This is a nice little article I enjoyed writing for the upcoming edition of the East-West Center Cookbook, a collaborative effort of East-West Center participants from all corners of the Asia-Pacific region. There is a fantastic variety of delectable recipes every year in the cookbook, but since all of my recipes involve using a microwave I was told submitting an article might be more useful. So here it is.
Food. Culture. Two very important, and seemingly different, aspects of our lives. One keeps us alive and healthy (or very unhealthy in the American experience), and the other defines who we are. The first is a very concrete entity that is easily defined and identified, and the other is an abstract term used by lazy scholars to label characteristics they can’t be bothered to more specifically define. And yet these two terms are strongly related, though it’s hard to identify which has a stronger influence on the other. Is it culture that shapes and molds what the people of a certain locality consume on a regular basis, or is it the foods that they consume on a regular basis that help define the culture? And what do concepts like food culture and cultural foods really mean? And why can’t George Bush even spell the word culture? These are tough questions to answer, and so I’m not even going to attempt to answer them myself. I will leave them in their rhetorical state and let them serve as an overarching theme for this brief essay – if it can truly be called that – about my own experiences with food and culture here at Hale Manoa.
I still remember the first time I walked into Hale Manoa’s Ewa ninth floor kitchen. I was amazed at what I found, but less by the mélange of tantalizing aromas and potpourri of lively languages emanating from the kitchen than by the simple fact that there wasn’t a single woman present! All of the sweet odors gently caressing my nostrils were the products of men, and not old, sweaty, bearded men like the “professional chefs” manning the grills at McDonalds, but young men like myself. They could all cook, and they even seemed to be enjoying themselves as they were doing it!
Over the next few months, I too began to spend a vast amount of time in the kitchen “trying” to cook. Of course my pasta and meat sauce entrée was no match for the delectable delicacies my neighbors were whipping up on the adjacent stove, but I eagerly observed their methods and began to experiment with new delicacies, often with hazardous, but usually edible, results. I also began to distinguish between the cuisines of various nationalities from just a glance or whiff of the ingredients. In fact, I remember clearly that fateful day when I first ventured near the Vietnamese students at the far end of the kitchen. I was just minding my own business and trying to open my can of pasta sauce, but of course nobody bothered to tell me that the kitchen can opener had been broken for fourteen years. Just after I finally managed to puncture a tiny hole in the lid of my sauce, a horribly fetid smell assaulted my nose. I thought somebody had just dragged a 200-pound fish into the kitchen that had been dead and rotting in the sun for as long as our kitchen can opener had been broken. At first I thought I had bought the wrong pasta sauce. I checked the label to make sure I hadn’t bought the “dead rotten fish” flavor instead of my usual garlic and onions flavor. Then I figured my pasta sauce had gone bad. I picked up the can and sniffed it repeatedly, but it smelled like garlic and onions. So I turned around, half expecting to find a rotten fish hanging from the ceiling behind me, but all I saw were three Vietnamese students chatting and enjoying a laugh as they cooked up a feast.
Then it caught my eye, the little yellow bottle with Vietnamese, Thai, and Chinese written all over it. One of the guys picked it up and liberally squirted the contents into his frying pan. The instant it struck the pan, the horrid fish smell returned in force. I ran to the guy and yanked the bottle from his hand as if it were a poisonous snake about to strike at his jugular. He recoiled in shock, and I politely told him that his sauce had gone bad. He didn’t understand. I told him that his sauce smelled like dead rotten fish. He thanked me for the compliment and snatched the bottle back from my grasp. I was confused. One of the other Vietnamese reached into his own cupboard, produced a similar looking bottle, and held it up in front of my face. There on the label in large English letters were the words “Fish Sauce”. Oh, hello Mr. Fish Sauce, nice to meet you. With my nose pinched closed with one hand, I used my free hand to tuck my tail between my legs and run back to my pasta.
There were numerous other occasions like this one which helped teach me about the various cuisines of the world, and the unique ingredients and methods involved in cooking them. Like the Indian guy on the stove behind me whose special curry pot emitted the sound of a massive explosion every time it produced steam, causing me more than once to fall to the floor petrified. And recently I was fortunate enough to have my first Bhutanese meal, which was so incredibly spicy that I got to experience the power of the Bhutanese peppers twice (I won’t expound on that). And I’ve learned from my Chinese neighbors that tofu can actually be made to taste better than a bar of soap. And in return I’ve taught my neighbors how to cook an entire meal using just one little microwave.
Most importantly, I’ve learned about the cultures and traditions of my fellow kitchen-mates and Hale Manoa denizens through the sharing of food, and I’ve come to have a broader understanding of their way of viewing the world through the ways they cook and the things they eat. Obviously I didn’t glean all of that information just from watching them fry up some food or by sniffing their unique ingredients, but I can assure you that sitting down to have a seafood meal cooked by a Japanese neighbor where the main dish is still moving can lead to some pretty interesting conversations on differences in culture. So here at the end of my essay, I’m not any closer to answering my original questions of how food and culture interact, but I can assure you from my experiences living and cooking here at Hale Manoa that they are vastly interconnected. Through food I’ve come to have a greater understanding and appreciation for various cultures, and in understanding those various cultures I’ve certainly come to enjoy a broader palette of foods. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go buy some more fish sauce. I’m cooking a new type of pasta for my Vietnamese friends tonight.
