Where do you travel through your stomach?
Indigenous food directly connects you to a place–the place literally assimilates into your body–but it also works the other way around. When you’re home, food can bring you places by bringing those places into you.
The standard Western supermarket has a wall of imported chocolate offering escape. Goya (and competitors) often claim half an aisle, and it’s no longer a surprise to see basmati rice in Wal-Mart.
Wine stores are like a miniature planet. You can go from South Africa to Chile to France to Australia with just a few steps. Each bottle promises the fruit of a particular recipe of sun and soil, and the local bubbles and buzz that come with it. Beers and booze can be destinations too: Sierra Nevada, Scotch, Porto, etc.
Specialty grocery stores (you know, that bodega down on the corner) take the possibilities further. Instead of just a taste or a treat, you can sustain yourself on products of, say, Colombia, Vietnam, or India, down to the after-dinner DVD and bedtime toothpaste.
Which places do you welcome into your kitchen? Places you’ve been, places you plan to go? How have your travels affected your at-home menu? Can you resist a mango from Brazil? Do you have a secret stash of lime pickle? Or do you avoid the temptation of imported foods because of the impact of burnt jet fuel?
Photo by Hazy Jenius via Flickr
Flip side from last week — McDonald’s and the “authentic” travel argument
November 11th, 2009 at 3:21 pm
I usually have more jars and bottles of sauces, oils, pastes, and powders than actual food in my kitchen, covering the flavors of the American South, Italy, Spain, India, Vietnam, Korea, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Indonesia and beyond.
You know you’ve become too obsessed with Southeast Asian dishes when you have two types of shrimp paste, plus fish sauce and anchovy paste. Also a dozen ways of delivering heat: Korean chili paste, Chinese chili garlic paste, Thai chili paste, Mexican hotsauces (3), an US hotsauce (1), ground chili powder (3), dried chilis (2).
Four ways of eating one type of nut: American peanut butter, ground peanuts, ready-made gado gado sauce, and actual peanuts. My freezer is packed with sliced galangal, ginger, lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves, curry leaves. I have strong opinions about which brand of canned coconut milk is best, but pressed I also have powdered coconut milk, or dried toasted for sprinkling on top of whatever.
I’ve used all these things at least once in the last two weeks.
Using imported food products is no worse than someone in New York drinking California wine, so I’m not letting myself get nuts over it.
November 11th, 2009 at 5:32 pm
Living with foreigners gives you an array of foods, and in a way, helps you continue your “travels” when back in your home country. I’ve lived with Mexicans, Indians, and Taiwanese since returning last. In this way, I took 8 months of international travel and lengthened it (from a certain point of view) to two years.
A++++++++ would recommend!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
November 11th, 2009 at 8:43 pm
Great post, Brett. Like Lauren, I have condiments galore in my kitchen – Ras el hanout spice mix from Morocco, Lisano sauce from Costa Rica, Korean chili paste, and tequila from Mexico. I cook internationally, loving Chicken Mole just as much as a good Asian stir fry, Japanese okonomiyaki, or Moroccan tagine.
As you so eloquently said, cooking meals at home that you’ve had abroad can bring you back to those places, reliving memories of good food and the company you shared it with. Every time I pull out our tagine (which refers both to the vessel, and the stew), I remember the dinner we shared in a family home in M’Hamid on the edge of the Sahara. Going to the Japanese grocery to get the okonomiyaki mix along with some cabbage brings me back to sitting in a small restaurant in Shinjuku.
Photographs provide memories for the visual sense, but food can be tasted, smelled, heard, and touched.
November 15th, 2009 at 1:16 pm
@Lauren and Ted: Thanks for the detailed comments. The accumulation of specifics like the ones you’ve noted here really helps bring out the point I was going for. (And also makes me HUNGRY…)
@Nicolai: Agreed! It would have taken me a lot longer to get to India if I hadn’t lived with an Indian, and I wouldn’t have had as much culinary motivation to make the trip. Like how you point out that it also applies upon return…