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Americans have mastered the art of "big." Look at our cars, houses, open prairies and steaks - especially our steaks. Steakhouse menus, without irony, refer to the 12-oz. prime rib as the "kiddie cut." So accustomed are we to seeing a mighty plank of meat at the center of our plates - probably because it leaves no room to see anything else - that our founding fathers might as well have written it into the Constitution as an inalienable right. Lest we literally get too big for our breeches, we should remember that for most of human history, we didn't have the luxury of eating so high on the hog. To this day, many parts of the world still don't. In cultures spanning Latin America, North Africa, East Asia and beyond, the idea of daily meals dominated by animal protein would seem anomalous, if not downright excessive. Indeed, other cultures reserve the big game for special occasions, while packing everyday meals with grains, produce and a conservative smattering of meat for flavor's sake - a practice that, to Americans besotted with The Zone and Dr. Atkins, must seem so 1985. However, the tidal wave of "all meat, all the time" diets has to crest sometime, however, and as it does, product developers may want to look ahead by looking back to the culinary past: to a time and place where meat, poultry and even seafood served more as an accent to a meal than as the main event. The good old daysIf the world's traditional diets avail themselves of meat less frequently, it isn't for lack of trying. Red meat, and to a lesser extent, poultry and fish, simply weren't always available. Whether for reasons of geography, climate or economics, people in much of Asia, the Mediterranean and throughout the Southern Hemisphere derived the bulk of their sustenance from plants. Grains, such as rice, millet and maize; legumes; roots and tubers; and wheat-based bread, pasta and couscous delivered concentrated caloric energy in low-cost, high-yield forms. "It was only the rich people in these societies who used to consume meat," says Christopher Speed, manager, food and nutrition strategies, Oldways Preservation & Exchange Trust, Boston. "Red meat was not something that the average poor person who grew up in traditional times would have had enough money to afford. So grains and plant-based products were just more affordable. They were all part-time vegetarian diets." Their scarcity granted flesh foods a rarefied status, and cooks treated them with deference. Basing an entire meal around the catch meant some guests would have to leave the table without getting their fair share. Instead, "meat was used as the garnish, rather than the other way around," he says. Thus developed cuisines devoted to making more out of less meat. Far from reflecting the straitened circumstances that inspired them, these "peasant foods" defy current notions of deprivation. No one leaves the table hungry after enjoying crisp Turkish flatbreads cobbled with roasted peppers, goat cheese and a sprinkling of ground lamb; bowls of butter-rich polenta draped in tissue-thin slices of sopressata; translucent rice-paper dumplings that distill an ocean of flavor into a single shrimp; or Moroccan tagines so thick with preserved lemons and chickpeas that they need only one game hen to feed a crowd. In fact, these same dishes woo adventuresome palates to trendy ethnic eateries. As Mario Valdovinos, corporate chef, foodservice, Tyson Foods, Inc., Springdale, AR, points out, "Peasant foods are the hottest thing known to man right now." They cast meat and poultry as part of an ensemble of grains, vegetables, sauces and seasonings. Even in something as simple as a tamale, he says, "The highlight isn't the meat inside. It's that dense and hearty corn-masa cake surrounding it." And in a traditional chicken mole, all of the preparation goes into the sauce, he says, while "the chicken serves as one of the ingredients." Turning eastward, Christopher Hansen, executive corporate chef, Quest International, Hoffman Estates, IL, cites Chinese dim sum as a perfect example of how cooks turned a little meat into a lot of variety. "You have all these little tastings of dumplings and buns filled with vegetables and meat," he says. "But again, the center of the meal is rice. They might offer it in many different forms (wrappers, noodles, fillings) but rice is the bulking agent of the meal." Slow-cooked stews and soups help cooks disguise meager stores of meat within a more-filling matrix of beans and broth. Mexican posole and menudo soups, Valdovinos says, "are both fantastically fragrant and aromatic with hominy and pork shoulder or picnic butt." Even the French have gotten into the act with cassoulet - a casserole of flageolet beans and garlic, topped with breadcrumbs and larded with country sausage, hunks of cured pork or goose preserved in its own fat. When it comes to frugality, nobody beats Yankees, and despite a penchant for T-bones and double-fisted pork chops, American comfort classics can out-peasant those of the flintiest Toulousian grand-mère. U.S. cookbook shelves burst with Junior League volumes that chart the country's long history of stretching scraps of meat in everything from tuna-noodle casseroles to turkey hotpots. "People don't usually categorize something like biscuits-and-gravy as peasant food," Valdovinos says, "but you've got a white gravy with pork sausage, and again, the highlight isn't the sausage, but the gravy and the biscuit. The pork sausage and pork fat just add that really robust top note, that mouthfeel." What's in it for us?Old chestnuts from church fundraisers and PTA potlucks scratch America's itch for '50s kitsch. Their appeal, and that of other traditional cuisines where meat is the accent, goes beyond nostalgia. Even a nation that can afford a meat-centered supper every night can grow bored of the routine. The old pie-chart approach to the dinner plate - two-thirds devoted to the protein, and a couple of teeny wedges left over for peas and potatoes - went out of favor years ago. That's why Valdovinos thinks designing with meat as an accent offers diners an ideal "reward system." "It's not just a slab of meat or a chicken-fried steak or a piece of bacon. You get so many other ingredients and flavor elements that are created from layers. And that makes it a new experience."
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Meat as an Accent in Food Products
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