WRITING CULTURE 2012: Film, Food & Beyond

Worms…I mean onions on the table
Source: http://www.melaniecooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/sauteed-red- onions.jpg

As a little girl my mother fed me some eggplant and cooked slimy onions…at the same time. Needless to say, I was traumatized. The slimy taste of the onions  combined with the disgusting smell of the eggplant scarred me for life.  It did not help when a boy from next door tricked me into eating a burnt onion which looked like meat to me. While he had a laugh I was once again shaking in disgust over the slimy onion sliding down my throat. This all happened when I was six.

Of course, I was a disgrace to my Dominican mother who can eat anything and everything.  She always tells me I should eat everything  that is available, including onions, in order to survive. Personally, I’d rather die.

Let’s talk about the onion. First of all, sometimes they’re purple, sometimes they’re white, sometimes they make you cry? Maybe i’m thinking about it too much but why would I cook with something that brings tears to my eyes? Second of all, is the feel of onions. If they are crunchy, the taster bursts out of it like a lemon right in your mouth. It is the most bitter taste on this earth. Followed by the smell, it is completely unbearable.

I should make something very clear, I do like onion flavored chips because the smell and the taste are very subtle. However, I have a problem with onion rings. Why are these restaurants trying to trick me? You give me a deep fried onion that is supposed to taste better but inside is the usual slimy onion? It’s like that boy from my neighborhood all over again, except this time I feel betrayed because I actually paid for this experience.

In conclusion, onions do not make sense. I don’t understand why they are useful or why people eat them. They physically seek to repel any human from eating them. They make you cry, they give you bad breath and they feel like worms slowly dragging themselves down your throat and out to lay eggs on your unsuspecting stomach. How many signs must the universe give to human beings to alert them to the predator that is the onion?

(Image: pattieproject.wordpress.com)

As a recent British Jamaican transplant to Brooklyn (aka Little Jamaica) it’s no surprise that I’m passionate about the representation of our culture, especially the food, but with over 50% of Americans with Jamaican heritage residing in New York, why haven’t we made a bigger culinary impact on the mainstream foodie map here?

New York is one of THE most cosmopolitan cities on the planet so ethnic isn’t a just a pretentious food genre, it’s what we’re all eating in this town.

Zagat’s latest guide however lists only 1 Jamaican establishment in the best of Caribbean restaurants review (by contrast 7 were Cuban) and Time Out magazine’s doesn’t even list Caribbean as a cuisine category.

This is crazy, when by contrast back in July, 10,000 people made it down to Roy Wilkin’s Park in Queens for the 2^nd annual Grace Jamaican Jerk festival. People LOVE Jerk!

This lack of mainstream respect may be down to a few key things, well known food bloggers have only recently started to venture off ‘The Island’ and then only to the most gentrified of neighborhoods, so aside from places like Negril’s and Miss Lily’s (the restaurant whose very existence is much to the chagrin of Vogue’s Anna Wintour) few other less upscale but still very tasty joints get promoted.

The core customers often think their grandmother, Aunt, cousin, uncle can do it better, so blogging or tweeting about the latest store bought curry goat dish really isn’t on the to-do list, and frankly the surly, you better know what you want because I haven’t got time to answer your questions about what the hell is on (or most likely off) the menu today attitude, of some of the smaller establishments don’t make for the most welcoming of visits.

It’s not all bad, The Huffington Post just named Goat as the in-meat for 2012 but in the meantime I am going to brave the bad service, inaudible mumbling and get my chicken and plantain to go before, the hipsters push the price up.

As a Chinese American one of the many privileges I’ve had to enjoy from both cultures is their food. I can get into a bowl of noodles just as easily as I can churn through a helping of mash potatoes any day. But it pains me to know that the bridge between the two cultures themselves isn’t nearly so complete. Because when Americans typically think about Chinese food they’re trapped in the box of the image above.

Having had real home-made and formal dining Chinese food the image above does not qualify in any way beyond appearance. It’s a box of salt, sauce, and oil turned out of a fryer is what it basically is. Chinese takeout gives real Chinese food a bad name, allowing Americans to forget about the authentic version they could have if they took the time to look. A well-seasoned, evenly balanced, and thought out meal with a variety of different textures and flavors that can sing more then one note and can actually be good for you.