A Matter of Taste

Originally published in The Philippine Star

Why is balut so generally abhorred in the west? That it was used in the reality show Fear Factor is evidence of this aversion. And I remember an episode of Lonely Planet where one of the hosts purchased balut in Malate, then talked herself into taking a bite only to spit it out almost immediately and wretch over it. Yet this same host downed a glass of wine in Vietnam to which the raw gall bladder of a snake had been added. Not only did she manage to hold it down, she even made a complimentary remark about it.

I guess that one man’s comfort food can be another man’s reason for a bellyache. The food specialty of a specific culture or region will not always be appetizing to everyone and may even repel some. Especially if a basic ingredient is this side of unappealing or forbidden.

Take another Filipino favorite—Dinuguan. Eaten at face value, it usually passes most westerners’ epicurean standards. But tell those same people that pig’s blood is the base for this stew and chances are they’ll make a beeline for the nearest powder room. Unless they’re from Sweden or Poland. Svartsoppa or Black Soup is made from the blood drippings of the geese the Swedes roast for St. Martin’s Eve. And the Poles have Czernina, a sweet sour soup made from duck or pig’s blood, broth, sugar and vinegar.

Culture and habit have a lot to do with our biases particularly the hard to explain ones.

Some folks balk at eating Sashimi on the grounds that it is raw fish but won’t bat an eyelash at dining on carpaccio, oysters on the half-shell or sea urchin roe, which is seldom if ever cooked. The French and their Escargot may have given snails a better reputation but I’ve seen people screw up their faces at the seafood version of Kare Kare when snails are part of the mix. And it’s one thing to eat frog’s legs which resemble small chicken legs after all; quite another to eat it whole sans head but with limbs still intact and splayed, reminding you that you are about to pop a frog into your mouth. Stuffed relleno-style and deep-fried to a crisp turn, these tiny frogs are a popular dish in some parts of Pampanga.

And then there’s caviar. The ultimate luxury to some, to others it is just salty fish eggs, no more, no less, with only its cachet to recommend it. One of my uncles declared he would take bagoong over caviar any time however costly it is. Clearly even the yen for the world’s gourmet delicacies can be an acquired taste.

Beware prairie oysters, Montana tendergroins, cowboy caviar, swinging beef, Rocky Mountain oysters and calf-fries.These are deceptive euphemisms for bull testicles. There’s even a famous Testicle Festival in the western U.S. state of Montana where the favorite way to eat the stuff is battered and fried and served with ketchup or barbecue sauce.

But American wranglers are by no means the first or only folk to feast on these “nuts”. Ram testicles were a popular item on fashionable 18^th century French menus. And the ancient Romans dined on gonads to increase their sexual vigor. Ditto for the Chinese who have created a hearty bull testicle soup.

Come to think of it, animal testicles are not the oddest ingredients ever to make their way into a soup, stew or stir-fry.

How about whole boiled lizard in broth and soup starring sheep’s eyeballs? Deep-fried white rat that could pass for amber-hued Peking Duck? Or insects, grubs and worms for lunch or dinner? We have the local Camaro or crisply fried crickets. And those little critters are also staples in many South American locales where they are often the cheapest source of protein. They are sautéed, stewed, fried, roasted and wrapped in tortillas to make a very different kind of taco. They are even eaten raw. I will never look at another garden slug or earthworm the same way after watching one of the indigenous tribesmen on Discovery Channel happily take a bite of a big, fat white grub and show off the gooey, still twitching uneaten half before popping it into his mouth. For some, apparently fresh does not mean raw but alive.

Else why do Sashimi restaurants that specialize in cutting their fillets from live fish do such brisk business in Japan? Another version of Sashimi is a live shrimp that is quickly beheaded and shelled and handed over to the diner while still wriggling. The object is to swallow the poor thing in one bite so you can feel it “dance” in your throat as it goes down. The Koreans go one step further. Imagine fishing a small live octopus out of a bowl of water, dipping it in sauce then eating it whole while its tentacles frantically cling every which way to your lips, chin and cheeks.

And lest you believe only uncommon foodstuffs lend themselves to the strange and exotic, well, think again.

The common egg becomes a specialty gourmet item when salted or aged. Hence, our local itlog maalat (especially delectable when teamed with chopped tomatoes, diced green mangoes and a dollop of bagoong) and the exaggeratedly named century eggs with their slightly ammoniac flavor and brownish whites and green yolks.

Or how about rich, dark chocolate? Traditionally a dessert ingredient or a sweet in its own right, it is a main ingredient in the spicy Mexican poblano mole. Dried chili peppers, ground nuts and spices and charred avocado leaves also go into this very popular savory sauce.

And then there’s coffee. The customary way of taking it is either black or with cream or milk. Sweetness depends on where you are in the world though diabetics would be advised to keep in mind that in some countries close to half a cup of sugar is not deemed too much of a good thing. For the more adventurous, the various coffee bars have come up with a plethora of concoctions to satisfy the near universal hankering for beverages based on this aromatic bean. But I very much doubt they will ever do as the Lapplanders do and dunk butter in their cups of steaming coffee for a fortifying hot drink.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder but our aesthetic proclivities are shaped by the various cultural forces at work on us at any given time and place. The same goes for food and our taste buds. Frankly, I think we are all discriminating diners, our ingrained loves and hates in the gustatory arena dictating what we consider simply to die for, not bad at all, just barely palatable or fit to toss into the garbage bin with nary a second thought or an experimental bite.

One Man’s Shake is Another Man’s Frappe

Whenever we go to Starbucks, Bryan, Niccolo and Jonathan order the frapuccinos. Invariably, I wish they hadn’t become so fond of these expensive concoctions that are little more than glorified milkshakes. Particularly when I can whip them up at home at less cost and with fresh ingredients.

Smoothie, frappe, velvet, frosted shake, malt, cabinet and batido are all one and the same—a milkshake going by another name depending on region or country and what goes into the recipe. But basically, a milkshake is a cold beverage made from milk, ice cream or other similar dairy products and flavorings ranging from fruit syrups to chocolate sauce. It’s generally meant to be drank but there are recipes where the shake is so thick a spoon is more useful than a straw. In the 1950s in the United States, such a shake was aptly called a concrete and was handed to the customer upside down to demonstrate its drip-proof consistency. So does that make the Dairy Queen Blizzard a concrete treat?

Interestingly enough, the milkshake originated in the U.S. as an alcoholic whiskey drink. The name first appeared in print in 1885 and was similar to eggnog. And just like its soda fountain compatriot Coca Cola, it was positioned as a health tonic. By 1900, however, the name referred to dairy-based drinks made with chocolate, strawberry or vanilla syrup. It was solely made with milk and shaken or whipped until foamy. Hence the term milkshake. (Talk about taking names literally.) Anyway, within a few years, people wanted ice cream in the new drink as well and the basic shake in its current incarnation appeared.

What differentiates a milkshake from a frappe or smoothie? Well, in the first place, even milkshakes are not born equal. While the most common version consists of milk, ice cream and a flavoring, in the New England states and some Commonwealth nations, they adhere a bit more to tradition and there is no ice cream in the shake, only iced milk.

By and large, the variations in name have to do with its region of origin or with the changes or additions in the basic recipe. For example, a frosted shake is a milkshake to which ice cream has been added. In the 1930s, the newspapers used the term ‘frosted’ for any beverage that had ice cream added to it. Even hot coffee with ice cream added to it was called a frosted coffee.

Now take away the ice cream and substitute yogurt, crushed ice and fresh fruit and you have the health buff’s favorite treat, the smoothie. Add malted milk to the basic shake and you’ll wind up with a classic malted milkshake or simply a malt. An extra thick milkshake came to be called a velvet or frappe (pronounced ‘frap’) in northern New England and Canada. The term frappe comes from French frapper, meaning ‘to ice’. In Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts, locals are fond of their coffee frappe shake. (When I read this, the frapuccino began to make sense.) By the way, once you add ice cream to a milkshake in this particular region it becomes peculiarly enough, a cabinet, probably named after the square wooden cabinet in which the mixer used to be encased.

The concept of milkshakes also migrated south of the border. Add fruit to a milkshake and you have the batido, which is very popular in Latin America and among Miami’s extensive Cuban expatriate community. Nicaraguans even coined their own name—they call their milkshake leche malteada.

In the 1940s and 50s, soda fountains were favorite hangouts in the U.S. and milkshakes often formed the base of their ice cream menus. Soda fountain staff, or jerks as they were called, had their own jargon for these milky concoctions, some nicely descriptive, others quite bizzare and incomprehensible. A “White Cow” was a vanilla milkshake while a “Burn One All the Way” was a chocolate malted with chocolate ice cream. The whimsically named “Shake One in the Hay” was a simple strawberry shake. But the “Twist It, Choke It and Make It Cackle” needs a bit of circular reasoning to connect it to what the shake was: a chocolate malted with an egg.

In the Philippines, milkshakes are often bought as a dessert or a cold treat to sip while strolling around on a warm day. But in North America, it was discovered that nearly half of all milkshakes are bought in the early morning and are usually the only items purchased per customer. The reason? It makes an ideal breakfast product for the commute from home to work or school because it can be consumed with just one hand and there is little risk of spillage on clothes or soiling the hands, as is the case with sandwiches or pastries.

Nowadays, the plethora of milkshake variations can be bewildering. Everything from the basic milk and ice cream version to fruit- or candy-studded, spiked and gourmet concoctions are on hand. Anything from M&Ms, peanut butter and jelly, Hostess Twinkies, melted caramels and crushed Oreos to crème de menthe and Kahlúa liqueur, whiskey and vodka to macerated strawberries, Valrhona chocolate, saffron-rose water and taro root have found their way into today’s shakes. Going by this, I suppose even the once ubiquitous pearl drinks can pass as milkshakes.

I once used leftover ice cream to make milkshakes for my three sons. I followed the most popular recipe—cold milk, ice cream and a flavoring, chocolate syrup in this case. I got the thumbs up from all three with Bryan claiming there’s nothing like homemade, Jonathan stating that it was the best milkshake he’d ever tasted and Niccolo simply and enthusiastically saying “Delicious!” and asking for a second serving.

Hmmm, maybe if I do this often enough, their clamor for costly commercial shakes will go the way of the dodo. Well, I can dream, can’t I?