with generous quantities of hot chillies. Further north, there was also a goat curry dish that was a speciality of the province of Aceh. That dish had been liberally seasoned with a certain five-fingered leaf — a very different experience to the other banquet.

Ah, the things one does for national honour.

It should be noted that North Sumatra is not unique in terms of roast canines. Historically, such meat has been the fourth most consumed meat in Korea, but its sale will soon become illegal. Meanwhile, increasing numbers of Koreans have done a volte-face and warmed, instead, to the idea of dogs as adored and loved pets.

As The New York Times noted the other day: “Not long ago, South Korea often made global headlines — and raised the ire of animal rights groups — for its tradition of breeding dogs for meat. But in recent years, people here have gravitated toward pets, especially dogs. They are looking for companionship at a time when more South Koreans are choosing to stay single, childless or both. More than two-fifths of all households in the nation now consist of only one person. The pandemic also did much to bring pets into homes, as people cooped up indoors adopted dogs…”

And as for Japan, as anybody who has seen the original true film “Hachiko”, or has encountered a shiba inu or akita puppy, knows dogs are lavished with attention, and even designer clothing and carriages, in Japan. An academic friend in Tokyo has been spending time documenting the astonishing outfits made for pet dogs and baby carriages retrofitted to carry them around the city. My suspicion is that his field research is for a book about what has, heretofore, been a thoroughly understudied topic.

Shiba inu puppy. (Image by Thorsten Schulze from Pixabay)

Meanwhile, for centuries, cats have been revered in Japan as symbols of good luck, despite their mysterious ways. Small figurines of the “o-maneki-neko”, the welcoming cat, are frequently placed at the front of shops and restaurants in the hope the little statue’s moving paw will entice customers to enter. And, of course, the whole world is familiar with the “Hello Kitty” phenomenon.

The culinary world in Japan naturally was rather different from that of Sumatra. After we moved there, we became fans of the mind-boggling range of Japanese dishes and we often ate one of the typical Japanese office worker’s lunches in one of the small restaurants near our office. In every city, there are thousands of small restaurants in arcades, on shopping streets and the ground floors of office blocks, or tucked away in quiet back alleys.

It was easy to find global fast food favourites, or Indian food, Italian dishes, Chinese specialities, and haute cuisine offerings. But a tempura lunch set, an eel or pork loin and rice bowl, steaming servings of udon, soba, or ramen noodles, grilled fish, sushi, sashimi platters, or a restaurant’s “teishoku” offering — the daily special — were available everywhere that there were restaurants.

Previously foreign foods have, over the centuries, also become locally reimagined versions of foreign dishes. For example, ramen, of course, in its many taste versions, originally came from China, and in its instant version has become nearly universal. Sometimes there has been a curious mix and match of concepts such as the curry and noodle dishes in the old castle town of Hirosaki.

Meanwhile, the ubiquitous tempura is a Japanese interpretation of early Portuguese explorers’ and traders’ meals of breaded, fried pieces of meat, vegetables and seafood. Tempura has now become a familiar feature of the Japanese culinary landscape.

That “teishoku” daily special, meaning a “set meal” with no substitutions permitted, might be prepared from seasonally available items, and offered at a price less costly than other lunchtime offerings. In ordering it, perhaps you might begin thinking of Jerry Seinfeld’s fabled “soup nazi”, but the Japanese restaurant server would proffer your teishoku meal with a hint of a smile and modest bow of respect to the customer, instead of a snarl.

At a more refined level, the traditional Japanese lunch box would contain a selection of differently and elegantly prepared items — some broiled, grilled, baked, raw, pickled, and so forth, and all set out artistically in small divided compartments on a rectangular tray. Sometimes it would be served with a few extra side dishes as well.

Kaiseki, left. (Image by huey3800 from Pixabay). Japanese lunch box, right. (Image by 宏和東涌 from Pixabay)

On long distance trains, a version of this, the bento box, with local specialities, would be sold in a container that sits easily on the fold-down tray of the seat in front of the diner. At old-style formal picnics, the kind of events that would have been described in the early novel, The Tale of Genji, or depicted in paintings or woodblock prints, the food would come in three stacked dishes fitting one atop the other, with a handle that held them together.

A more seriously refined version of food service would be the “kaiseki ryori” meal at a formal banquet. It would feature a variety of small courses served in sequence. Each would be on a small dish or plate and designed as treats for the eyes and taste buds, both.

For most meals, the diner would also get a small lacquer bowl of miso soup. This savoury liquid is made from fermented soya bean paste, pieces of nori (from sheets of seaweed), cubes of tofu, diced spring onion, and, sometimes, mushrooms.

Miso soup is consumed by picking up the bowl and drinking from it directly — no spoons needed. If one is eating ramen, soba, or udon noodles, a diner sucks the noodles from bowl to mouth, aided by chopsticks. Noisy slurping demonstrates satisfaction with the food.“Oishii desu yo” — “It’s really tasty!”

Of course one has to have something to drink with one’s food. In almost every Japanese dining spot, other than in western fast food chain outlets, a server immediately places a handleless cup of steaming green tea in front of the diner, along with an oshibori, that steaming, moist hand towel sealed in thin plastic.

Diners might also order a beer, perhaps a local brand like Suntory, Sapporo, or Yebisu, or maybe a preferred foreign brand. In the evening, limits on beverages become looser. Office colleagues often go out for dinner together and have a drink or two or three. Such conviviality is expected, and during such communal meals and drinks employees can feel comfortable telling awkward, even embarrassing, truths about the office to their superiors — without recriminations at the office the next day.

Sometimes, a group may go on to a more exclusive “bottle keep” bar after dinner where a member has placed a bottle of their favourite spirits, like a preferred single malt scotch, with the club operators. One’s name is noted to reserve the bottle for your solo use. The member settles up monthly for the service charges, mixers, and nibbles consumed at that club — even though the hardtack has been supplied by the consumer.

In the summer, a diner might get a chilled glass of mugi cha, a roasted barley grain tea, instead of the usual green tea. Or one might enjoy a chilled tokkuri of sake. The tokkuri is a smallish pitcher without a handle, but with indentations near the top of it to make it easier to hold and pour — somewhat like that ubiquitous soya sauce bottle seen around the world.

Alternatively, non-alcoholic beverage consumers might choose a serving of “calpis”, a health drink with a slightly astringent taste. Years ago, as their sales apparently slowed in winter, the makers apparently hit upon marketing it as a winter beverage as well, and television commercials began flogging “hot calpis”.

My favourite commercial featured a stunningly beautiful young woman seated at the counter of a rustic tavern with frost on the windows so that you would know it was winter. She is clearly waiting for a date, her boyfriend, or her partner — but he seems to have forgotten about their appointment. And so she waits. The world-weary bartender pours steaming hot calpis for her, into the kind of delicate cup reserved for drinking good sake. The only words during the entire commercial come from a seductive voiceover that says: “hot-to calpis”. That commercial should have carried an “R” rating. She sips, then smiles ever so slightly, things are better now.

Speaking further about sake, it is made from just four ingredients: water, rice, “koji” mould, and yeast. But the differences between the different brands arise from the marginally different ways the rice is fermented, or in the strains of rice or the water used to brew it.

After years of drinking it warmed, I was finally, firmly instructed by a Japanese colleague that good sake should only be quaffed cold. (In Japan, there are always rules.) If heated, the flavourings of cheaper brands are more volatile, but they are never as satisfying as a sip of a really fine label, served chilled.

Sake makers across the country are eager to strut their stuff and so there are sake tastings and competitions — just as with fine wines or whiskeys. A colleague and I were once invited to serve as jurors at a blind tasting of a dozen sake brands to judge which was the best, the most delicate, the deepest in flavour, and so forth. We confronted an array of tasting stations on a raised platform, in front of a large, enthusiastic crowd of sake connoisseurs and sake brewers — and the media. We were given our judging sheets, and big bows labelled “official judge” were affixed to our suit coats.

But there was one missing detail. There was no spittoon for emptying one’s mouth after tasting a particular sake. And so, soon enough, we both were increasingly inebriated. We decided we simply must taste the offerings a second, and then a third time, just in case we had missed subtleties in flavour, bouquet, taste overtones, and alcohol content in the competing brews.

We had a great time as our audience cheered us on, and by the time it was over, we had tasted every offering multiple times, and I was ready to award every brewery with a five-star, first-in-its-class rating. At the end of the tasting, we received applause and an obligatory gift of yet more sake for our efforts, even if, to be honest, we couldn’t distinguish any one from all the others. As I recall, we encouraged everyone there to enjoy them all.

Japan’s food culture has all manner of unwritten, unspoken rules, probably even more complex than other food cultures. As with the British, many Japanese will have a serving of “curry-rice” for lunch. But curry seems a particularly malleable concept in Japan.

For years, there was a popular, pre-made curry sauce mix, available countrywide, branded as “Curry Marche”. The television commercials for this flogged it as an authentic French-style curry — yes, really — but, in the commercials, the cast wore dirndls and danced to a jingle that sounded like it had escaped from the score of The Sound of Music. Yes, really, once again. But curry, or whatever it was, was only lunch, and never supper.

Early in our first assignment in Japan, as a thanks to my office staff for having made our arrival and then the start of working there nearly seamless, we invited our entire team to our home for supper. For this occasion, my wife had laboured all day to make an authentic Southeast Asian curry with all the necessary ingredients, from scratch, and with all the customary side dishes. We learned later that there had been some quietly expressed misgivings about how we had crossed that unwritten rule about curry never being a supper meal. Shortly after that, to host a group of influential Japanese women, my wife had prepared opor ayam, a famous Indonesian chicken dish that similarly takes hours to make properly, but looks a bit like — uh oh — curry. Lightning struck twice. Curry (or something that looks even a bit like curry) for a formal dinner? Really? We learned, slowly.

Opor ayam; although my wife’s version was on the bone. (Image by Tresia Hoban from Pixabay)

And yet, there are other ways in which the Japanese gastronome has dishes that can terrorise the unwary. Ikizukuri cuisine is where a still living fish is extremely carefully carved so that the flesh is separated from the creature (and then placed back on to it) and the diner plucks up the slices while the fish is still giving its last gasps.

There is also a menu item where five large, living prawns are placed in a wooden tub with about 5cm of salty water in it. The diner picks up a prawn, pulls its flesh from its exoskeleton, and dips it into one of the sauces on offer, before eating it.

I always had the delusion with such a meal that the prawns knew something dangerous was taking place. It always seemed they were trying to push the weakest among them away from the herd — and into the hands of a diner, perhaps thinking the diner might become surfeit before reaching for that last swimming prawn.

Cruel? Well, maybe it is. But many people throughout the West love raw oysters and clams (unless they are adherents of kashrut, the biblical dietary laws) on the half shell. And those creatures are alive when they go down our gullets. And then there is the boiling of live lobsters and crabs for a seafood buffet. And while we’re at it, what about veal? So, who is the more humane with their dining customs?

Next time around, we shall explore the ways and mysteries of that hallowed South African institution, the braai, and what it means for people of every background. How it draws people together; and how I came to be introduced to it and what that meant to me. The old adage is, per Napoleon, that an army marches on its stomach. But it seems to me that this is even truer: that a nation, a culture, expresses itself and shows others how it sees itself through its food choices and traditions.

Bon appetit, everyone, but do remain vigilant. As French culinary chronicler Anthelme Brillat-Savarin wrote almost two hundred years ago: “Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are.” DM

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