Unusual Meat Tutorial for Those Who Didn’t Learn Snacks in High School
In David Brooks’ latest article, ” How We Are Destroying America, ” Brooks shares a little anecdote that brilliantly illustrates how far the American school system has to go when it comes to meat dishes:
I recently invited a college-educated friend to dinner. I took her insensibly to the gourmet sandwich shop. Suddenly, I saw her face stiffen as she faced sandwiches called Padrino and Tomato and ingredients such as sopressata, capicollo, and striped rice baguette. I quickly asked her if she wanted to go somewhere else, and she nodded anxiously, and we ate the Mexican.
How embarrassing , right? I mean, she clearly didn’t like the Italian words, not the prices of the gourmet sandwiches. (Everyone knows you can’t be Italian and poor.) At least he didn’t take her to a French bistro or an IKEA food court because KÖTTBULLAR would be the end of it all.
Also, thank goodness for Mexican food, a cuisine with non-English language menu items that are more accessible to those without an advanced degree. (I’d like to think that Brooks ordered the moles platter just to give a mini-lecture on how the mole is not a culinary monolith.)
Anyway, I would hate to see such a bad scenario happen to you, especially if you have a friend who likes to take you out to dinner as a kind of classic cultural litmus test, so I put together a little tutorial for this primitive Italian. meat:
- Suppressata: Whole classes can be taught on this small salami, as there are many types of it, both dried and non-dried. I am partial to Soppressata di Calabria, which has a pleasant, smoky, pungent flavor and a vibrant red color that is very different from Soppressata Toscana , an uncured meat made mainly from pork head.
- Capicolla: “Capicolla” is a regional term for “capocollo”, a tender pork meat made from ” dried muscles extending from the neck to the 4th or 5th rib of a pork shoulder or neck .” Condiments vary from region to region, but wine and garlic are commonly used, which is great. Thin, fatty slices are delicious when eaten in front of an open refrigerator at three in the morning.
- Baguette Striata: This is clearly not meat, but bread, but it still bothered Brooks’ interlocutor a lot, so we’ll talk about it. I’ve never heard of it, and believe me, my face was frozen, when I first read these very confusing word. It seems that this word “striata ” simply means “stretch” and there has been quite a bit of controversy over who created the elastic bread and what it is. I remain vaguely confused.
- Mortadella : Brooks doesn’t mention it, but mortadella is just a quirky bologna with cubes of lard and I’ll eat white bread with American cheese if I want to, damn it.
- Prosciutto: This is also not in the article, but it is very important. Prosciutto is a delicious dry-cured ham that can be served raw or cooked, but I don’t know why you would cook these paper-thin slices of wonder. (There is also prosciutto cotto, a ham cooked with a fairly low sodium content, which is different from the raw product.) You should probably wrap it around a melon or toasted pineapple .
I hope we’ve filled in some of the gaps in your meat education, and if you come across a sandwich in the future that fills you with existential dread, let me know and I’ll do my best to help.