So you know how there’s seriously lip-smackingly good eN-Zed food? Like pavlova, pikelets and paua patties? Sadly, there’s also some not-good eN-Zed food too. Actually, let’s forget political correctness and linguistic sensitivities. Not-good food is bad at best, or nasty, evil and spewy. And if that’s not descriptive enough, here’s an example of bad food: mutton chops.
Lamb chops have an aura of French cuisine about them. A rack of meticulously manicured, pink-fleshed, mint-sauced rib from a few-months-old sheeplet. It may even be seasoned with rosemary or garlic. But you know, lamb is just a few months away from being sheep and sheep is mutton and mutton is fatty greasy and it stinks, no matter how much rosemary you bury it in. And it has to be said, lamb chops will always be mutton dressed up as lamb.
Mutton chops are dog-food not people-food. Dogs are primal; they like to chew on bones and gristle. Dogs like to roll in filth so they don’t mind their faces being smeared with mutton fat and they probably think the thick heavy stench of mutton on their bodies is alluring. Fighting for food is in a dog’s DNA.
My Economics teachers used mutton chops to explain the concept of inferior goods: as your income increases, you buy less inferior goods and more luxury goods and that’s as right as your left hand isn’t.
What could you serve with mutton chops to make them better? I visited a Chinese restaurant once, in Macau, and the only thing I recognised on the menu was mutton chops and gravy. I worried what the other menu items might be and so I took the plunge… let me paint the picture… one large, luke-warm mutton chop, the fat already paling on its way to white, solid and cold. There was a copious topping of gelatinous, brown gravy as near to cold and sticky as a day out on the Otago Peninsula, the only hint of seasoning being the smell of albatross shit and salty sea air. And a bowl of plain, cold white rice. Out of respect for the dead, I left the corpse undisturbed, paid the bill and left reminding myself of what Confucius once said, ‘Mutton chops are not people-food’. Or was it Sun Tzu who said that?
Their mutton chops were nasty, but Macau cuisine should not be written off because Macau is one of the ground zeros on the globe for pastel de natas – Portuguese Egg Tarts. Small, flaky-pastry shells filled with sweet, egg-custard, baked till the top has been caramelised – and eaten warm. Eat as many as it takes to erase the taste, feel and smell of mutton chops but the words of the great wise one: Mutton chops are not people-food.
eN-Zed 