Category Archives: Culture

Kerala (Mallu) food: a party for all senses

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Today, we went over to Chris’s mom’s cousin’s building a few blocks away for a family gathering, with relatives coming together from New York, Philadelphia, Australia, and India. Given our group was a bit larger, they rented the common space lounge of their condo building for the lunch. As soon as we arrived, it was clear the dinner table was laid out for a feast, with bright green, yellow, and orange table settings, plates, and napkins. Place mats were also laid out on three other tables where the eventual food would be placed for buffet-style serving. Although we showed up close to 1 when the event was meant to start at 12:30, they told us that the Kerala (Mallu) Indian caterers in New Jersey were supposed to deliver the food by 11am. So, needless to say, they were running quite a bit late.

But when the food eventually did arrive, it was clear it was all worth the wait (Chris’s uncle and aunt told us, “Their service is horrendous. They are always, always late and it’s nearly impossible to even place the order. It all has to be paid in cash. But we put up with them because the food is so, so good!”). I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw the sheer variety of the foods delivered, but also how intoxicating it all smelled. This is what was served, with my rudimentary knowledge of the names of these actual dishes in Malayalam – 13 in total (!), in addition to the freshly fried pappadams, which were so fragrant that any time someone bit into one near me, I could smell the delicious spiced scent wafting towards me:

Nadan meen curry – Kerala style red fish curry

Kappa Puzhukku – Kerala-style mashed tapioca/cassava (to be eaten with the fish curry)

Kerala style beef cutlets with a side of raw red onions and chilis

Kerala / Malabar style parathas – “rounded” flakiness – the best!

Kerala beef fry Ularthiyathu – with big chunks of meaty coconut strips

Kerala-style chicken curry

Ghee rice with cashews and caramelized onions

Moru curry (Buttermilk/yogurt curry)

Yellow dal

Savory mango yogurt curry

Savory banana curry

Black-eyed pea and green bean thoran

Kerala red rice (AHHH, what a treat outside of Kerala!!)

I thought I had died and gone to food heaven. Every bite was beyond delicious. But because there was so much variety, it was hard to eat more than 2-3 bites of any one dish. It was truly such a treat to have this food in the middle of Manhattan, of all places — and delivered from the Northeast Capital of Indian Food: New Jersey!! But I did leave extra space for the kappa since we don’t ever see it on menus. The beef fry, with its thick, crunchy chunks of coconut, is truly one of my favorite Indian dishes, along with the fish curry — they are very unique flavors and textures. My brain wanted to eat more, but my stomach had to put the savory eating to a stop, especially since for dessert, we had my orange olive oil cake and some semiya payasam, as well, and I needed space for these.

While I was eating this sumptuous meal in the midst of all of Chris’s Mallu relatives, I thought back to the time when I was in Singapore in 2012 for my friend’s wedding. Her husband used to say that South Indian food wasn’t as prevalent in the U.S. “for a reason,” as in, it didn’t taste as good as North Indian food (but anyone knowing history and the demographics of India would know that on average, people from Delhi/the surrounds are far lesser educated than the people of Kerala, the state of India that has the highest literacy rate. So while North Indians were on average poorer and immigrating to western countries to open restaurants and pursue lower level service jobs, Keralites were moving for “knowledge work” careers and on average, not opening restaurants). So when I said I wanted to explore the Indian area of Singapore to try the South Indian food, he had rolled his eyes and said, “All South Indian food is is dosa and idli, which aren’t even that good.”

As I enjoyed every bite of my beef fry, fish curry, and Malabar-style parathas, all I could think was… how could anyone be so wrong and ignorant about how good this food is?!

Chinese cuisine: a cuisine that deeply appreciates textures and “delights”

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Back in high school, I remember a friend that I made in journalism who was a third-generation Italian American. Her mom used to make the most incredible Italian-American feasts, many of which I was invited over to enjoy for their annual Christmas celebration each year. Although she loved food, she mostly really loved Western European food and found a lot of things about Cantonese Chinese food so puzzling. At that time, most of the Chinese people in our high school were Cantonese, and most of the Chinese restaurants in the city were also Cantonese. One day, she went on a rant against bean sprouts, also known as mung bean sprouts, especially in “Chinese chicken salad.” She was debating the idea of them to several of us in the room, most of us being Chinese.

“I just don’t understand bean sprouts!” she exclaimed, annoyed, picking them out of the salad she had purchased from the food court at Stonestown Galleria, the mall next to our high school. “They have absolutely NO flavor and add nothing to this salad at all!”

I looked at her, a bit amused. “They don’t have much flavor, yes, but they add a really nice crunch to the salad.”

“Who cares?” she retorted, clearly not liking my response. “It has no flavor, so it serves NO purpose in this or anything!”

What I didn’t realize then, but I realize now, is that to many non-Chinese or non-Asians, the concept of something being “delicious” is directly related only to a flavor. So if something does not have an actual distinct taste, there is no way that something can be delicious. Adding texture doesn’t add “flavor,” and therefore isn’t valued in western food. But to the average Chinese chef or Chinese person who appreciates food, texture is actually extremely important and part of what makes something “delicious.” The root of the word “delicious” is actually “delight,” as Fuchsia Dunlop so eloquently explains in her latest book, Invitation to a Banquet. So for something to be delicious, it doesn’t necessarily have to have a “taste,” but instead, it just needs to bring delight — if you stick with the definition of the word. Chinese people appreciate all textures, whether it’s a crispiness from a just deep-fried prawn, the crackle of a roast chicken skin, or the creamy wobble of a custard. Those are textures that Westerners generally appreciate. However, what Chinese people appreciate that the average Westerner will not are textures like the sliminess of taro (I LOVE THIS), or the crispiness of silver ear fungus (a clear fungus/mushroom that is oftentimes in Chinese tonic or dessert soups that I grew up with, but has virtually no flavor whatsoever; I had an addiction to this stuff as a teenager).

Fuchsia Dunlop asserts that one is unable to fully begin appreciating Chinese cuisine if one is not able to appreciate mouth feel, or what Chinese refer to as 口感, or kǒugǎn. You must be able to appreciate the pleasure of texture, otherwise Chinese food in its purest, most authentic forms will be incomprehensible to you. As someone who studied 3.5 years of Mandarin Chinese in college and grew up knowing how to speak Toisan and understand some Cantonese, I will never be fully fluent or literate in the language. But even if I were, I found out that even the most fluent, literate Chinese person may not even know how rich their language is, as there is an endless lexicon of Chinese words not just for “mouth feel” but also for different ways of cutting and cooking foods that are unique by REGION or town of China; a Sichuanese chef may have specific words for julienning vegetables that just do not translate up north in Beijing! I was just blown away by this part of the book.

One of the great interpreters of Chinese culture for western readers Lin Yutang wrote in his book My Country and My People: “If there is anything we are serious about, it is neither religion nor learning, but food. We openly acclaim eating as one of the few joys in this human life.” So I thought back to my high school friend’s diatribe against mung bean sprouts while reading the section about mouth feel. I hope she has moved on from her narrow view of bean sprouts and embraced the texture; who knows, maybe since then, she’s actually eaten more varieties of Chinese food and gets why that “crunch” is important in the context of that salad. But if she hasn’t, I suppose she will just be one of the many westerners who is never able to fully embrace Chinese food due to her own mental block the way Fuchsia subtly warns against.

Chinese public immersion preschools in Manhattan

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This morning, we did a couple tours of 3-4K schools in the Manhattan Chinatown area, one of which is a Mandarin Chinese immersion program that is also part of the Universal Pre-K program in New York City. The class is taught in English and in Mandarin, with emphasis on verbal Chinese communication (listening and speaking). In the afterschool component of the program if you opt in, the teachers support and teach children how to write in beginner-level Mandarin Chinese. I loved looking at the walls and seeing all the activities and art projects these young kids did in Chinese. Given the season, they made Valentines for their mothers and fathers in Chinese, did some painting and paper craft projects to depict spring (春 chun) in Chinese, and also decorated dragons for the Lunar New Year / Year of the Dragon. From the book shelf, it also looks like they get story time in both English and Chinese, as well, and sing Chinese nursery rhymes and songs. I will say that I was a little surprised there was far more English than Chinese on the walls, but it sounds like given this is all public/DOE run, they had to comply by those standards.

In an ideal world, Kaia would be fully bilingual; hell, I would be fully bilingual, too. Looking back, I always wish that I was put in an immersion program like this one where I was exposed to both culture and language from a young age. I got plenty of exposure to culture given I grew up with my grandma and followed all her traditions, plus our schools were very progressive and proactively taught us about Lunar New Year, along with other cultural traditions of other countries. I was exposed to Toisan and Cantonese through my grandma and my relatives, but I didn’t learn Mandarin until I was in college, and that learning was fully my choice. In some ways, it does make me a bit sad that Kaia will be very unlikely to know or understand any Cantonese or Toisan at all; those are actually my father tongue languages, not Mandarin. Though language does evolve, understanding a language is not just simply understanding a language: knowing a second language also exposes you to cultural nuances that you cannot simply know just by exposure to cultural traditions. Chinese is notorious (and famous) for its endless idioms and word plays, and understanding them brings you closer to understanding the culture itself better.

The 3K applications are due on March 1. Who knows if Kaia will place anywhere at all, much less a Mandarin immersion program. But I do know that the ideal situation would be if she had consistent Chinese language exposure outside of my barely-basic Mandarin skills.