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Tongue in Check

The Source

My mom never cooked a bad meal…ever. Maybe it was my slave-driver father who worked his boys so hard that every meal was a feast, but I think that Mom had a real knack for things culinary…except once. Beef tongue. I’ve asked myself over the years…How could a woman who’d turn out gourmet meals on a short notice for a farm family blow it so completely? Then it hit me: it wasn’t Mom at all. It was the tongue. It would have helped had I not seen the tongue before it was cooked…a gray, gelatinous slab of bovine protein with the little “tongue bumps” still attached. If she’d have slathered it in tomato sauce and called it “pimpled Salisbury steak” I’d likely have gobbled it right down. But it was tongue, and what’s worse I knew it was tongue. And yes, I’ve eaten eggs and I know on which end they’re produced, but there was something about an Angus cow’s tongue that just seemed wrong for supper. I’ve prided myself on being able to eat practically anything practically anywhere. Over thirty years of traveling abroad with students has given me a set of taste buds impervious to anything . . . almost. A tour director must master the “See, I’ve eaten it so you can, too!” attitude that’s gotten us through Parisian snails in garlic sauce, fish heads in Russian soup, and Scottish haggis. In fact, I love haggis. I’m proud to say that my list of “I’ll never touch again” foods is the tiniest of anyone I know. With a few mouth-jarring exceptions. Like… Vegemite. It’s a thick, brown paste made from the leftovers of the British beer brewing process…a yeast extract guaranteed to extract a pucker and a gag from anyone not accustomed to eating oozing metal. Australians are bonkers for the stuff and in the 1980’s they shipped a barge load of the Outback outrage to the U.S. to try it on American kids. In general, they gagged, too. At the same time they tested peanut butter on Australian kids and the verdict was enough to choke a Kuala. The experiment was a cross-cultural flop. The Brits have their own version called Marmite, a yeast-based goo that’s even stronger. Once upon a horrible time my little tour group was given sack lunches before our tour of the London parks. When we parked ourselves for lunch we opened our sacks to find Marmite sandwiches. We were hungry and we stayed that way. The squirrels enjoyed the feast but the little creatures were, after all, British. Pickled Eel. One of the Maori tribes in Rotorua, New Zealand, asked my group of students to a meal at their banquet hall. I just heard two words “food” and “free” so I eagerly agreed to show up at the appointed time. We were met by five Maori warriors, dressed in loincloths that did a great deal to enhance the appetite of the teenage girls in my troupe, then we asked to sit at long tables while our bravest warrior was sent up to pass the bravery test. “If he can just stand there without running away or screaming, you may eat for free!” I picked a skinny Chapin boy named Greg Schone to stand there, frozen, as the Mauri’s jumped at him, screamed in his face, and swung what looked like decorative corn knives around his nose and ears. Greg din’t flinch so they brought on the feast: An eel. A six-foot-long eel…perhaps as big around as Albert Pujols’ bicep. Not cooked or fried Morgan County Fair style, but simply pickled, still retaining its original color and texture. We were starving and the Maori’s held all the corn knives. I whispered to my kids, “Eat. Eat it. And smile while you’re chewing.” I confess that I’ve never had as much trouble choking down a meal (hint: don’t eat the skin). We were famished and this seemed to be the only food available to us for the evening. Then, as the native dancers began their show, they brought on the main course: prime rib, baked potatoes, green beans, salad… The eel was just the appetizer. Thank you, Lord! Coming in at third place in the Most Unappetizing Olympics would be Russian orange juice. We were traipsing across Moscow on a day hot enough to burn your borscht, when we began looking for water…anything. McDonald’s had just opened its first Russian outlet, but the lines stretched for blocks and the last Tsar must have removed the water fountains. Then one of my group shouted, “Look! A drink machine!” We dashed down the street to a vending machine with the words “Be3 NepeboAa!” which my vast Russian vocabulary translated as “Orange Juice!” Okay, the large picture of a glass of orange juice helped. We stood in line, kopeks in hand, eagerly awaiting a sip of the precious nectar. When we got to the front of the line we saw the dispenser, saw the money slot, then saw the glass. A single, besmeared and contagious-looking glass made of..well..glass…out of which probably 700 people had sipped that morning. It made me homesick for tongue.