SUPERFICIALLY EDIBLE

When I first returned to the United States I had almost no clue what Americans ate.
My exposure to white-folks food had been limited to what my parents cooked.
My father did roasts, goulash, garlicky Italian stuff, and curries.
My mother, having grown up in the day when officers’ families had servants, and then spending a decade and a half in the navy, or boarding houses while at Berkeley, lacked any significant culinary experience and inspiration.

My mother did most of the cooking.

When I was going through her study after she died I found a small notebook with eight "recipes" in it. For several years, every week we had eaten six of those dishes in precise order, Sunday through Friday. The seventh recipe was paprika chicken for special occasions, the eighth was risotto – which she tried to master for over a year and a half. The result was always inedible, but atrocious in a different way each time.

[Risotto: Largely as a result of my mother’s experimentation, I have not touched risotto since . There are a few other dishes I also avoid, having eaten enough of the United States Military Family's Version to last me a lifetime: leathery pork chops, shepherd’s pie, tuna casserole, meatloaf with hard lumps of cheese within, Yankee pot-roast, and rubbery omelette. Similarly, I also eschew Welsh Rabbit (inedible!), creamed chipped beef on toast (unimaginably nasty), and chili con carne (" two pounds ground round, two onions minced, a large quantity of extremely old and stale Spice-Islands chilipowder, and a bay leaf ").
Yes, I know that chili can be very good – I myself do a nice chile verde with chunks of pork in a sauce composed of roasted Anaheims and Mulatto Isleños for flavour, with various other green chilies to tailor the heat level precisely. I also like son-of-a-bitch stew.]


Saturday was always my father’s turn to cook. Usually curry, side dishes, fluffy rice.
It made up for previous suffering.

My father was somewhat relieved when I finally took over the kitchen during the week. Disconcerted, too.
My culinary "knowledge" at that time included a complete reading of the Larousse Gastronomique, an Israeli cookbook that mr. Kater had once gifted us, a few Eastern European recipes gleaned from different sources, and absolutely massive exposure to Indonesian and Chinese-Indonesian food at my aunties' houses. So the results veered rather wildly between classic French and something no Frenchman would touch with a ten foot pole.

Crepes with coconut beef, taugeh, and chilies? No problem.
Stirfried stringbeans with chilipaste, peanuts, and sugar? Okay, a bit weird, but at least not overcooked.
Blanched crunchy vegetables with a sweet-hot-fermented shrimp paste-chili dip? Let’s NOT do that again.

When my mother was home from the hospital, I would cook ‘normal’ food.
No chilies, no spices, no vinegar. No fishpaste. No flavour.

Two years after her death I returned to the United States, and boarded with my grandmother in Berkeley, whose cooking was halfway between ‘bachelor’ and ‘English’ – she had lived alone for nearly four decades, ever since the boys (my father and my uncle) had gone off to college, to war, back to college. She had a rather casual attitude towards food in consequence.
I once saw her time stringbeans in the pressure cooker for half an hour – which was how long it would take her to do something elsewhere in the house.
I have no idea what the result was, I ate out that evening.

In the decades since then, I have finally found out what Americans eat.

Thai food. Indian food. Cantonese food. Pizza. Sushi. Wraps, pockets, and burritos. Tacos, eggrolls, trailmix. Pho, fried wontons, and vegan tofu scramble.
Tofurky, frito pie, and tapas.
Teriyaki jerky, cheddar chips, diamond almonds, pickled eggs.
Plus icecream.

TGIFs, The Olive Garden, Birdcage Wok, Roundtable, Bob’s Big Boy, Mickey Ds, Denny’s Domino’s, Hardee’s, In-n-out, Outback, Sonic, Subway. Etcetera’s.
All with special sauce.

Heinz, Tabasco, or honey glaze on everything else.
Or all three combined, in which case it’s barbecue.


* * * * *

This evening, there will be a fried-chicken cook-off at a place I go to regularly.
Should be interesting.
I love culinary discovery.


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