Last time I checked, us carnivores were quite happy to allow vegetarians, vegans and worshippers of the vegetable to go about their business unassailed. So why, then, do lovers of tomatoes, mushrooms and baby marrows struggle to leave in peace those of us who simply want to enjoy a juicy piece of dead hoofed animal? Because our – meat-eaters – creations, terminology and dishes are continuously being abused through their deployment in meatless alternatives.
The current vegetarian hijacking of meat dishes was underscored yet again the other day while I was listening to a radio chat about a new Cape restaurant. The owner, a former winner of the TV programme Kokkedoor, was talking about one of the standout dishes on his menu, namely a pumpkin “steak”. I could hear thousands of braaiers and hundreds of cattle groaning in anguish at this abomination of calling a roasted slice of yellow, soulless pumpkin a “steak”.
“Steak”, cut from the matured carcass of a cow or bull who dutifully and proudly sacrificed her or his life for man’s rightful primal lust for meat, does not come from something kept alive with water, sun and compost. That life, one devoid of emotion and soul or any lifeblood pumping through the veins, belongs to a pumpkin and is, with respect, not worthy of the name “steak”. Just as a bowl of crispy pork crackling can never be muesli or a piece of venison droëwors never a carrot be, pumpkin is not “steak”.
Pumpkin, though, is by far not the only vegetarian ingredient being hijacked by faulty food terminology. For years now we have had the monstrosity called “tomato carpaccio”, which is merely a plate of tomato slices drizzled with piquant sauce.
Like “steak”, carpaccio should only be used when it is made with beef. And that’s a fact.
Carpaccio originated in 1950 at Harry’s Bar in Venice. The owner, Giuseppe Cipriani, had to make a plan, as one of his upmarket clients, Countess Amalia Nani Mocenigo, was for health reasons only allowed to eat raw meat – a Countess and Lady who must truly have been close to a man’s heart. Giuseppe thus created a dish of his own for his lady, namely paper-thin slices of raw red beef fillet covered with a mustard-and-mayonnaise sauce. And the dish was named after the Renaissance painter Vittore Carpaccio, who liked to daub his canvases with bright scarlet paint.
Yes, a good ripe tomato may well be red in colour. But that does not entitle it to the name carpaccio. The Countess’s craving was for pure raw animal flesh, and to use the name carpaccio for a tomato salad is not only incorrect, but disrespectful to her memory. Vegetarian bad manners and aggression, therefore, at their worst.
Another vegetarian absurdity, one made to truly rouse the suspicion of meat eaters, is this thing of mushroom biltong. Biltong is surely South Africa’s proudest preparation of meat, and to give something made from salted mushrooms the name “biltong” makes me wonder how those responsible for the New South Africa’s Constitution could allow such a thing.
Luckily this seems to be a Cape thing, for should the meat farmers and eaters up north hear of this, civil war does not seem too far-fetched an impossibility. Perhaps one bloodless event I can handle.
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I fail to understand why people who do not wish to eat meat, bless them for whatever their reasons are, would want to eat things with meat-related names. Or why there must be “fake meat” things like vegetarian/plant-based sausages, burger patties, schnitzels etc when there are perfectly delicious things one can make with vegetables, without having to give them meaty names.