Mash potato ice cream anyone? ANYONE?
“Do you want milk with your prawns?” (Julia Davis in Nighty Night)
All families have food traditions which are peculiar to their tribe, established by long-suffering and/or adventurous mothers and passed down the generations. The family are entirely accepting of them, but every so often an outsider will pierce the carapace of weirdness and expose the food-freakery that has been brewing.
I speak from experience. One of my first gastronomic experiences with my now-husband’s family was a plate of macaroni cheese served with a cylindrical roll of ham. On closer examination (while my mother-in-law-to-be was still the other side of the serving hatch) I realized the ham was wrapped around a banana. I screamed on the inside, quickly deconstructed it, and put the banana on my side plate. No-one else turned a hair. It was normal for them.
That same woman laments the disappearance of her favourite dish from the Townswomen’s Guild: beetroot in blackcurrant jelly. She doesn’t cook now that she’s a widow, and eats “mainly squid” (conjuring up an image of her as a huge, foraging sea monster). Her cooking was so legendary that I used to run upstairs after meals to text my friends the latest culinary horror. It often went something like this “cucumber slices in malt vinegar, shredded iceberg lettuce, and a ‘flan’ made with inch-thick pastry filled with skimmed milk, eggs, half-fat cheese, bacon, pineapple chunks and prawns, with plums stewed in sugar-free squash for pudding”.
My own mother isn’t without blame. Her memorable home remedy for the common cold was whole, raw garlic cloves floating in hot Ribena. I had to crunch through the cloves, then drink. It didn’t make me better, but it certainly stopped me complaining. Mother 1: me nil.
I have a distant cousin who lives in Huckleberry Drive, Montana. Every time I saw that address as a child I wondered if there was really was such a berry and what it was like (that was before Google). After years of anticipation it was rather exciting to be served them in a pie made by his wife. All I can remember now is the crisp, short, sweet pastry that encased these wild fruits – and that it was made with bear fat, rendered down by Uncle Bob himself.
So when you squirm – or laugh out loud – at the mention of dog’s penis being eaten in Korea, or spasming dead octopus in Japan, take a closer look at those around you. One man’s meat is another man’s poison, as the old saying goes.
