ABSTRACT
The only Eskimo dish I know is boiled seal meat, but you are not likely to find that in the market. It should be full of blood (never bled as we do our meat), boiled in a mixture of sea and fresh water, half and half. A certain amount of blubber should be in the pot for flavouring. The meat is delicious when cooked fresh after the kill, and the broth is perhaps the best. Cold seal meat is delicious with pickles. But, of course, I've learned to like it. Some complain that it tastes of 'fish'. . . that is, not as fish themselves taste, but with the taste of animals (say ducks) that eat fish. The seal liver lacks this flavour and is as tender and delicate as calves' liver, and I've tried it. I should admit, however, that I have never learned to boil seal meat as well as the Eskimos do - nor, for that matter, as well as the Tlingit Indians do. Our tastes are similar in the matter, but I evidently don't know just how much salt and how much fresh water to use: 'half-and-half may be just a saying. When some Tlingit Indians cooked some fresh seal on a picnic, the older woman and I agreed that the cooks hadn't added enough blubber. So I know my taste is right, even if my method isn't always perfect.
