11 Comments
founding
Dec 16, 2022Liked by Hank Shaw

Love this. Thanks Hank. Takes me back to writing research papers. Read a ton, form an opinion, and test by talking to a bunch of experts - only yours sounds way more fun!

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Your venison 101 classes allows novices like me the opportunity to "interact" with you as playing the videos....pause.....rewind....you learn nuggets that you would not necessarily get from the printed word resulting in improving the food I cook. I smiled at your wife's reference to the timeliness of having big game broth on hand to help with your covid as I just brought some to a sick neighbor who LOVED it. It was my first batch, and not last batch, following your class. Get well and happy holidays!

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Dec 16, 2022Liked by Hank Shaw

Ground truthing is something that is a concept that doesn’t always come natural to scholars. I observed this in the Marine Corps when dealing with young officers vs. enlisted men. The “book smart” officers would often have to learn certain details, that only experience can teach, from the high school educated Marines. Muscle memory is a real thing. I can only imagine that this is an absolute necessity in your world, since taste can’t be read or watched on TV, albeit flavor descriptions can bridge the gap, but only if you’re previously familiar with that taste.

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founding
Dec 16, 2022Liked by Hank Shaw

Beautiful (and mouthwatering) piece. I think it's easy to forget sometimes that food is a product of the actual people making it, and isn't ultimately divorceable from that -- it's not just a set of concepts and techniques, but a whole cluster of relationships -- and this is a lovely recall to that fact. But I really appreciate that you emphasized how important research ALSO is. I've occasionally found myself very annoyed by certain smug thinkpieces about regional food that totally dismiss any knowledge gained at a distance as somehow worth less, and I've never been able to put my finger on WHY they annoyed me so much until you pointed to the fact that most humans have neither the money or the gastric space to learn solely through direct experience. Thanks for bringing us back to the importance of the both/and.

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Hank, can you recommend a mexican cook book or 3? Which mexican chefs / cooks do you follow on instagram?

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Great piece! Funny, I remember having a very similar experience, eating my way around Merida until I was nearly full to bursting, sitting in a small restaurant, watching Harry Potter in Spanish and waiting for chicken tacos. Lacking the stomach space has always sadly been a barrier to better understanding local cuisine on short 1-2 week visits.

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author

Oye! Como se dice "avada kedavra" en espanol? :)

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