Part of my competency log training is a checksheet on identifying different cuts of meat. Presumably so I can do an accurate stocktake of meat we've got in the freezers and fridges, as well as sign for deliveries and check them off properly. Although I've been doing this for almost two years, and I've even got posters of Australian Beef/Sheep/Pork primal cuts on the walls of my room, it's still my kryptonite.
I don't remember being explicitly told that meat came from dead animals. I think I've been fed meat for as long as I can recall any memories of eating. I can't really remember a time where I've not eaten meat, apart from when I've been too poor to afford any, or phases of inspired vegetarianism like when we did the butchering unit at TAFE and I couldn't shake the feeling that I was dissecting, cooking, then eating corpses for a living.
One strange thing about the Chinese language (or at least, in Mandarin) is that there is no word for pork. The word for pork is actually 'meat'. I guess a rough translation of beef would be 'cow meat', and fish/chicken have their own separate words, but perhaps when you eat so much pig meat, it's just a matter of efficiency to just call it meat and let everyone assume that it's pork unless otherwise specified.
It wasn't until I moved out of home, and started exploring various Chinese restaurants, as well as eating all manner of other foods, that I realised how much of what my parents cooked for me as a kid truly revolved around pork. I found it odd that a friend of mine at my 16th birthday would mention how she didn't eat pork, and disliked it so much that if she did eat any, she'd throw up... what's to fear? It's not like there's pork everything on the menu! Wasn't as tricky a situation as for vegetarian friends of mine, anyway...
So there's all these dishes that I don't know the proper Chinese or English names for, that I sometimes wish I could order at a restaurant. Pork dumplings and pork spring rolls are easy enough to find, as are barbecue pork buns. You know how you can get barbecue pork just cut up in special fried rice, or even chopped up for a take-home pack from some restaurants, you know, the ones with the ducks hanging in the window? It has that bright red tomatoey looking coating on the outside... as kids we called that 'red meat'. My Dad used to make us this marinated braised pork belly dish that I used to love with congee... because of the soy and whatever else was in the marinade, the pork belly was dubbed 'brown meat'. I didn't even know what congee was until just a few years ago, it was called something that I think translates to 'wet rice'.
Then there was this meatloaf kind of thing Dad made, which I think was just leftover dumpling filling moulded into the base of a bowl, with an egg cracked into a dent in the top of it, then it was steamed until it was cooked. You could break off bits of it with chopsticks or a fork and eat it with rice. This classic was simply called 'meatball'. I had all sorts of favourites - meat with bamboo shoots (which I didn't connect with pandas, as a kid!), meat with celery, meat with tofu, meat with Chinese spinach, meat with minced mushrooms. I don't know how they managed to do it, but my parents managed to feed me a million variations of pork without me being conscious or even annoyed with the constant source of meat. It was like a ghetto version of Iron Chef, but the secret ingredient is always pork. Just don't tell the kids!
Which brings me back to a year of vague attempts at discerning veal from beef, topside from rump, knuckle from collar, and meat from... meat. I totally blitzed my theory tests during the meat unit at TAFE, because I studied the primal cuts like a doctor would cram anatomy, but when it's not me that's done the breakdown from animal to chunk of something wrapped in plastic, I struggle.
My parents' parents would probably laugh at my so-called misfortune and tell me to stop trying to label it, just be grateful and cook/eat it instead.
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