**BEWARE- BLOGGER HAS DONE NO REAL RESEARCH BECAUSE SHE IS LAZY**
Okay folks, it's time for another trip into my weird little mind, brought to you today by Man Vs. Food. I love that show, man. It's like a soap opera for fat chicks. There's the intriguing leading man, (an absolute cutie who wouldn't mind me cleaning my plate? be still my possibly enlarged heart) the ongoing ups and downs of emotion; you feel the thrill of victory when the host manages to down that barbecued half cow in 15 minutes (plus sides), and the emotional trough when he throws up after the 25th pound of deep-fried butter. It's addictive as hell and I'm still pissed I didn't have cable and knew nothing of the show before he came to Tucson.
Anyway, back on topic.
I saw a bit from a restaurant in Hawaii where the audience was being shown how to make this traditional pork and butterfish thing, and it occurred to me:
Where did the pig come from?
These are small groups of islands, the idea that some species of wild pig had been evolving in these little South Sea dots of rock since the breakup of Pangaea kind of sounds iffy to me. Especially when you consider the largest comparable land mass, Australia, didn't have pigs until they were introduced in modern (as in not paleolithic) times. So, there were pigs on these little dots, but none on the huge frakkin' continent? Huh. That's a noodle scratcher. So from that I formed 3 possible answers to how there could be South Sea pork recipes of such perfection and understanding of the ingredient.
1. The recipes are newer than the seeming perfection of them would make you think, and were, in fact, perfected fairly recently after the introduction of the pig.
2. The recipes are old ones that were made with indigenous ingredients and then mildly adapted for the new ingredient of luscious piggy.
3. The recipes were perfected with something indigenous that is very close to pork but fell out of favor with the arrival of white people, and presumably pigs. Yes, I'm going there.
I think it is possible the fantastic island pork dishes folks love are in fact adapted from similar if not the same ways of preparation used back in the days of cannibals.
Before the flames are kindled, let me remind you all that I am in no way an anthropologist and I didn't even bother to do a quick check on wiki-freaking-pedia to try and find out if and/or when pigs were introduced to the South Sea Islands.
Let the games begin.
I suppose the islanders could have brought their livestock with them when they migrated across the ocean...
ReplyDeleteSince Central and South America did not have pigs - or any large meat animal at all - until the Spaniards brought them over on ships, and they became the primary meat animal very quickly thereafter (and still are, in every part of those areas except the central portions of South America, where cattle are raised, and the mountainous parts - e.g. Peru where it's hard to keep pigs), I think there's anthropological evidence that pigs can travel with humans on boats pretty well. Now, who they travelled WITH to get to the South Sea islands, I do not know.
ReplyDeleteWell that's kind of my point, did the pigs come with white people? Prior to those days if I remember correctly the traveling islanders had great canoe-type vessels that I wouldn't think would be exactly ideal for bacon introduction. Not to mention you have to think about sails vs. paddles and who would have gotten from point A to point B without losing the livestock and/or saying "fuck it" and having ham for breakfast?
ReplyDelete