| What drives our tastebuds? |
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| Food | |
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Gabby Malpas You can't blame my parents - they were war generation people of English/New Zealand descent (Pakehas) and they didn't know any Asian people at that time so they had no exposure to that style of eating. Dining out in NZ in the 70s was fairly limited. Chinese food was limited to sweet and sour pork and lemon chicken (which I bet was as Chinese as KFC). Later on, when the restaurant scene in NZ expanded to include good Vietnamese and Chinese restaurants, my parents tried the food but it wasn't really to their English palates. Food was something that was necessary (there were 10 children to feed so fancy stuff wasnt an option). It needed to be wholesome, filling and above all, cheap. In New Zealand it was easy to get potatoes, chops and cheese. Funny how expensive these things are in London! Since childhood I've had a fascination for what I perceived to be Chinese food. On the very odd occasion that oriental dishes were on offer at social events, I would head straight for those, even though I had never seen them before or was unfamiliar with the ingredients involved. I loved the salty and spicy tastes and the strange new ingredients such as rice noodles in soup. As an adult I have sampled food in many South East Asian countries and prefer cooking in a wok (which does turn out excellent scrambled eggs). Trying to narrow down the reasons why I prefer Asian food over 'English', I've come up with the following: 1) texture: slippery noodles and rice flour steamed dimsum, crunchy vegetables Question: What is authentic? What makes food authentic? And is there such a thing as authentic cookery? I often read about and hear about authentic Chinese cuisine. I am ignorant of proper Chinese cookery but I know what I like and have some favorites (OK, so shoot me now). I read books, scan web sites and pay close attention to the contents of other shoppers baskets in Chinatown. But I can't help thinking that the food I cook at home, sometimes closely following a recipe, and the food I often eat in Chinatown restaurants must be very different to the food normally served in China or in Chinese homes. Being a non-chinese speaker/reader, my options are limited but I have to make the point that Ive never seen fried rice served in any form, in Chinese movies (where they inevitably include a banquet scene), nor sweet and sour anything. I have my doubts that this is somehow a bad thing. I couldn't imagine a decent banquet in Chinatown or a night on the sofa with a Chinese takeaway without at least one helping of egg fried rice. I'm sure many cuisines throughout the world have evolved to include other cultures' preferences or just the available ingredients and I've read that Chinese food preferences have spread through South East Asia with the emigration of Chinese nationals for centuries. And then of course, didn't pasta originate from the noodles Marco Polo found in his voyage to China? Is it wrong to adapt and improvise traditional recipes to include whatever is available to the person cooking the meal? The national dish of England is now claimed to be curry but I bet many peoples perceptions of curry would be completely different to a restaurant owner in Delhi. Is this a bad thing? What is trendy? When I was travelling through SE Asia, all the trendy young things around town were hanging out in KFC, MacDonalds and Burger King (I know this because sad as I am, once every few weeks I used to crave burgers and fries). In London, when I arrived 13 years ago, some of the trendiest places to be were the noodle bars of Soho and Thai restaurants famous for atmosphere and decor as much as taste. You had to have a fairly high level of disposable income to sit in KFC and eat a burger in South East Asia, and it's the same, to sit in some of the more highly regarded asian eateries in the UK. It's probably not wise to attempt to draw comparisions with a KFC and an upmarket London restaurant with a waiting list, a mile long... but both types of places have to some extents experienced the same level of enthusiasm (though from different levels of age groups). What an atmosphere I love turning up to London's chinatown on the weekend for dimsum. Normally it is myself and my partner or a friend. I watch fascinated, as around 3 generations of a family assemble, sit down and start a meal which I'm guessing is a regular occurance. The beaming grandparents, chatting parents and the children - the older of which constantly chat into their mobiles. But why? Is this just a personal preference for things I have observed? How does food bring people together? |
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I had a 'western' upbringing and relationship with food. Not that this is a bad thing you understand, it was just the way it was. I was Chinese but I was bought up on a diet of meat and two vegetables - solid 'english' fare. Now that I'm an adult, I realise that many Chinese people growing up in Britain/US/Australasia were also familiar with the meat and two veg diet - but the difference was that they were probably fed traditional Chinese cuisine as well. 
And why is there such an emphasis on authentic ingredients? It makes me laugh to hear people who call themselves foodies, wax lyrical about the authenticity of ingredients they found in the local newly-opened Vietnamese caf in some trendy part of town reminding them of that wonderful little shack they found off the beaten track in XXXX Hell. I reckon if all that shack owner had was a couple of tesco's medium white slices, some eggs and a bottle of Heinz, he could have knocked them up an authentic fried egg sandwich but of course it would have been named in Vietnamese. | < Prev | Next > |
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