Food for Thought

A lament on the erosion of my culinary heritage

BY VISHALLI ALAGAPPAN

My cheeks hurt from smiling maniacally at the camera as I took a picture with my steaming bowl of chickpeas and rice to send to my parents. This was the first recipe that I created. The chickpeas were roasted with Indian and Mediterranean spices and glazed with a generous olive oil and herb concoction and the rice was cooked with tomatoes and cilantro, borrowed from the Mexican tradition. I am ecstatic to have graduated from instant noodles and eggs on a bagel to dishes that are “adult.” As the scrumptious aroma of my meal permeated my heart, so did a whisper of sorrow. My meal isn’t comforting the way my mother’s is. Or a family friend’s, or neighbor’s.

I realized that the food I grew up with has a communal aspect to it. Many Indian dishes are time intensive/technically difficult and thus require a team effort to be prepared. No one person can make thenkuzhal or karupatti paniyaram. It’s the same for Mexican tamales and Japanese mochi. When we move away from our families, we lose this gastronomical ancestry. I recall that I was excited to have my own kitchen to try out new dishes from different cuisines and even create my own recipes. Yet I find myself yearning for my mother’s love in Italian pasta, Korean Jjigae, and my Frankensteinian dishes.

Moreover, social media exacerbates the erosion of ethnic foods. I am often victim to the online food content and these trendy foods regularly outcompete my family recipes. Indian food fluctuates in popularity with content creators and if my generation is so easily swayed, is there not a dire threat to our culinary heritage, not to mention the dilution of our foods to be more palatable to white audiences.

Although pondering how the loss of community and social media have influenced my cooking habits marred my accomplishment of rice and chickpeas, I finished my dinner with a vow to stay connected to my roots. Now, this doesn’t mean that I will throw out the tofu and nutritional yeast in my kitchen, it just means that I will mindfully bolster my cooking with my own gastronomic ancestry.