The Food of the World

In the "About This Blog" section, I alluded to the fact that the food of Israel is really the food of the Mediterranean region, as Israel is a melting pot to peoples from all over Europe, Africa, and even the Americas.  I spoke about the proliferation and popularity of vegetable dishes of every kind in the Mediterranean, and indeed, the legendary healthfulness that the Mediterranean diet is known for.

Today I have a slightly different angle.  My husband and I had lunch at a local Indian restaurant that has become one of our favorites.  We typically go for the buffet with offerings as diverse as lentil stew with potatoes, to spinach with white cheese; rice and lentil crepes with a potatoe and vegetable filling, to chicken cooked in a spicy sauce; chutneys of every stripe; salads of sprouts with onions, rice with cardamon and fried cashew nuts, spiced fried eggplant served with raita, goat stew with carrots - the list goes on and on.  I mentioned to my husband that anyone who claims not to like vegetables is a fool, or lazy, or probably both.  There is such variety, and it is so well prepared and so tasty, I cannot imagine some vegetables not appealing to the taste buds of just about everyone.  I rhetorically asked my husband how such a thing was possible, that in the United States, what passes for "vegetables" is invariably presented as steamed - or worse, as French fries?  He answered in four words: America is cowboy food.

Admittedly, that is an oversimplification.  But in truth, America, or more precisely, the United States, does not have a rich history of cooking.  Our nation is a mere 230 or so years old, and the Pilgrims came from impoverished England and Ireland, where their diet consisted mostly of sheep and potatoes.  They arrived in New England where they remained poor for years, then the wagon train took many pioneers across a land infested with the American Indians.  The American Indians, for their part, grew corn and chased turkeys, grew sweet potatoes and tomatoes, and supplemented their diets with some nuts and fruit, but theirs was a limited diet to what they could find locally.  The gold rush miners came next, and their lives were characterized by shanty towns with muddy roads, and their focus was on striking it rich, not on cultivating the land.  They had precious little to eat, and subsisted on cured bacon, flour, sugar, steaks from their cattle and baked beans.  This country was built by pioneers with an eye toward independence from religious oppression and lust for gold.  Their lifestyles did not include many parties or entertaining foreign dignitaries, activities which might encourage a variety of food offerings.  The Spanish Conquistadores and Columbus undoubtedly contributed some variety to the local foods, but not enough to entrench fresh foods into the American consciousness.

Korean food is marked by heavily pickled and spicy vegetables that evolved because of lack of refrigeration and very hard winters.  Pickling preserved the vegetables, so they could be added to bowls of rice when they could not be grown in the snow, and the use of hot chilis kept the people warm, thereby preserving heating fuel.

The Japanese also have leaned to pickle vegetables, but since their winters are less harsh, they eat fewer hot and spicy pickled vegetables than the Koreans.  The Japanese diet's hallmark is fish and rice, to which mountain vegetables are added as condiments.  Still, because fish is expensive in Japan (as is everything else), rice is the mainstay of their diet, to which are added little morsels of other foods.  Rice itself is made into many different food items, including pancakes and dumplings, puddings and soups.

And so it is in the ancient land of India which has a society that by some measures is 4000 years old.  India is also very large geographically, and every region has its own agriculture and cooking style, moving from one region to the next.  Foods are used in religious ceremonies all over the world according to each culture, and thus assumes a special place in people's eating habits.  India is plentiful in spices that it has used to trade for centuries, and those spices appear prominently in its cuisine.  As ubiquitous as olive oil, feta cheese, lamb and yogurt are on the Mediterranean table, so are spices of every ilk featured in Indian cooking.  The results of such variety in cultures and cooking are stunning.  It is for that reason that I claim that Americans should be exposed to vegetables in ways that abolish the plain steaming of a turnip, and borrow from some ancient culture some of their tricks of the trade.