Herbs and Tubes

I seem to be facing a few of my culinary demons lately. Chewy is the demon here. It's not often that I find myself attacking the garnish with gusto before that which lies beneath it. I'm making the same choices as a rabbit.

But it becomes rather obvious to my eating companions. They are chewing with relish as I continue to mow through the botany. I do eye the cuts of tube trying to identify a piece that is small, that I can get down with minimal chewing and a trap-door swallow. I don't want my mates to place a gnarly thick bit in my bowl for me. In these situations in the past, there has been an expectation that I demonstrate some kind of adverse reaction. I want to be brave. I don't want to offend. I want to communicate a 'water off a duck's back' kind of vibe.

It's hard, when I know that poo used to travel these tubes.

Pig intestines (trang) are commonly available across the city, along with other organs and offal. They are not a delicacy but something eaten on an everyday basis. They are clean, all traces of poo long flushed out. If I'd been born Vietnamese like my friends, I wouldn't be getting so worked up about this.

I do eventually bite the bullet...and it is kind of rubbery like a garden hose.

But it has had me thinking since. What has happened to me and my ilk? Why is it such a challenge to eat these parts of an animal? Surely they were part of the diet in generations past. In parts of Europe they probably still are. Where do these parts of the pig end up in my country? Perhaps I have regularly eaten them disguised in a sausage or spread on toast as liverwurst, in an altogether different form.

Can I acquire a taste for them in their original form, before any processing, when they were not that long ago clearly related to the vital functions of a living thing? Pulsing, beating, belching, farting living things!

I would have to practise long and hard.

Comments

[Lucie J.]

Wow this is madness. But you are right, intestines (or some part of them) are used to wrap sausages in ... Happy eating!

[Nguyen Thanh Huong]

You should try the tube with some cooked blood of pig inside. I think it would be nicer than this one. Call for "doi"!!!

[eastingfeasting]

that looks like medium rare, i have childhood memories of eating these but they were well done. cook to death in chao' or braised to death in spices. i think you would start a war with vietnamese if you mention that these things used to transport poop. ahahaha but it's good to hear your opinions on this, if vietnamese hear enough people feeling squeamish, maybe they'll toned down their eating habits.
there's a recent article in europe where they move these pig parts from corporate pig farms to africa and sell them for cheaps, i thought that's ingenious way to feed the world. here in the USA people have rejected that chicken wings have bones or skin, or chicken cutlets is a fine cut of meat, i just can't hardly wait for this populations to rave about space food.

[meemalee]

You need to to either braise or barbecue the hell out of something like that before it's edible IMHO

[Sticky]

Lucie...half the madness is in my head, half on the plate!

Huong - I can handle the blood, no problem...are you setting me some kind of challenge?

EF - why would it start a war? Surely that's an accepted fact?

meemalee - not sure that it'd be any less rubbery those ways?

[RecipeOfTheWeek]

More power to you! I don't know if I could ever do it. I'm really particular with textures of meat. This one looks like a bit on the chewy side.