by Claudia Kwan
FoodConnect Vancouver
claudia@foodconnect.com

Not all of the learning at Whistler's Cornucopia festival occurred in designated formal settings... or at least, sometimes, it wasn't the focal point of the sessions.

Case in point: a lunch session with Eric Pateman of Edible BC where he passed on an incredibly handy tip as an aside while he spoke of the value of eating locally.

Buy the toughest and cheapest cuts of red meat (beef, lamb, venison, etc), and don't worry, your dinner guests will never know. Take a couple of peeled kiwi fruit, mash them up, and put the mixture in with the meat in a Ziploc bag or some kind of a sealed container for about twenty minutes. Too long, and the meat will turn into mush.

Pateman says there's some sort of enzyme in the fruit that is guaranteed to break down the proteins so the meat ends up butter soft. Pineapple and apparently papaya (which seems a little odd because it's never struck me as a particularly acidic fruit) also seem to have this compound, so you could use them instead if you don't have kiwis handy. I would imagine fresh fruit is the only way to go with this.

After the right amount of time has elapsed, take the meat out. You can either rinse or just pull the fruit bits off, and then cook the meat as normal--Pateman says the fruit won't change the flavour of the dish you're making (especially since you're not putting in large quantities.) Who knows, it could even add in some extra vitamins or something.

I've never been able to stand meat that requires jaws of steel to eat, and adding a chemical meat tenderizer seems gross. A physical tenderizing process with a mallet works, but sometimes the meat doesn't look very pretty afterwards. This is fairly quick and doesn't require manual labour, so it's a secret weapon I'll be keeping in my arsenal.

Try it out and tell me what you think.