GOOD GRUB
I have never met a food I wouldn’t eat. I have, in fact, met very few I didn’t like.
My mother is responsible for this. She is not much of a cook (she is, in fact, a terrible cook), but she has an adventurous palate and an inquiring mind. When I was small she was constantly wandering around New York neighborhoods, happening into little grocery stores and discovering things she’d never seen before. Some people might have thought them strange. Others might have asked what they were. My mother simply bought them and brought them home.
This was, you might remember, a time when yogurt seemed weird. So when my friends came over I prayed my mother wouldn’t ask them to eat mussels or raw fish or strange smelly cheeses. “Just taste it,” she’d urge, holding out her latest find. They usually declined.
This all came back to me the other day when I was standing at a buffet table laden with grilled heart and curried goat and witchety grubs. I was just reaching for a grub when a voice behind me said, “You aren’t actually going to eat that, are you?”
“These foods are rarely eaten in American homes,” admits Vickram Jayanti, the man responsible for the grubs. “But I wanted to highlight the extent to which food is a cultural item--to introduce the audience to a great deal of diversity.”
Jayanti is director of Anthropos 87, the Barbara Myerhoff Film Festival being held this Wednesday through Sunday at USC. Over four days 85 documentary films will be screened. People sitting through all these films will naturally get hungry, and the Festival wanted to have food on hand. But Jayanti wanted to serve something out of the ordinary, so he came up with the idea of offering an anthropological grazing menu.
The eclectic offerings by Two’s Company Catering include dishes from many of the 30 countries represented in the festival. They cost $2 apiece, or you can get a sampling plate of four dishes for $6. Some are as straightforward as Brie and miniature croissants (France). Others, like brownies or chopped chicken liver, are downright ordinary. But many will appeal only to the adventurous. Care to try some sauteed baby eels from Spain?
At a pre-festival tasting I was disappointed to discover that salamagundy, an 18th-Century English dish, was nothing more exotic than chicken salad. But the goat curry was a spicy treat, and if the Hunan lamb was a bit too sweet for my taste, the injera and eggplant salad more than made up for it.
As to the grubs--they were great. Soft but crunchy with a sweet mild flavor, they reminded me of enormous pine nuts. “We had a little trouble getting them,” said chef David Shaparro. “They aren’t raised commercially, even in Australia.” He promises, however, that there will be plenty on hand for the festival. I’m glad to hear it; I know my mother will want to taste them.
For tickets to the Anthropos Festival, call (213) 743-5241.
