The Not-So-Curious Incident of the Pork in Australia.

Wanna know if the Asian in front of you is an ABC or FOB?

Serve them a piece of pork.

Not charsiu, or bacon or sweet and sour pork.
Straight up pork chop from the supermarket, steamed.

–

I have two distinct memories of Australian pork.

Once, I was shooting a rustic theme wedding on a farm, far away from the city.
The bride was kind enough to provide a meal, and it was buffet style. Very casual, very intimate.
Otway pork was on the menu.
For those out of Victoria, Otway pork was the first to break out as the 'free-range, cruelty-free' pork in the 00s.
The guy carved two thick slices of meat from a giant slab of shoulder, and I was pretty excited because of all the premium hype behind it.

I sat down, stab it with my fork, took a giant bite.

–

Memory number two: Sydney, also the 00s.

Way before Ippudo, Ryo's, Rarara, there was Gumshara in Chinatown.
It was legendary because back then our ramen vocabulary was in its infancy. Foodies raved about the limited 15 bowls of authentic tokontsu ramen in this underground food court in the middle of Chinatown.

I don't remember the process, but I remember the struggle to get to the store.
I was gasping for air, like a fangirl: "do you .. still have... the limited .. ramen? Am I ... too late? I came all ... the way from ... Melbourne. "

The macho man behind the counter told me I was lucky and served me the final bowl of the day.

I sat down alone, gave thanks to the ramen god, stared into my bowl of awesomeness, and took a sip of the soup.

–

Now the answer to the migrant test.

The one who could chew the pork all the way through, swallow, and ask for seconds with a straight face, is most likely the locally born and bred Asian.

On the other hand, the migrant's mouth is still full. Because she is trying very hard to not have a gag reflex. She is Mr. Bean looking for a handbag, a glass of water, a vase, a cleavage, anything to hide that unbearable heaviness of being.

Australian pork, you stink.

I don't know if it's just you, maybe your big brother, the American pork is the same, but you specifically, stink.

That supposedly premium Otway pork tasted foul.

Gumshara's tonkotsu ramen was so revolting, it was the first time I walked out on a bowl of ramen.
It's probably still there, staring out of the window, waiting for me to play catch, but I have no guilt.
I have tasted evil in the flesh.

And apparently, it's a known phenomenon among migrants.
A silent struggle.
Your parents don't talk about it.

The reason we don't enjoy Chinese food away from home, on top of being homesick, is because - let me say it one more time - the pork stinks.

And for the longest time, I thought I was delusional.
While 50% of Asians I meet agree that they should warn us on the plane before we touchdown at the airport (don't bring drugs, declare your apple, and oh, watch out for the pork), the other 50% are oblivious.
Like the coriander test.

'Huh? Is this true? Nah, you're just being dramatic, wanting attention. Here's a sticker.'

Funny that's also how my parents dealt with most of my problems.

Sometimes, that 50% who don't smell pork, is your wife.

–

"My hometown is the origin of ramen," my wife said, back when she wasn't my wife. Heck, I wasn't even her boy toy then. To say that to a person you met for the very first time, one has to be so, so proud of Hakata Ramen.

So the first time I visited Taroumaru ward, west of Fukuoka, her brother took us to this everyday man's ramen place.

This is it, I said to myself. Courtside seats to the OG tonkotsu ramen. None of this commercialized watered-down Ippudo / Ichiran BS.
Witness me, gaijin foodies.
I'm going to taste history.

Once I stepped out of the car, I wanted to go home.
Someone was burning corpses.

I gave it the benefit of doubt, you know, perhaps it's like stinky tofu.
If you close your eyes and chew, eventually, everything turns into glucose and fructose.

But there I was, trying to not throw up in the restaurant, breathing through my mouth while everyone was behaving like it's a Tuesday. They really couldn't smell it. The fat, the bone, the hair on the skin, the scum - they permeated through my jacket, into my pores, my nervous system, via osmosis.

A bowl of white ramen appeared in front of me.

The family stared at me, using telepathic ESP to say 'EAT IT EAT IT EAT IT EAT IT EAT IT EAT IT' while my wife gave me the 'don't embarrass me' look, and I finally understood what it's like to be pressured by your partner to take it in the ass.

–

It's always a sex thing.

Male pigs, once they reach puberty, release androstenone and skatole, (one from the balls, the other within the fat) which gives the meat a 'fecal flavour', according to Wikipedia.

So if you're in Victoria Market and wonder why all the Asian butchers have 'female pork' plastered all over, now you know.

Some castrate the male pigs to get rid of the boar taint.
Some never made it through puberty.
Remember suckling pigs during wedding banquets, anyone?

Some say it's just the butchering.
Factories shock the pig to death in mass, unlike the 'conventional way' of killing.
If you answered 'the blood didn't drain properly', DING DING, you get a match in this round of Family Feud.

It's ironic because if Muslims were to eat pork and kill pigs the halal way, they'd probably taste the best.

"Some people just don't care," says Frank, my butcher, when I asked him about this.

"It's just a label, mate. Who knows if it's really female pork or not. If the customers don't care, then why would the butcher go through all that trouble to please 20% of the clientele?"

-

Surely, I'm not the first to migrate to this country, encountering this issue. I need the past ghosts of housewives, the problem-solving skill of ancestral mothers to guide me.

I typed 'why Australian pork smells' in Chinese Google and I saw solutions.

I learned new words such as 断生 , 焯水, 飞水 and 跑活水.

They translate to 'blanching' from cold water.

Apparently, the best way to do this is to place your piece of pork in a big pot of cold water, at the lowest heat possible.

Let it sit for 30-40 minutes. Think of this as an open water sous vide.
The water will be pinky, scummy, stinky.
Discard it, then your meat is ready to go.

If you're making soup, into boiling water for 2-3 minutes, wash the bones, and start again.

This also explains why in ramen-making youtube videos, they would boil the trotters, the bones, before starting over in a new pot.

It's a good solution, but I don't know man, what if I have pork mince?
Why can't we just, you know, have nice pork to start with?

I remember the first time I had a fried pork cutlet in a Tonkatsu joint in Tokyo.

It was the opposite of my experience in Fukuoka. Similar to the first time you unraveled your parents' white lie.

Pork can be juicy, and flavourful? And not stink?
What else have you been hiding from me??

Hit it, Phoebe.

Smelly pig, smelly pig. What are they feeding you?
Smelly pig, smelly pig. It's not your fault.

–

How about I turn this around?

Is the pork 'back home' really that good?
Or do we just want it to be good?

As I crawl through my memory, our so-called 'favourite' pork dishes - charsiu, bah kut teh, wantan, pai guat, lu rou fan, charsiubao, dong po rou, sweet and sour pork, lion's head etc., are all heavily seasoned or stewed to bits.
Charsiu is basically 50% sugar. Crispy pork belly (siu yok) is probably the most vanilla of all, but we also brine them and dip them in an awful lot of sauce and sodium.

If the ingredients are so great, then, why so much seasoning, as if ... there's something to hide?
*doubt emoji*

The last time I went back to my childhood place and took a bite of the charsiu, it's just really dry and tiny, filled with the bittersweetness of first love, and the reality of 'but I have to move on now'.

–

I was talking to a Malaysian writer recently, and I said we should all travel more, eat more, expand our palettes so we can all be better cooks.

Now I realised, sometimes, experiencing too much can make you an ungrateful son of a bitch. Always complaining, always comparing, and never be content.

So I guess the moral of the story is to:

1. Live in the moment, accept what you have in life;
2. If you can't accept it, try blanching it in hot water;
3. Smelly pork is real, if you're suffering, please know that you're not alone.

Talk to your loved ones.