Tenderloin, anyone? (Vegetarians beware)

I have now backwardly integrated my love for all things non-vegetarian. At the behest (read coercion) of my father, I recently embarked upon a journey to learn how to cook – with the aid of my mother of course. On the menu was fried pork with bamboo shoots.

The first order of business was to cut the frozen raw pork. This part needs no explanation to tell you that it was fun. I love handling knives (though am far from adept at peeling fruits in a single stroke and using the principle of the opposing thumb) Cutting up chunks of frozen meat (especially pork from Mizoram, which contains immensely thick layers of pork fat) using a cleaver takes me back to the days of Jason vs. Freddy, minus the blood, but with all the imagined fear of the-being-chopped. Plus there is immense satisfaction in slicing off that perfect layer of pork + fat and dropping it into the marinating bowl.

This brings us to the uber-exciting part – the marinating. For those of you who remember the Mark Wahlberg starring movie, The Big Hit, you would recall a very cute Asian school girl (in plaid skirts, no less) being kidnapped by the protagonist (Wahlberg) and brought to said protagonist’s home while the ransom was being demanded, denied, destroyed etc. And yes. The marinating. There is something morbidly erotic about marinating pieces of dead meat with bare hands. Something incredibly gratifying about the way the meat slips and oozes through your fingers as you slap it around the bowl and roll it about in your hand. You can go ahead right now and accuse me of necrophilia but I’m not going to take it back. In fact, go and try it yourself and then tell me what you think. Maybe I’m one of those sex maniacs with a fetish for dead meat. Scary [shudders] And yes, The Big Hit has a scene where the protagonist and the damsel-in-distress (distressed by the protagonist himself) share a marinating bowl where their hands get all touchy and feely along with the gooey meat and icky things happen.

After that it’s pretty simple. Drop into one big tub of burning oil, add bamboo shoots (or whatever your little heart pleases), add corn flour for gravy, stir occasionally for even frying. Serve.

Oh did I mention I also sawed the head off a chicken, de-feathered it using boiling water, cleaned out the insides, cut up the still bloody bird into more manageable chunks which were then fried as well (no I’m not really getting on a health trip here).

I’m thinking of starting a club of meat lovers (all kinds, no “I don’t eat this” or “I don’t eat that” stuff). I’ll call it “Please Eat Tasty Animals”

PS: thanks to Fishy for the name, and trust me to name a friend after a food section on the menu