A few weeks ago, we had a crisis at home. Sofi was demanding Dino-nuggets, but we were out of ketchup. This took us by surprise. Like most households with preschoolers, we buy tons of ketchup. That day, I decided to capitalize on the crisis. What an opportunity to teach Sofi some food history! So I put the question to her, “Do you know where ketchup is from?” Sofi grinned and without missing a beat, she proclaimed, “From tomatoes!” Well, yes and no. ----- Nowadays, ketchup is synonymous with tomato ketchup. But this was *not* always the case. Centuries ago, people made ketchup with cherries , kidney beans, mushrooms, even fish. The many faces of ketchup offers some food for thought (as well as a sugar rush). Unlike many of the other culinary products that we have seen this term (for example, biryani and Central Asian plov ), ketchup looks nothing like its ancestors. Think of little Sofi and her great-great-great grandfather, August Schuckman (1827-1907). Two centuries can do a lot to the way family members look. In Sofi’s case, the Chinese, native American, and Spanish genes mellowed out that Schuckman jaw. The passing of time can also make a difference to foods: not just the way foods appear, but also how they taste. Sometimes, there can be no family resemblance whatsoever. Ketchup represents an extreme case of how much a food can mutate. It also illuminates how those mutations can open up novel gastronomical possibilities. Yes, possibilities. If you’re skeptical, read on: I’m making a case for ketchup. ----- Today, our story begins not in the Americas, the original homeland of tomatoes and corn syrup, two pillars of the Columbian Exchange . Instead, the journey starts in the ancient coasts and rivers of Mainland Southeast Asia. I didn’t say China, Vietnam, or Thailand. In many cases, foods — which are often solutions to particular environments — transcend national borders. In the case of southern coastal China, its climate and natural resources resemble northern Vietnam more than northern China. Thousands of years ago, few of the indigenous inhabitants of this larger region would have called themselves Chinese or Vietnamese. Then known as the ‘many Yue’ (or Viets), the ordinary people of the region spoke languages ancestral to modern Thai, Hmong, and Vietnamese. The food of this part of the world was quite different from anything that we have seen thus far. Mainland Southeast Asia is rice and fish country. Unlike the lands further north, which are suitable for cultivating millet, wheat, and soybeans, this area is damp. It was a bad place to raise horses and sheep, but an area where tropical fruits like lychees and seafood abound. Think shrimp and anchovies. The indigenous inhabitants of the region took advantage of the bounty from local waters. They realized that they could ferment aquatic fare by salting it to make a rich savory paste. Over the centuries, those pungent and savory sauces have morphed into amber-colored fish sauce, the nuoc mam of Vietnamese cooking and nam pla of Thai cuisine. (Click here for a video that shows the process). Nuoc mam (Picture by Linh Trinh) Lemongrass Pork Skewers (Picture by Linh Trinh) Seafood in Xiamen, S. Fujian (Nov 2019) More Seafood in Xiamen (Nov 2019) Beginning in the tenth century AD, people from southern coastal China, from what is modern-day Fujian and Guangdong, began to migrate to Southeast Asia. Some of them, like my ancestors, landed in colonial Malaysia and Indonesia, then known by the quaint name of the East Indies. By the eighteenth century, these emigres lived in large numbers in Maritime Southeast Asia. They brought with them this ancient tradition of making brine from salted fish, which in the local Fujian dialect (Hokkein) went by the name of kê-tisap 鮭汁 . In Indonesia, that sauce goes by kecap ikan , a loan word from the original southern Chinese dialect. Kecap now means ‘sauce’ more generally. ----- This is where the British enter the story. If you’re wondering why you haven’t heard much about them yet this term, it’s because they were latecomers to Asian imperialism. But the eighteenth century was their moment. They moved into Maritime Southeast Asia, where the Dutch, Spanish, and Portuguese were busy competing to take over other people's lands. There, the English and Dutch encountered fish sauce. The British in particular took a shine to the stuff. They understood that fish sauce did wonders for making their ocean provisions (stale crackers and dried ham) more palatable. Ketchup also had another virtue: it kept forever. This was a special plus in a time before modern refrigeration. Soon enough, everyone in London wanted ketchup. According to Dan Jurnasky, merchants made good money shipping this sauce through the Indian Ocean trade route back to merry old England. Discerning merchants knew that the best stuff came from a place in Northern Vietnam, but they also understood that the sauce could be bought cheaply from Canton and sold for a fortune back home. The high cost — and prestige — of ketchup spurred home cooks to do a little improvising (or l ocal adapting ). English housewives began thinking of ways of getting the same umami bomb for a fraction of the cost. So they used cheaper, locally-abundant ingredients. One recipe from the mid-eighteenth century betrays the fishy origins of ketchup. It takes a pound of anchovies, mixing it with more familiar English flavoring like strong beer , mace, cloves, pepper, ginger, shallots, and mushrooms. Other recipes, however, got more creative. They added wine and nutmeg, claiming that this aromatic and alcoholic fish mix would keep on journeys “all the way to the Indies.” There were also nuttier options like Walnut Ketchup (1771), and shell-fish concoctions: Oyster Ketchup (1814), Mussel Ketchup (1887), Herring Ketchup (1814). Liver Ketchup (I'm really not joking). These fishy sauces and their many knock-offs were also a hit in America. Many early American versions of ketchup remained close to their savory roots. These include recipes for Mushroom Ketchup (1728). Click on the link to see actors dressed up as colonial settlers. The nineteenth century witnessed the rise of fruit-based ketchup. Believe it or not, the Americans weren't to blame for this -- the British did it! Peach Ketchup (1861), for example, represented a competitor to another plentiful American fruit: the tomato. Interestingly, the earliest versions of tomato ketchup were not yet cloying sweet. Home cooks still used some anchovies. The nineteenth century was big in ketchup history. Two things happened. First Americans dropped the fish from the tomato-based sauce. Then some home cooks realized that adding a little sugar was helpful for the fermentation process. They then balanced the recipe with additional vinegar. This, of course, proved to be a slippery slope. As sugar consumption skyrocketed, Americans did a strong pour with the sugar...into the ketchup. Then capitalism got into the action. The early twentieth century was the Era of Too Many Tomatoes. Farmers had so many tomatoes they didn’t know what to do with them. Luckily, a tycoon named Mr. Heinz took advantage of new canning and bottling technologies and turned the tomato surplus into a personal fortune. An American classic was born. Since then, American housewives have given up making their own ketchup; cherry and peach ketchup have since been relegated to the footnotes of food history. ----- Most historians end here with the usual warnings about tooth decay and the Americanization of the global palette. I'll end on an up-lifting note. Our fruity mutant did not stay at home. It went to la belle France and encountered Monsieur Hermes, who put him into a ketchup macaron (this is actually real). It also followed American colonial influence and found its roots. It returned to the rivers and coasts that gave birth to its savory ancestors. Ketchup Macaron (Source: Jesse Cheng, 3-21) In the 1960s, sweet American ketchup started infiltrating Taiwan, an island settled by Hokkein speakers in the 1700s. The great television chef, Fu Peimei 傅培梅; (1931-2004), prepared sweet and sour pork with ketchup. She was not alone in loving the stuff. Today, people on the island commonly make a sweet and savory sauce with ketchup, which they drizzle on Taiwanese-style tempura . Sweet and sour pork in Hong Kong (Nov 2017) Squirrel Fish (Suzhou, May 2017) Haishan jiang (Taiwanese Ketchup), Feb 23, 2021 Vietnamese cooks have also taken a liking to the stuff. Andrea Nyugen has begun adding ketchup to fish and shrimp sauce. She is not alone. The combination of nuoc mam and ketchup features in modern incarnations of Bún riêu , a crab, pork, and tomato noodle soup. According to Linh Trinh, a PhD student, the ketchup substitutes for more traditional Achiote Oil ( Dau Mau Dieu ). In the Philippines, a former American colony, people make ketchup with local bananas (which are more plentiful than tomatoes). They add ketchup to Filipino-styled spaghetti , a dish that marries banana ketchup to fish sauce. We have come full circle. No longer a mere knock off, ketchup has come into its own. It has even begun spawning its own mutants. Banana ketchup is just the beginning. And Sofi is curious about how it will look — and taste — after it makes another turn around the globe. Sources: Erica F. Brindley, Ancient China and the Yue: Perceptions and Identities in the Southern Frontier c. 400 BCE- 50 CE (Cambridge University Press, 2015). Dan Jurnasky, The Language of Food: A Linguistic Reads the Menu (W.W. Norton, 2015). Smith Andrew F. Smith, Pure Ketchup: A History of America's National Condiment, with Recipes (University of South Carolina Press, 1996), 3-32. Recipe Resources for Mainland Southeast Asia: Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid, Hot, Sour, Salt, Sweet: A Culinary Journal through Southeast Asia (Artisan, 2000). David Thompson, Thai Food (Ten Speed, 2002). Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. https://thecuriouseater.substack.com/?utm_campaign=profile&utm_medium=profile-page

Picture it now A Japanese lunch appears on a red lacquer tray. Your eyes first espy the cold tofu garnished with wasabi. Then they shift to the stewed vegetables called oden , and then the potato salad flanked by daikon. A few moments later, your brain registers the main attraction. It’s the tempura: a few slices of crispy eggplant, kabocha, and lotus root covered in batter. You grab your chopsticks and decide to start there, while the food is still hot. Picking up a slice of the eggplant, you gently dab it in the sauce, and bring it to your mouth. Teishoku Box (Photograph by Erin Brightwell) You bite in and feel sheer delight. For something deep-fried, the tempura looks implausibly healthy. The batter’s there, but barely. It’s filmy, not bready. This isn’t your standard pub fare -- the fish and chips you chow down while chugging beer. Tempura is an art. Your brain says it has been deep fried, but your palate registers no grease. That paradox is traditional Japanese cuisine in a nutshell: flavorful but light. ***** By now, you can already anticipate my next move. You think I am going to burst your bubble. “No food origins is safe,” one of you wrote the other day in YellowDig. And you would be right. I *will* tell you about the foreign origins of a traditional Asian food. Tempura is 100% traditional Japanese, but it has Iberian ancestry. But there is more to the story than cocktail talk. Tempura begs a bigger question: Why is Portuguese culinary influence so hard to see in this dish? To answer the question, we must do something different. Let’s play a game of time travel (we should be on Winter Break, anyway). It is the year 1600. You are a merchant, traveling on a black Portuguese boat. That journey began in Lisbon and first landed in Goa, before moving on to Macau, and then on to Nagasaki. For most of the journey, you have been cautious. You wear a crucifix everywhere you go and eat pork, knowing that all eyes are on you. Your forebears were Jewish converts to Christianity after Ferdinand and Isabella expelled the Moors in 1492 and launched the Inquisition in Spain. In 1536, the Inquisition spread to Portugal before moving overseas to Goa in 1560. Arrival of the Portuguese (Photography by Leanne Martin) You finally land in the great port city of Nagasaki , in Southern Japan. In the early sixteenth century, a local warlord, the daimyo, welcomed foreign merchants who brought weapons and the spoils of the Indian Ocean Trade. Catholic priests also found a receptive audience in war-torn Japan. It's 1600, so there are now 300,000 native Japanese converts to Christianity, a church at the center of town, and houses painted white in the Iberian style. The markets are full of new crops from Spanish colonies in the Americas, brought on the galleons that connected Acapulco to Manila. There’s kabocha: green pumpkins with sweet orange flesh; tomatoes; and sugar cane from the Caribbean (and Canton). As someone raised in Portugal, you find comfort in these familiar foods. You have heard through the grapevine that the priests have persuaded the Japanese converts to show their Catholic credentials by eating more meat. You laugh, knowing that no meal is ever safe from the priests. As a New Christian, you must prove your religious faith through meals. In Portugal and Goa, you went to the pub and stuffed your face with pork and lard three times a day. You do this in front of your neighbors as much as possible. In Japan, though, the Catholic fathers are wary of another faith: Buddhism. Many of the native converts to Catholicism grew up on a diet of fish and rice. Some of them had been Buddhists and had avoided flesh altogether. They have had to overcome their revulsion to animal meat when they became Christians. This is one reason why Portuguese-styled meat became popular: rich stews made with beef or wild boar, simmered with a little daikon and vinegar until the meat falls off the bone. It’s similar to the adobo eaten in Manila, a Spanish colony. Here, though, Japanese Christians call it kujito. There’s also a rich cake called kasutera . This is how the Japanese pronounce P ão de Castela . Only a hundred years before, the Japanese did not make sweets with eggs or granulated sugar. They had made do with honey and arrowroot. Nowadays, Japanese cooks use sugar in everything, even in mochi . They found that the sugar makes the mochi soft. Kasutera , however, is an Iberian treat and full of eggs. The natives, however, do not have ovens, and use cast iron pot s hung over flames to bake. Castella in Nagasaki 2015 (Photography by Erin Brightwell) For a real taste of home, you eat fish deep-fried in the Moorish style, in batter. Japanese cooks, who know how to prepare all seafood, quickly mastered that art. They cut their fish in round slices, douse it in flour and fry it in hot oil. Afterwards, they sprinkle it with powdered cloves and grated garlic. They call it tempura. Tempura (Photograph by Erin Brightwell) Tempura with Bento Box (Photography by Erin Brightwell) As much as you enjoy Nagasaki, you’re thinking it’s time to move on -- to Mexico. Things have gotten tense. It’s one thing to have to dodge the Inquisition. But it’s quite another to *also* navigate around unfriendly Japanese authorities. The Japanese strongman, Hideyoshi, who died two years before in 1598, had despised Catholic missionaries. He scorned the Portuguese, who trade Japanese slaves. Catholic conversion, he thought, was the prelude to Iberian invasion -- the kind that "happened" in Goa and the Philippines. Since Hideyoshi crucified twenty-six Catholic priests and Japanese converts to Christianity in 1597, your Japanese friends have become more discreet about their faith. Many of them have gone underground. Their diets also look less overtly Portuguese. Those hearty meat stews, seasoned with garlic and cloves, make people nervous. Christian families know that in a country where meat consumption is rare, beef stew is too much of a statement. It reminds people of the “ Southern Barbarians ” and doesn’t fit with Japan's cultural matrix , which favors vegetarianism and pescetarianism. Fortunately, sweets and tempura are different. While Hideyoshi’s confidants have accused priests of hooking converts with cookies and red wine, people in Nagasaki are still making the desserts, confeito and castella. Catholic parents whisper the recipes to their children knowing full well that there are murmurs at court. Nowadays, no one is advertising the Portuguese roots of these foods. When asked, they point to the Chinese merchants in Nagasaki, who have a taste for wheat pastries and fried things. They swear that these foods came originally from China. ***** My fictional account draws from the life of Rui Pérez , a Portuguese merchant of Jewish extraction. Pérez had sought to lay low in Nagasaki, but Portuguese authorities had dispatched agents to arrest him and bring him back to Macau. From Macau, they sent him to Mexico, where he faced the Inquisition. Accompanied by his grown sons, he died en route and was buried at sea. His sons got to Mexico and fought hard for the freedom of an enslaved Japanese man they had grown up with as brothers. Once successful in their suit, they changed their names and identities, and vanished from the historical record. Macau (Nov 2017) Western accounts of the period often emphasize the brutality of the Japanese suppression of Christianity. The suppression did involve considerable bloodshed . In 1614, the Tokugawa shogun banned Christianity formally, before excluding Portuguese traders in 1638 from Nagasaki. Shogunate authorities then hunted down Christians and executed them. Contemporary art depicts the execution of Japanese converts who refused to disavow Christianity. The rest of the community went underground for hundreds of years, only resurfacing at the end of the nineteenth century. Their cookbooks , furthermore, were never published. These historical events have inspired the popular blockbuster film, Silence (2016). If you are itching to know more, take Asian 200 with Professor Erin Brightwell. Despite these tense circumstances, some Portuguese dishes and ingredients went mainstream in Japan. Sugar -- now a crucial ingredient in mochi -- was one of them. So was tempura. It was so popular it was sold as street food in the eighteenth-century capital, along with soba. Mochi with Sakura (Photograph & Confection by Erin Brighwell) Nerikeri (Photography by Erin Brightwell) Perhaps what is most interesting to me are the recipes that did not survive the purge. Scanning old cookbooks, it's clear that people in Nagasaki had learned at one point to make cheesecake, meat pies, even caramels. They had also picked up a taste for red wine. This fact reveals that Japanese borrowing from Portuguese cuisine ended up being more limited than it could have been. To put things differently, foods like tempura represented an example of the piecemeal adoption of Iberian cooking styles. The contact with Portuguese cuisine never led to wholesale culinary change : for example, the creation of new hierarchies of food ingredients, a change in attitudes towards meat consumption and fish, and a preference for bread. Nope, the cultural matrix remained intact. Things, however, might have ended differently. The early Christian converts in Nagasaki took Catholicism and Catholic eating seriously. They observed Lent and sometimes gave testimonies to Inquisition authorities about Jewish New Christians (and their diets). Every now and then I wonder what would have happened had Hideyoshi taken a shine to Christianity. He sometimes conversed with missionaries. What if one of them had persuaded Hideyoshi (or the Tokugawa shoguns) to give Catholicism a chance? Perhaps Japan would have become like the Philippines: a heavily Catholic land? I suspect that Japanese food would be vastly different today. Full of meat, garlic, and vinegar? The tempura would still be there, but what would it taste like? See you on YellowDig! Recipe resources: I highly recommend you try your hand at making castella cake. There are many on-line recipes for tempura, I suggest using this one by Nancy Singleton Hachisu from Japanese Farm Food (Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2012). It is not only easy, but also similar to the Iberian prototype. In terms of an Iberian prototype, I highly recommend making berenjenas fritas con miel (eggplant fritters with honey) from Southern Spain. There's also shrimp fritters if you like a heavier batter. Sources: Lizzie Collingham, Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), Chapter 3: “Vindaloo: The Portuguese and the Chilli Pepper,” 47-80 . De Sousa, L. (2015). The Jewish Diaspora and the Perez Family Case in China, Japan, the Philippines, and the Americans (16th Century). Translated by Joseph Abraham Levi. Macau: Fundacao Macau. _____(2018). " The Jewish Presence in China and Japan in the Early Modern Period: A Social Representation." In: Perez Garcia M., De Sousa L. (eds) Global History and New Polycentric Approaches. Palgrave Studies in Comparative Global History. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-4053-5_9 _____(2020). "Judaeo-Converso Merchants in the Private Trade Between Macao and Manila in the Early Modern Period." Revista De Historia Económica / Journal of Iberian and Latin American Economic History, 38 (3), 519-552. doi:10.1017/S0212610919000260 Rath, Eric (2010). Food and Fantasy in Early Modern Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press), Chapter 4, “The Barbarians’ Cookbook,” 85-111; “Appendix: The Southern Barbarian’s Cookbook ( Nanban ryôrisho ),” 189-95. Reinders, Eric Robert (2004). "Blessed Are the Meat Eaters: Christian Antivegetarianism and the Missionary Encounter with Chinese Buddhism." positions: east asia cultures critique 12.2: 509-537. Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. https://thecuriouseater.substack.com/?utm_campaign=profile&utm_medium=profile-page

A few weeks ago, ‘curry’ popped up on my YellowDig feed. I had just released a blogpost about Massaman curry , and that prompted a question about terminology. One student wanted to know whether we should even use the word ‘curry’. The question came from a good place: an interview by cookbook author Priya Krishna. Krishna thinks that we should ditch the term curry altogether. Here’s what she says: Curry was a word that was popularized as a way to make blanket assumptions about a cuisine that’s actually really diverse. There are actual names for those dishes. I would love for us to never use it in the context of Indian cooking. Krishna could have gone a lot further. Lizzie Collingham asserts that the term curry was a British colonial invention. For some, that fact alone would be grounds for avoiding the word (and dodging “ inauthentic ” Anglicized dishes like chicken tikka masala). Over the last couple weeks, I've thought about the question: to retire 'curry' or not. While I’m largely sympathetic to Krishna, I’m not yet ready to take the plunge. I'd rather educate people about the history. ***** Like many foods, curry did not start its career under auspicious circumstances. It was born from English colonialism in India. In the eighteenth century, the East India Company had become the de factor ruler of much of the Sub-Continent. Its control emanated from cities like Madras, Calcutta, and Bombay. (For a quick run-down of the initial phase of British rule, check out this BBC video ). By the mid-nineteenth century, the British had taken over the administration of India from the Mughuls. The results would prove especially disastrous in the twentieth century. Some historians believe that British wartime policies contributed to millions of Bengalis starving . The British entanglement in India would leave its mark not only on Indian eating, but also on the English diet. From the British, the Indians got the potato for their samosas and chai tea (Collingham covers the history of the latter). From the Indians, the British acquired their national dish: chicken tikka masala , a red gravy now a staple of the British diet. One statistic claims that the U.K. eats 18 tons of it per week. The British also got a whole slew of stews and treats. There’s Rogan Josh , palak paneer (fresh cheese in a green gravy), and chaat , a snack consumed throughout the Subcontinent, but now served in British fine diners. In those restaurants, chaat becomes fancy artisanal (“Haryali Spiced Potato and Date Samosa Chaat”), vegan, and Michelin-starred chaat . The last item, incidentally, features blueberries. The British engagement with Indian foodways (plural) was not only long lasting, but profoundly transformative. In this respect, the British empire was unlike any of its competitors . Take Spain: My husband and I scoured the Iberian peninsula, in search of traces of Mexican or South American cooking styles (as opposed to raw ingredients). The closest we came were the potato chips we consumed at a nice tapas bar in Granada. With the obligatory serving of jamon serrano . You would also never know from eating in Lisbon that the Portuguese had run Macau for centuries. Ditto for the U.S. and the Philippines. Granada in Dec 2014 (tapas = potato chips & ham) To see why England became so influenced by Indian cooking styles, we must better understand the nature of that culinary exchange. What follows below is my summary of Collingham's discussion in Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors (2006): The two and half centuries of British rule brought people from the United Kingdom into the Indian Subcontinent: Traders, soldiers, and colonial administrators. Like the Portuguese , the British had initially attempted to recreate a European lifestyle overseas. But those settlers were unable to resist the pull of India for long. Many of them hired Indian cooks, and soldiers often married native women. These arrangements spurred the creation of a distinct culinary culture. As one would expect, the meals prepared by the Indian women represented a mish mash of influences. To be sure, there were recognizable South Asian elements, but they came with can’t-miss European accents. In this regard, Mughlai Beef Curry offers a case in point. It marries the South Asian penchant for using aromatic spices with the strong British preference for beef and mutton. In the nineteenth century, the average Briton chowed down on a whopping 154 pounds of red meat per year -- a feat that set him apart from his Indian counterparts . Anglo-Indian dishes were also eclectic. Collingham refers to this "unsophisticated" cuisine as the first truly pan-Indian form of eating. Indian foodways were diverse, something that reflected the country’s sheer size and varied topography. The British administrators of England, however, mashed together those influences, flattening out differences in local cooking traditions. As they rotated rapidly between posts across the Sub-Continent, the administrators (or their cooks) combined ingredients from different parts of India and deposited them into new recipes. For instance, they introduced coconut milk from the south to the Northern Muslim areas. This is why you find coconut milk in some versions of Mughlai Beef Curry . Perhaps most importantly, Anglo-Indian food was curry heavy, meaning just about everything was a curry. The term curry, of course, was *not* a native category. The British had appropriated a Portuguese loan word from a South Indian language for black pepper and spices. With the British, 'curry' came to mean any Indian gravy. In Anglo-Indian cookery, curry comprised butter-fried onions, marinated meat, aromatic spices, and tomatoes. Is this curry? Picture and Food by Ashira Chugh ***** Anglo-Indian cuisine, however, did not stay with the Anglo-Indian community. Like ketchup , curry decided to see the world and traveled to Britain. It came back with Indian cooks who moved to the United Kingdom to serve Britons who wanted a taste of India. It also traveled through the mail and in boxes. Britons in India often wrote letters about their meals. Family members at home were eager to try the “exotic” and “healthy” foods they read about. This led to an early nineteenth-century vogue in Indian food. By 1831, there were best-selling books about Indian cuisine in English. The British also imported enormous amounts of spices from India. Consider just turmeric, which increased from 8,678 to a startling 26,458 pounds between 1820 and 1840. According to Collingham, curry’s popularity in England owed much to the flavor vacuum in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In the seventeenth century, French cooks initiated a revival of Roman foodways. This meant more olive and fish sauce , less cardamom. As a result, European cooks banished many of the aromatic spices used in medieval cuisine. The British eventually followed suit, leading to blander and virtually veggie-free eating (the potato, though, remained a safe choice). As a result, the British became obsessed with indigestion. (If I were a betting woman, I would guess this was code for constipation). We do know, though, that the British looked to Indian cooking for solutions to their tummy troubles. The popularity of Indian cooking also inevitably led to further adaptations . Apples began to replace the mangoes (which did not grow well in tropical England). And lemon juice substituted for the hard-to-source tamarind. The British also added more familiar herbs like thyme and marjoram to their gravies. The differences began to show themselves in the cooking process, too. British cooks adapted stew recipes to reflect more established ways of doing things. For example, they thickened the gravy with a flour-based sauce, just like they did when preparing European stews and casseroles. This is the basis of the roux that some of us made the other day in Japanese curry lab. Above all, British cooks got addicted to curry powder and prepared spice mixes. Originally, Indian cooks had added spices at different stages of the process. Some spices like coriander are slow releasing. They go into the oil early on. Others like turmeric tend to burn. As Collingham puts it, “spices thrown into hot oil simultaneously cook unevenly” and can lead to unfortunate results. But the philosophy behind curry powder was different. It did not require a lot of grinding, or spice know how. **** Certainly, it’s easy to diss Anglo-Indian cooking. Collingham does a fair amount of it. She thumbs her nose at the flattening of the palate – and the use of premade spice mixes. The latter was something, she writes, that “no self-respecting Indian cook would have allowed in their kitchen.” She also bemoans the “insensitive” British palate, which drove native cooks to simplify their complex dishes. As a result, the British had little appreciation for the “endless variation of flavor that was achieved by adding spice to the food in different combinations and at different stages in the cooking process.” And it’s true that Anglo-Indian cuisine enjoys little of the renown of its colonial counterparts. Today, foodies wax poetic about the riches of Goan cooking and sing the praises of traditional Macanese food . Anglo-Indian cookery, in contrast, has the dubious distinction of giving the world chicken tikka masala and other watered down “curries.” I agree with Collingham’s assessment -- up to a point. But I resist the idea that curry is a monstrosity, because it is different from the foods in India. And yes, curry did start its career as a crude British construct. But that construct has taken a life of its own and now reproduced. Many of us enjoy its progeny. Curry is now a big thing in East Asia. The Japanese eat it all the time . There it’s a called kare カレー, after the English. It’s a British dish inspired by an Indian one, adapted for a Japanese palate. In concrete terms, that means the curry is sweet and not too piquant. The British features are all hard to miss, as there's a strong family resemblance . There’s a premade spice mix (curry powder & garam masala), a roux cube (made with flour and more premade spices), some grated apple, and a dab of Worchester sauce. The curry's best over sticky rice, with a daikon relish. Japanese-styled curry, in fact, is so popular that it pops up all over the world: In China, folks call it ga-li 咖喱. My first encounter with curry, in fact, was precisely in this form, in an American Chinatown. Last year, the largest curry chain in the world, Coco Ichibanya , opened its doors in the Indian city of Gurugram. Its specialty? Japanese-styled curry. Coco Ichibanya now claims that curry has finally come home. Talk about one heck of a round trip . Japanese styled curry (picture by Leanne Martin) Source (not hyperlinked): Achaya, K.T. A Historical Dictionary of Indian Food (Oxford University Press,1998). Collingham, Lizzie. Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors , Chapter 5, “Madras Curry: The British Invention of Curry,” Chapter 6, “Curry Powder: Bringing India Back to Britain,” Chapter 7, “Chai: The Great Tea Campaign” (Basic Books, 2006), 108-216. Collingham, Lizzie. The Taste of Empire: How Britain’s Quest for Food Shaped the Modern World (Basic Books, 2017), Chapter 19, “How the Empire Supported Britain During the Second World War,” 249-61. Recipe Resources: If you are interested in a complex (but straightforward) Indian chicken stew, check out this family recipe presented by a former student in ASIAN 258. She calls the dish curry, interestingly enough. Many recipes call for garam masala, which you can make by yourself. For Japanese-styled curry, you can find a recipe and video in JustOneCookbook. There's a beef and chicken version. I would also recommend giving "Singaporean" rice noodles a try. It's made with curry powder. It was a staple of my childhood, served by my Singaporean-born mother who had zero beef with the name. Fun fact: this dish is now a part of Sino-Indian cuisine, and here's the recipe . Thanks for reading! 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Like most people, I’ve expanded my cooking repertoire since the pandemic began. In part, I credit Costco for this. On a lark, my husband ordered pork tenderloin. Expecting a pound of meat, we were surprised by an enormous log, seven pounds in total, sealed in a vacuum pack. “That’s a lot of pork,” my husband said with a sigh. “What can you make?” I looked through my recipes and smiled, “Vindaloo.” Vindaloo with guabao (April 2020) ***** While vindaloo is not yet a household name in most American families, it should be. This fiery and flavorful stew is popular both in the Indian Sub-Continent and in the United Kingdom. In England, it has become so popular that it now joins tea and cheddar as symbols of Britishness. If you like complex meat stews, this is a dish for you. You can make it with any form of protein. Lizzie Collingham recommends duck breast , in the English fashion. But I have seen recipes featuring beef, goat, chicken, and even tofu. The main thing is the heat. Some versions of the recipe employ as many as twenty chili peppers. There are also many other aromatic spices. Cumin, cloves, cardamom, cinnamon. These pair well with tangy and pungent ingredients like tamarind paste, whole mustard seeds, and garlic. To finish? Some toasted cashew nuts (I'll pass, as I am severely allergic...). The combination of these flavors produces a spicy, tangy, and tender meat stew. People serve it with rice and naan. I’ve gotten cute in the kitchen and made vindaloo bao sandwiches. A cursory glance at the ingredients hints of a long and storied history. The dish, of course, marries New World ingredients with the fruits of the Indian Ocean Trade. But the presence of beef and pork in an Indian dish demands closer inspection. It points to a darker history of colonialism and religious persecution. ***** The name of the dish makes no bones about its genesis in the Portuguese empire. Vindaloo is a loan word . A local pronunciation – “corruption” – of the Portuguese carne de vinha d'alhos . Vinha d’alhos for short. At first glance, vinha d’alhos looks nothing like vindaloo. The Portuguese dish is mostly tang and little heat. It also lacks many of the signature elements of the Indian version. The aromatic spices, for instance, are M.I.A. But a closer look reveals a faint family resemblance . To see the similarities, we must focus less on flavor and more on process: the long marinade in something sour, the stewing of the meat to produce something tender, and the main ingredient (pork). This method is similar to that used to make the ill-fated meat stew in Nagasaki . It’s also a distant cousin of adobo , now known as the national dish of the Philippines. That’s made with pork or chicken, and stewed with the local palm vinegar . A More Catholic Version of Goat Vindaloo (February 2015) Obviously, many of these dishes have Indian accents, accents that reflect the inevitable process of local adaptation . When the Portuguese arrived in India in the sixteenth century, they struggled with the lack of vinegar for their meat stews. So home cooks (like the Indian wives of Portuguese merchants and soldiers) substituted other sources of acid: tamarind, which abounds in Southern India and which finds its way into local renditions of biryani. Goa, too, was a Portuguese colony, from 1510 to 1961. The Portuguese began settling in Goa not long after they landed, and they built the area in the image of an Iberian settlement. Today, you can see traces of European influence throughout the region. Unlike in Nagasaki, there are *very* old churches, Portuguese-styled houses (painted bright red), and South Asian Catholics with surnames like D’Silva, Sousa, Souza. The talented Indian actor, Freida Pinto, of Slumdog Millionaire fame, is of Goan extraction. The Portuguese influence in Goa is easy enough to explain. Portuguese rule brought Portuguese people to Goa in numbers: merchants, soldiers, and Catholic missionaries. While in India, the Portuguese settlers attempted to live and eat as Europeans, even when they intermarried with local women. This meant enjoying familiar foods like yeasted breads baked into soft milk rolls with an egg glaze, similar to Filipino Pandesal. Goans also prepare plenty of custardy dishes, a love they got from the Iberians, who in turn got that predilection from their former Moorish overlords. Today, you can enjoy bebinca and various flans – a Portuguese influence found not only in Goa, but also in Macau (egg custard tarts) and in the Philippines ( Leche flan ). There’s also meat. Not just pork vindaloo, but also beef: Goan beef roulade , Goan meat tarts (served with chutney), Goan Chouriço (chorizo). **** The meat, though, deserves more attention. How did meat get into Indian cuisine? As Collingham points out, the Goan love of meat (even beef!) is somewhat anomalous. For an answer, we have to consider the nature of Portuguese culinary contact. The Portuguese were interested in not only building an overseas empire, but also proselytizing. Towards this end, their ships transported Catholic priests across the world : Franciscans and Jesuits. Those priests were full of zeal. Once they got to Goa, they got busy preaching the word from the 1540s and going to war with other religions. They used Portuguese military might to destroy Hindu temples and to drive out Hindus (and Muslims) from the area. They then forcibly converted the remaining native population. By 1650, two thirds of the Goan population was Catholic. The establishment of Iberian rule and Catholicism, however, came at a price. The Holy Inquisition – with its interrogators and torture racks – also came too. The Catholic authorities looked upon these new Christians with the same suspicion that they viewed Jewish converts. In 1560, the Portuguese Inquisition spread to Goa, where it acquired notoriety in Europe for its brutality. (The French philosopher Voltaire quipped that the "war" on Satan had turned the Portuguese clergy into the Devil's agents). ***** The Goan Inquisition followed a familiar pattern of using violence to root out non-Christian beliefs. Last time, we focused on the way that Jewish New Christians were targeted; this time we look at people in South Asia, too. As Rowena Robinson puts it, "The Inquisition came down heavily on converts who refused to consume beef and pork." For Indian converts to Christianity, the avoidance of meat and especially beef was dangerous. Inquisition authorities were constantly on the lookout for evidence of lingering Hindu belief – especially, signs of “revering the cow.” But this was not the only reason why pork and beef became signature elements in Goan cuisine. Many of the converts hailed from low caste backgrounds. Unlike Brahmins, lower-caste people did not observe a beef taboo, or practice vegetarianism. So the transition to a Portuguese diet was "no wrench." For former high caste people, however, violating the beef taboo entailed a complete change in social identity. It meant losing one's membership in the Hindu community and instead becoming someone in Portuguese Christian society. Chowing down on red meat thus became a handy way to display allegiance not only to the Catholic Church, but also, perhaps more importantly, to the Portuguese crown. Madrid Ham Shop (Dec 2014) ***** The Goan case offers a studied contrast to the Japanese one. As I mentioned last time, the Portuguese influence in Japan was light. It came down to accepting some new ingredients and the piecemeal adoption of a handful of Iberian recipes. As point of fact, Portuguese influence did *not* spur a fundamental overhaul of the Japanese food system, or cultural matrix . If anything, the suppression of Christianity in Japan militated against radical change. The Japanese shoguns had realized the dangers of allowing Iberians to play on their soil. So they began their own horrific campaign of religious suppression , driving Christians underground. In Goa, things worked out differently. The Portuguese were a colonial power. They had the military force to impose their rules, their culture, their church, and their cuisine on the local population. Not surprisingly, Portuguese dominance prompted a reordering of the cultural matrix . It dislodged taboos against beef consumption among Brahmins, and turned red meat from a lower caste food to something European and prestigious. **** Last week, some of you posed the question on YellowDig: how should we feel about foods with a violent past? The case of vindaloo exemplifies this conundrum. For vindaloo is a product not only of trade and culinary exchange, but also religious intolerance and European colonialism. As one of your classmates noted in YellowDig, the recognition of that history has inspired some people to decolonize their diet s : to reject the food of conquerors and to return to the cooking styles and ingredients of their ancestors. For a Mexican of indigenous ancestry, that would mean cutting out the beef, pork, wheat, and cheese. For a Korean, this program would entail skipping the chili peppers in the kimchi. And for someone in India, that would imply ditching the vindaloo, excising the potatoes from the samosas, and getting unhooked on chai. While I am sympathetic to these sentiments, I think that the approach is wrong headed. To people in Goa, pork and beef are their foods, and Catholicism is their religion. And in some cases, they were the product (like me) of mixed marriage. This makes the Portuguese also their forebears. For them, there is no going back to some pristine, untouched Indian past. What's more, vindaloo is no longer a Portuguese dish. I like to think that this act of appropriating -- and radically altering -- the European stew represented an act of "talking back." When Goan women began preparing the pork for their Iberian masters (and husbands), they transformed its flavor profile by adding heat and aromatic spices. They thus domesticated the food of their European oppressors and came to own it. What *they* created was something new, marvelous, and now better known to the world than vinha d’alhos. Recipe resources If you don't mind meat, vindaloo is a good recipe to make. Here's the BBC version of pork vindaloo. Many people also make the chicken version. But if you have a lot of pork and would like to compare vindaloo to its Iberian ancestor, you can do this recipe . I would also recommend comparing the South Asian version with adobo, a Filipino "cousin" of the recipe . Sources: Anderson , James Maxwell (2002). Daily Life During the Spanish Inquisition (Greenwood Publishing Group). Collingham, Lizzie (2007). Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors (Oxford: Oxford University Press), Chapter 3: “Vindaloo: The Portuguese and the Chilli Pepper,” 47-80. Priolkar, Anant Kakba (1961). The Goa Inquisition; being a quatercentenary commemoration study of the Inquisition of India. With accounts given by Dr. Dellon and Dr. Buchanan. ( Bombay). Robinson, Rowena (1993). "Some neglected aspects of the conversion of Goa: a socio-historical perspective." Sociological bulletin Volume: 42.1-2 : 65-83. ____ (1998). Conversion, Continuity and Change: Lived Christianity in Southern Goa (Sage). Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. https://thecuriouseater.substack.com/?utm_campaign=profile&utm_medium=profile-page

This week, I decided to try something different. Rather than write my routine food history blogpost, I interviewed Linh Trinh, who knows a lot more about Vietnamese food history than me. As some of you asked for phở resources, I steered the interview specifically in that direction. Linh was kind enough to supply her gorgeous pictures of phở and some excellent recipe resources. So don't forget to read her blog ! If you are a student enrolled in ASIAN 258, you can access a recording of our twenty-minute conversation on March 10, 2021 from Canvas. What follows below are the highlights of our exchange, which I have edited for concision and clarity. Miranda Brown: Thank you Linh for joining us in Food and Drink of Asia. Would you mind briefly introducing yourself to the class – and to all our unintended blog readers? Linh Trinh: Hello everyone and thank you for having me. I am a PhD student in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures [at the University of Michigan]. I research Sino-Vietnamese culinary connections. My new blog is a place where I share some exciting research, as well as introduce Vietnamese food and recipes to the English-speaking world. Miranda Brown: This week we’re getting to Vietnam belatedly. One of the main challenges of teaching Vietnamese food history is the dearth of English-language scholarship on the subject. So it’s great to hear from someone who not only knows Vietnamese food intimately, but also has the language chops to get us beyond the standard mythology. For many Americans, Vietnamese cuisine is familiar primarily through a few signature plates: bánh mì , spring/summer rolls , and phở. How do you feel about these foods dominating the popular American imagination of Vietnamese cuisine? Are there dishes that you wish got more attention from global eaters, and, if so, what would they be? Phở in Hanoi (Picture by Linh Trinh) More Phở (Picture by Linh Trinh) Linh Trinh: I think dishes like phở and spring rolls deserve global recognition, because they taste wonderful and are definitely staples in the Vietnamese diet. But if you limit yourself to those options, you're really missing out on a lot of good food. There are many other dishes that I would mention: Bún Thang , which is a chicken rice-noodle soup, and Bún Riêu , a crab-meat soup. There’s also savory crepes prepared with turmeric, which are called bánh xèo and Vietnamese beef steak, or bít tết as we call it in Vietnamese . The latter is really exciting (and totally *not* what you would think of when someone says 'steak.') Bún Thang in Hanoi (Picture by Linh Trinh) Bánh Xèo (Picture by Lou Buis, AS 258 Alumnus) Bánh Xèo in Chicago (Before Sofi) On a more controversial note: bánh mì , and phở are perhaps popular because they are "safe foods" -- they get attention because they are palatable to almost anyone. These recipe compose beef and bread, so how could you go wrong? It’s different from intestines and other foods [that Americans are wary of]. But people need to realize that Vietnam is a diverse country with a wide variety of regional cuisines. Miranda Brown: Over the last two weeks, we’ve looked at how religious conversion and colonialism shaped Asian foodways. Specifically, we’ve paid a lot of attention to the Portuguese and English . Do you think that colonialism or religion is important for understanding Vietnamese food? If so, who were the actors? And what dishes show the influence of colonialism? Linh Trinh: French colonialism [from the 1880s to 1940s] wa s big. You can’t understand Vietnamese food without realizing how differently people ate before and after colonialism. Bread was heavily tested within the colonial spaces of Indochina [first with Portuguese missionaries and later French colonial settlers]. Originally, we got bánh mì from Europeans. It's now a very central Vietnamese dish. Another interesting theory is that it wasn't until the American presence in South Vietnam during the Vietnam War [1955-1975] that people began putting stuffing like meat pickles and sauces inside the bread. It used to be the case that you would take a bite from the bread and meat separately. This practice actually survives in the northern part of Vietnam. The problem with focusing solely on colonialism is that it leads to over-emphasizing the French contribution. The French are naturally famous for their cuisine. But there are other important dishes like bánh xèo , which has nothing to do with the French crepe (the process is similar; hence the comparison). This dish is also very popular in Cambodia and points to a different set of culinary influences than the French. Miranda Brown: In our reading this week, we look at how popular writer Micheal Garval talks about the origins of phở, which is now arguably the national dish of Vietnam. He has trouble settling on the origins of the recipe, however. He thinks there’s a chance that phở is a loan word from French: P ot-au-feux (beef stew) became phở in Vietnamese. He says this scenario makes sense, because the Vietnamese did not consume much beef before the French colonial period. Then he offers a second possibility: namely, that phở is a local adaptation of a Chinese rice noodle soup. He suggests that phở is just a loan word, from the Chinese word for rice vermicelli, fun 粉 [Mandarin: fen ]. Rice noodles (Jan 2021) In the past, when I lectured on this topic, I warned students away from the either/or approach. After all, many dishes [l ike Massaman curry ] have layers upon layers of diverse culinary influences. Or to use this week's new key word, layered influence ! Linh Trinh: The debate is old. Yes, the beef *is* an important tell. It's also true that the Vietnamese did not really "do" beef before the French. But there is a Vietnamese equivalent to pot-au-feux which is bò hầm khoai tây (beef stew with potatoes), and it’s nothing like phở. Also, the Vietnamese were eating rice noodles long before the nineteenth century [which rules out the possibility of a very recent Chinese origin of the soup noodle]. But this debate overlooks the broth, which is really important. It has fish sauce , an ingredient native to Vietnam. The broth also has aromatic spices like star anise, black cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, and fennel seeds. The spices reflect the fact that Vietnam has a generous coastline: all the way from the border with China to the tip reaching out to Maritime Southeast Asia. [Like Thailand], Vietnam historically participated in the Indian Ocean Spice Trade . So in terms of other societies, we were influenced not only by the Chinese, French, and Portuguese , but also by folks in Southeast Asia and well beyond. What makes phở unique is the fact that it didn't emerge from a vacuum. It is better to acknowledge the deep layers of influence. Spices a la Spice Trade (Feb 2021) Miranda Brown: So you are telling us to pay more attention to the spices and the Indian Ocean trade route? This is a more exciting story that the usual tale of Chinese or French influence. Linh Trinh : I think so. The best thing about phở is *not* the beef or the noodle, but the spiced broth, which can be hard to replicate. Miranda Brown: Our audience is going to be super excited about that, because they not only want to learn the history behind a dish, but also the secret to making great phở. Let me end this interview with a silly question: what is your favorite Vietnamese dish? What else should be on the students' bucket list? Linh Trinh: Oh wow. I will probably disagree with myself and about a week. But I think it would be Bun Bo Hue . Recipe resources: I’ve asked Linh Trinh to provide us with guidance. For a bánh mì recipe, you should check out *her* blog, which will be the basis of the food lab next week! Since we discussed phở, she offers two recipe options. One is for the Instant Pot (and she recommends it), and the other is without. Linh also mentioned bánh xèo ; click here for a recipe that Thúy Anh Nguyễn , our Vietnamese language instructor in Asian Languages and Cultures, created for students last year. For a really funny video of some hiker/surfer dudes traveling to Cambodia to eat the Khmer version (ban chiao) of bánh xèo , click here and compare. Recipe Books and Cultural Background: Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid, Hot, Sour, Salt, Sweet: A Culinary Journal through Southeast Asia (Artisan, 2000). Charles Phan, Vietnamese Home Cooking: [A Cookbook]. Ten Speed Press, 2012. ------The Slanted Door: Modern Vietnamese Food [A Cookbook]. Ten Speed Press, 2014. Sources: Michael Garval, “ French or Phở ? in Wonders and Marvels: A Community for Curious Minds Who Love History, Its Odd Stories, and Good Reads.” Downloaded from http://www.wondersandmarvels.com/2016/07/french-or-pho.html. Further reading: For Vietnam's place in the Indian Ocean Trade Route, see Kenneth R. Hall, A History of Early Southeast Asia: Maritime Trade and Societal Development (Rowman & Littlefield, 2011), Chapter 2. For a possible culinary flow that went from Vietnam to China (as opposed to the reverse), see Chan Yuk Wah, "Banh Cuon and Cheung Fan: Searching for the Identity of the "Steamed Rice Roll," in Tan Chee Beng ed., Chinese Food and Foodways in Southeast Asia and Beyond (NUS Press, Singapore, 2011), 156-71. Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. https://thecuriouseater.substack.com/?utm_campaign=profile&utm_medium=profile-page

This last week, my students from Food Crisis class did a final food preparation lab. This lab explored vegetarian and vegan alternatives to the meat-centered diet that we have been discussing all term, and we made two Chinese recipes: a Shanghainese vegan recipe made with braised gluten and a simple battered tofu recipe . Late Thursday night, however, I discovered that the Chinese market was out of dried gluten. Rather than admit defeat, I hopped onto the Chinese internet and found a recipe for making the dried gluten sponges from scratch. After experimenting with a few recipes, I have found one that I like. (The one that I drew the most inspiration was this one, from Xiachufang ). Ingredients: Vital wheat gluten (I use Anthony's): 200 grams Pastry flour: 50 grams plus 2 teaspoons Yeast: 1.5 teaspoon Sugar: 1/2 teaspoon Water: 330-350 mL, lukewarm about 110-115 degrees F Oil for brushing Equipment: Food scale (preferred) A mixer (optional) A big pot or steamer Saran wrap Process: Activate the yeast by adding it to a big mixing bowl with the sugar and 2 teaspoons of the pastry flour. Add the warm water, stir and let sit for ten minutes. Check to see that the yeast has "blossomed" (you'll know if you see a foam top). If it doesn't, start over again, or check the expiration date on your yeast package. Mix the gluten and remaining pastry flour together, then add to the yeast water solution. Stir with chopsticks or mixer attachment until it becomes a spongy mass. Brush a pot with oil, then add the spongy mass and cover (with saran wrap or an airtight cover). Let it rest in a warm place until it triples in size, between 1.5-2 hours. Prepare steamer. I usually put the gluten in a well-oiled bread pan, which I place into a big pot and add water. Steam for 35 minutes on medium. Do not open the lid; after the steaming is complete, allow the gluten to sit covered for 10 more minutes before uncovering. This prevents the gluten from collapsing. Remove gluten from pot or steamer and allow to cool completely. Use a knife to remove the gluten from the bread pan. If you are not using the gluten immediately, you can refrigerate for a day or two, or freeze it. For recipes that use gluten, check out this one from Yi reservation or from the Woks of Life . Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. https://thecuriouseater.substack.com/?utm_campaign=profile&utm_medium=profile-page

A few weeks ago, a ghost from lockdown resurfaced as I was scrolling through Instagram. No, it wasn’t empty grocery shelves. Or the sight of people carrying away the last rolls of toilet paper, or even unhappy children logged onto school-issued iPads. Rather, it was an old story, and a persistent one at that: Churros come from China. Some well-intentioned vlogger had repeated this piece of mythology for the umpteenth time. The Portuguese in the sixteenth century had visited China and noticed people making youtiao , breakfast fritters. Impressed, they brought it back on their ships. An Iberian and Mexican classic was born, or so the story goes. I confess that I had to suppress the desire to reach out to him and send him a link to an old blog that I’d written—a blog intended to deflate the dreams of people who wanted to imagine fanciful connections. You may be wondering why I had written a blog on such a subject, or why I had a blog at all. My blog— chinesefoodhistory.org —had sprung to life during the pandemic. It was not intended to be a public blog per se. Rather, it was a desperate effort on the part of a professor teaching a large course on Asian foodways to students across the world during lockdown. I had decided to convert all of my eighty-minute lectures into blogs rather than subject several hundred already unhappy students to another dreadful Zoom lecture. The idea of writing a blog had been both a foolish and fateful decision. Foolish because I had underestimated the scope of the task. Fateful because that decision took my writing, and me, far out of the ivory tower. Overnight, I was talking to food lovers, journalists, and people around the world about food history. Together, we thought through far-flung culinary connections. Looking back, I miss that sense of community, even if I am happy that my daughter, now ten, is back in school and no longer taking out her pent-up energy by applying crayon and paint to our walls. From those conversations, the seed of a book— Dumpling Therapy , my forthcoming book with St. Martin’s Press—was born. *** Back to the churros. During lockdown, I’d written a long, scolding post about their supposed Chinese origins, lecturing harried journalists about shoddy research and Eurocentrism. My harangue fell on deaf ears. A few journalists called me to get the story right. But the myth persists. Why? Because I learned something crucial: you can’t kill a catchy story with critique alone. You need a better story. And there is a better story—one I forgot to tell in my indignation. One that was sitting right on my desk in a fourteenth-century recipe collection. Muslim Julabiya Recorded in a 14th-century Chinese almanac, Shilin guangji [Forest of Affairs, ca 1330] : Use mung bean starch and wheat flour to make a paste, then fry it in boiling oil until soft and cooked. Alternatively, omit the bean starch and use only flour mixed with honey or maltose syrup. Mix with cold water to form a paste. Now, this isn’t a perfect match for the modern churros. Churros require an extra step—the hot-water or cooked dough method (like choux pastry for éclairs). You cook the dough on the stovetop first, then pipe it into hot oil. But it’s a close relative in a far-flung pastry family called julabiya (Persian) or zulabiya (Arabic). In India, it’s jalebi. The pattern repeats: something piped through small holes into hot oil, then soaked in syrup. The medieval Chinese version resembles its Indian counterpart most closely. But it’s still related to churros. How do I know? Because the basic recipe—with the same name, to boot—appears in a Moorish Spanish cookbook, where it goes by zulabiya. Thanks to Charles Perry, we now have a translation of an anonymous thirteenth-century Andalusian cookbook and can see this clearly: Preparation of Zulâbiyya Knead fine flour and add water little by little until the dough is slack. Let it be lighter than the dough for musahhada. Leave it in a pot near the fire until it rises. You will know it is done when you tap on the side of the pot with your finger. If you hear a thick, dense sound, it has risen. Then put a frying-pan on the fire with plenty of oil, and when the oil boils, take this runny batter and put it in a vessel with a pierced bottom… I suspect that this recipe represents a technological midpoint within the broader julabiya family. Here, the cook allows the batter to ferment gently in warmth, rather than relying on the hot-water, steam-driven method used for modern churros. At some point, the recipe matured into the hot-dough method—with its steaming and blasts of heat that gelatinize the starches. When exactly that happened is unclear, but today that innovation survives today as “zlabia banane” or “zlabia el banane” (banana zulabiya) in Algeria and Morocco. It’s a Ramadan favorite. My attempt to create a banana zlabia In Spain? It got a new name: churros . Here’s what this pastry tour taught me: The people claiming churros came from China weren’t entirely wrong—trade did broaden palates, and far-flung culinary connections are real. They just had the source wrong and the direction backward. And they drastically underestimated how deep those connections ran. Centuries before Portuguese ships reached China, Muslim traders traveled from al-Andalus and the Mediterranean to Alexandria and onward to Quanzhou in southern, coastal China—carrying their favorite fritters with them. Ming Dynasty Chinese Porcelain--and Reminder of China's Connections to the Muslim World In the early modern period, julabiya was enjoyed simultaneously across the globe: China, India, the Middle East, North Africa, and Moorish Spain. Granada in December 2014. A reminder of Spain's Muslim past. Photo by author. Those fritters found favor with fourteenth-century Chinese palates. Whether a version still survives somewhere in China, I don’t yet know—that would require another mad food history hunt. But I wouldn’t be surprised. So, no, the churros didn’t come from China. If anyone ever calls me, I’ll tell them that the truth is far more interesting. The cousin of the churros was once popular in China. It was called julabiya. That’s one food with legs. Like what you are reading? Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. https://thecuriouseater.substack.com/?utm_campaign=profile&utm_medium=profile-page

In 2006, Chinese premier Wen Jiabao shared his dream. It was a future in which every Chinese person would have a pint of milk each day. Wen’s proposal met with skepticism from some quarters. Quartz , for instance, declared the plan crazy. Ninety percent of all Chinese, the author wrote, are “lactose malabsorbers.” It thus follows that they should avoid milk or risk turning China into the land of a billion farts. Cheese tea in a Beijing train station Recent studies, however, suggest that Premier Wen may actually be on to something. Most people in China can probably safely drink milk. To be fair, Quartz is right about one thing. Most Chinese are lactose malabsorbers. But the journalist should have asked: What is lactose malabsorption, and how is it different from lactose intolerant? In layman’s terms, a lactose mal-absorber is someone who has flunked a hydrogen breath test. The test measures not how well you digest actual milk, but whether your small intestine can absorb an enormous amount of lactose, the complex sugars in milk. To assess this, people in a study will typically fast overnight. The next morning, they gulp down 50 milliliters of a lactose solution. Then someone measures the hydrogen in their breath at regular intervals over several hours. If there is a lot of hydrogen in your breath, this means that you don’t produce enough lactase to break down the milk sugars. The undigested sugars sit in your colon, attracting carbohydrate-greedy bacteria. Once bacteria devour sugars, they give off hydrogen. Like the S.A.T., the hydrogen breath test can only tell you so much. It doesn’t predict how well someone handles a normal amount of milk in the real world. The average American currently drinks 200 ml of milk a day, or less than a cup. The lactose solution in a typical breath test, however, supplies the amount of lactose in four cups of milk. Think of the last time you had a quart of milk on an empty stomach – and in the space of ten minutes. Now remember the S.A.T. vocabulary section. How often do you use ‘somnambulist’? Plenty of people pass the hydrogen breath test with flying colors, but have t ummy troubles after drinking milk. The reverse is also true. According to the National Institute of Health , most mal-absorbers can tolerate a cup of milk each day without symptoms. A more recent study of Chinese adds grist to the mill. The researchers were careful to distinguish between lactose malabsorption and actual symptoms of lactose intolerance, such as diarrhea, cramping, and flatulence. They also experimented with giving their subjects different amounts of lactose. They found that 97% of healthy Chinese tolerated 10 grams of lactose (a cup of milk has about 12 grams). Seventy-eight percent had no issues with 20 grams. When they gave 40 grams to the subjects, though, the picture changed. Sixty-eight percent experienced symptoms. Researchers have also discovered that people tolerate milk better than lactose solutions. In fact, Quartz cited a study of school children in Mainland China, which showed exactly this. After swallowing the lactose solution, many youngsters had cramps and flatulence. A few got the runs. When the children received the same dose of lactose as powdered milk, however, the symptoms decreased sharply. A team of researchers working in Hong Kong noticed the same thing in 1992. They suggested ditching the lactose solutions. There is admittedly a lot we don’t know about lactose intolerance in China. Maybe one day we will know how many people in China can’t drink milk. Until then, Chinese will just have to trust their guts.

Vegetarianism was fashionable in the Song dynasty (960-1279). Many members of the ruling elite were devout Buddhists. They visited monasteries and hung out with monks, debating the finer points of scripture. Some refused to eat meat and eggs, equating such foods with murder. A few die-hards even swore off beer and wine. The strict diet presented a dilemma. Some devout Buddhists believed that animal products and alcohol were essential to good health. They complained that a plant-based diet left them sick and malnourished. Still others craved flesh and found themselves relapsing. Some of them occasionally ate animals that had died of natural causes. Cooks rose to the challenge of making a cruelty-free diet both appealing and satisfying. They stewed bamboo shoots and deep-fried peonies. Some of them experimented with preparing food with ghee, sesame oil, and yogurt. These rich garnishes injected much-needed richness into meals. Cooks also devised ingenious tricks for turning gluten into “turtles.” The efforts paid off. Foodies could not get enough of vegetarian food. Before long, restaurants sold meat-free snacks “ just like in monasteries .” Book sellers also catered to the demand for such foods. In response, they included vegetarian recipes in popular almanacs. The recipe below is from a fourteenth-century collection. Crunchy, complex, and creamy, the Buddhist bun is unlike anything I have eaten in Asia. If you are in the mood for ethical eating, this is a good place to start. A Buddhist bun -- yogurt sauce is poured through the holes Filling Recipe I have streamlined the recipe in the interest of time, selecting only the ingredients that give the steamed buns their distinctive taste. The bun is virtually a mean in itself Gluten, ½ cup Fresh cheese, 2/3 cup (you can use crumbled paneer, strained ricotta, queso fresco , or mascarpone). For a Chinese recipe, click here. Mushrooms, 1/3 cup Wood ears, 1/3 cup Bamboo shoots, 1/3 cup (omit if brined or canned) Dried persimmon, 1 fruit Lotus root, 1/3 cup Chinese yam, de-skinned (or substitute jicama or water chestnuts), 1/3 cup Walnuts, 1/3 cup (de-skinned) Spinach (1/3 cup) Chinese celery, 1/3 cup (optional; do not substitute regular celery) Chinese sweet wheat sauce, ¼ to 1/3 cup Honey, 1 Tablespoon Sesame oil 1. Follow this recipe to make the dough for the bun. 2. While the dough rises, prepare the filling. If using dried gluten and wood ears, you will need to soak these ahead of time. 3. Strain any excess liquid from the ingredients. Mince and mix in a bowl. 4. Add the seasoning, adjusting the amount of honey and sauce according to taste. Drizzle in a little sesame oil. 5. Fill the buns. Be sure to roll the dough out thick. The final product should be a sturdy, fluffy bun like char siu bao. Also leave an opening at the top of the bun. 6. While the buns steam, prepare the yogurt sauce. Mix yogurt with a little mild rice vinegar, diluted in water. Adjust sourness to taste. 7. When the buns are ready, drizzle the yogurt sauce into the holes of the buns.

You don’t need to see it, because you can guess the plot. Ramen Girl (2008) is a cross between Karate Kid (1984), Tampopo (1985), Lost in Translation (2003), and your standard rom com. The story goes as follows. American girl (the late Brittany Murphy ) meets boy and trails him to Japan. Boy dumps girl. Girl drowns her sorrows in a bowl of ramen. Then she finds herself. She apprentices with a tough Japanese ramen chef, discovers the beauty of traditional Japanese culture, gets a career, and wins a boyfriend upgrade. A gorgeous native man becomes the trailing spouse. Tokyo Ramen with Butter (Source: E. Brightwell) More Tokyo Ramen (E. Brightwell) Prof Brightwell with Ramen (Brightwell) Critics predictably pounced on the Hollywood flop. The script writing was the least of its problems, however. Viewers objected to the way the director represented Japanese culture. Let’s face it, the poster with Brittany Murphy in a short red kimono (bathrobe?) is cringe worthy. But as a historian and career glutton, the crappy cultural politics were not the only thing I noticed. I was stuck on the noodles and the question: How did ramen come to exemplify traditional Japanese culture? On the face of things, this isn't a hard question to answer. Food writers often refer to ramen as the national dish of Japan. Like sushi (the other contender), the soup noodle is a common feature in Japanese life. Experts estimate there are 10,000 ramen shops in Tokyo alone. The fad is not just a Japanese phenomenon. The artsy form of the instant noodle has also taken the US by storm. If you’ve been to Slurping Turtle , you’re aware of how pricey it can be, too. Don’t complain. It’s worse on the East Coast. Slurping a bowl of the stuff in Hell’s Kitchen or the Lower East Side will set you back twenty bucks. ***** Like most national dishes, ramen has a convoluted history. It began its career as something else. As with pad Thai or lumpia , ramen was once a Chinese dish. In the eighteenth century, Japanese called it Shina soba (Chinese soba). After the Second World War, the noodles went instead by Chuka soba (Chinese soba). If you haven’t already guessed, Shina was -- and remains -- a slur. The slur, though, tells us loads. It reveals that ramen had its roots in China and that it owes a lot to some ugly politics. Here, I am not talking about bathrobes, but rather large-scale violence and imperialism. The Chinese progenitor to ramen is a pork broth noodle. The Chinese still regularly serve noodles in soup, and in the south, pork remains a staple of the diet. The Chinese word for meat, in fact, is synonymous with pork. The wheat noodles , needless to say, have a long history in the Middle Kingdom. So how did a fairly common Chinese noodle find its way to Japan and become the national dish? For an answer, we have to go back a couple of centuries, to the southern prefecture of Nagasaki. Nagasaki should ring a bell. Catholic missionaries and Portuguese traders introduced Iberian foodways and New World ingredients to Japanese consumers first in Nagasaki. Remember castella, confeito, tempura, and kabocha? As we learned before, the Tokugawa shogunate (1600-1868) took a hard line on Catholic missionaries. In hindsight, this proved to be a wise decision. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Iberians had a distinct taste for conquest. Think Goa, Macau, and Manila . The Spanish and Portuguese also made a habit of bringing the Inquisition with them. But the Portuguese were not the last foreigners to set foot in Nagasaki. The Dutch were there, too. So were the Chinese. Chinese merchants flocked to Nagasaki in the seventeenth century. By 1688, one fifth of the city’s population was Chinese. Out of the 194 ships that docked in the harbor that year, 117 were from the Middle Kingdom. The Chinese, however, were not free to mix and mingle with the natives. The shogunate strongly preferred that they live apart from the Japanese, in Chinatown. There, Chinese sojourners abided by their own customs. Governments, however, can only do so much. As we know, good food has trouble staying put. Curious Japanese men wandered into the Nagasaki Chinatown and watched the merchants feast, copying down their menus. They were struck by the Chinese manner of consuming food. Family style offered a contrast to the Japanese way of serving each person a separate portion. Japanese observers also noticed that the Chinese ate a decent amount of meat – especially mutton and pork. At some point, a few of them tried the pork soup noodles and began making a version of “Chinese soba.” For details, read Kushner! Nagasaki Ramen (E. Brightwell) “Chinese soba” was something of a late bloomer. It did not immediately appeal to the Japanese mainstream. It was too fatty and meat-laden. The cultural matrix had to first change. For this, of course, war and occupation played a decisive role. Two events in particular had a hand in changing ramen’s fortunes. The first was the Meiji restoration (1868-1912). This was in the wake of Commodore Perry’s forced opening of Japan to the West in 1853 (a series of unequal treaties followed in the decade to come). The young guns who toppled the Tokugawa shogunate and took command wanted to understand Western imperialists better. So they went on tours of the world. One of the things that struck them was how tall the British and Germans were. They wondered if height -- and Western dietary habits -- was the secret of European dominance. This was also the heyday of Social Darwinism . Our reformers thus kept notes of what these Westerners consumed. The copious bread, milk, and meat caught their attention. Was this the secret to keeping Japan safe? In an effort to improve the “fitness” of the nation, the Meiji modernizers pushed high-protein foods. One of them, Fukuzawa Yukich i (1835-1901) wrote a political treatise in 1870. You can guess the thesis from the title, “We Must Eat Meat!” The campaign to push wheat, meat, and milk was a flop. It worked up to a point with conscripts in the army -- but the general public remained unconvinced. Still, the movement paved the way for greater acceptance of ramen, which had two of these elements . What is more, “Chinese soba” could be adjusted to fit local tastes. Soup noodles were not as alien to the Japanese mouth as bread or beef roast. Plus, noodles had a long history in Japan: there was soba, or buckwheat noodles, and chewy udon. Not surprisingly, cooks began to adapt “Chinese soba” to Japanese tastes. They added fermented miso paste to give the stock an extra umami kick. What a classic example of local adaptation ! Udon on a Mountain top (E. Brightwell) More Udon (E. Brightwell) The second push, however, came later. The U.S. occupation (1946-1952) altered the Japanese cultural matrix (more details forthcoming in the next blog). If you haven’t noticed, there are close connections between cuisine and violence. Instant ramen eaters around the world have the Yanks in part to thank – or to blame. Again, my discussion borrows from Kushner. During the Cold War, the Americans offered “assistance” to the Japanese in the form of wheat shipments. They tried teaching Japanese women how to bake bread in the hopes that the Japanese would ditch the rice. That predictably went nowhere. But what to do about the surplus wheat? Fortunately, Andō Momofuku (1912-2008) had other ideas. ***** First, some background: Despite his Japanese-sounding name, Andō was not from Japan. He was an ethnic Chinese born in Japanese-controlled Taiwan. His original name was Wu Baifu. At some point, he spent time in prison for tax evasion and struggled with getting his career off the ground (things were tough in post-war Asia). Andō, though, had two things going for him. The first was his wife. He married a Japanese woman, acquired Japanese citizenship, and changed his last name to hers. The second was his knowledge of food. As someone who grew up in Taiwan, Andō was familiar with how pork noodles were prepared. He also knew, for example, that ramen was very time-consuming to make. So he came up with a method of mass producing -- and preserving -- ramen: quickly deep-frying it. He learned you could soften a brick of fried ramen without sacrificing the noodle’s springiness by immersing it in hot liquid for a few minutes. This trick was inspired by tempura . Tempura loses its crunchy texture when it swims in ponzu sauce. (Yes, there is a Portuguese layer to ramen, too). Andō’s corporation, Nissin, was born from this insight. ***** Is it right for Japanese people to claim ramen as the national dish? Here, I'll give you my opinion -- 'yes.' Ramen is now a part of everyday Japanese life. It has become a vehicle for Japanese chefs to express themselves. It is a dish that is currently an object of Japanese cultural pride. So, of course, it is Japanese. Much the way that dumpling is Chinese, Armenian, Korean, and Turkish, and pizza is quintessentially American. But like many 'national' dishes, ramen was not the brainchild of any single culture or people. It was a group lift. Its incomparable texture and flavor brought together the efforts of people spread across space and time: from the Portuguese missionaries to the Chinese missionaries to the Japanese imperialists to the American occupiers. And Andō: an ethnic Chinese man with Japanese citizenship and a criminal record! Each of them contributed something to that dish. So the next time you have a bowl of the stuff (instant or otherwise), take a minute and remember all of the people who brought you this umami bomb. You’ll find that it’s a decent-sized list. Experiences with ramen you would like to share? See you on YellowDig? Recipe resources: Ramen is very time consuming to make! Most of my friends who like Japanese food usually wait until they can go to a good noodle shop. However, if you plan to be at home, this can be a good way of passing the time and improving your cooking skills. As usual, I recommend JustOneCookbook, which has a miso ramen recipe (one of my favorites). Source: Barak Kushner, Slurp! a Social and Culinary History of Ramen - Japan's Favorite Noodle Soup (2012) Further reading: George Solt, The Untold History of Ramen: How Political Crisis in Japan Spawned a Global Food Craze (Berkeley, 2014). Eric Rath, Japan's Cuisines: Food, Place, and Identity (Reaktion Books, 2016).

If you’re like me, you're probably not going out much these days. So let’s fantasize about the places we might travel if we were suddenly free to move about. Imagine that money’s no object. Say we are flying out business class, to a densely-populated Japanese city for a meal. What would you have? Many of you would go for sushi (that’s a different blog, and we can return to Tokyo next week). Others would scarf down a nice piece of steak. Some kobe beef 神戸ビーフ? Or perhaps yakiniku 焼肉? Guess what this is? If you decided to take the plunge and go for the beef, you would not have to worry about your gourmand credentials. (Your green reputation, however, might suffer.) Japanese beef is renowned and many Japanese dishes are made with it. Think of the stews ( sukiyaki , gyûnabe ). Let’s face it: wagyu cuts are pricey. They are sometimes served in fusion restaurants with chimichurri sauce. If you are in a more adventurous mood, you might taste the Japanese beef tartare , served up with a raw egg. After all, there’s no danger of food poisoning in fantasy land. The tour is a teaser. If you haven’t already guessed, I’m telling you that the Japanese eat a fair amount of beef these days. Of course, Team America has them beat. But if we think per capita , then the Americans trail Uruguay, Argentina, and Hong Kong (yes, Hong Kong ). While Japan doesn’t make it to the top ten, kobe beef and yakiniku are nonetheless remarkable foods. They’re not only tasty, but also recent additions to Japanese cuisine. Japan’s meat consumption, in fact, has risen sharply since the early twentieth century. In 1955, the average person consumed about 3 kilograms of meat. Do the math: a kilo is 2.2 pounds. In 2017, that figure was 54.7 kilos. If we scrutinize the numbers , it’s clear that beef makes up under 20 percent of the total. The rest is poultry and pork. So how, then, did the Japanese become carnivores? The question is worth asking. As we saw in a previous lecture, the cultural matrix discouraged meat consumption. Japanese versions of carne de vinha d'alhos faded from the diets soon after the Portuguese went running . People in the homeland of wagyu steaks once avoided beef assiduously. There are, of course, the usual suspects in our story: the Meiji reformers (1868-1912) and the American occupiers (1946-1952). This food puzzle, though, requires introducing a new set of actors. Ethnic Koreans, stranded in post-war Japan, had a starring role in this tale of dietary transformation. But we are getting ahead of ourselves. Let’s back up for a moment, to the late nineteenth century. As you read on earlier, the Meiji reformers were hell bent on getting Japan on the fast track to modernization. This meant changing a lot about Japanese society and embracing novel ways of doing things – and, of course, getting people to consume new foods. Meat -- and particularly pork -- was among them. Sometimes, the pork turned up in the ramen (“Chinese soba”). But other times, it surfaced in Japanese interpretations of German dishes. Take tonkatsu , or pork cutlets breaded in panko. Yes, it’s often served on a bed of rice and consumed with chopsticks. But it’s a dead ringer for its ancestor: Schnitzel. Gourmet version of pork cutlets at Mabel Gray Tonkatsu also has a cousin. Heard of hambāgu ハンバーグ? It’s a loan word from the German, not the American (I mean English). Hambāgu comprises pork, beef, and panko. Don’t confuse it with pure beef hamburger ( hambaga ). The bun-sandwiched patty came later, with th e Yankees . Hambāgu , in contrast, is older. You can serve it with rice, miso soup, and chopsticks. Some cookbooks classify hambāgu as washoku (Japanese-styled cuisine) rather than yōshoku 洋食 (foods of recent Western origin). To be sure, Western foods made their way to Japan in the late nineteenth century. But the Meiji Japanese adoption of Western foods was limited. It fell more on the piecemeal side of the scale. Yes, you got a version of the Waldorf salad and some Schnitzel at the turn of the twentieth century. But the seismic shift in diet took place later. Post-war scarcity led to a more wholesale change in the cultural matrix . This change not only involved the introduction of new foods and ingredients, but also challenged long standing values . It prompted an overhaul of the social contexts of eating. To appreciate the magnitude of the change, we must remember who made up the Japanese empire. By 1895, the Japanese were as modern as their Western counterparts. By modern, I mean that they had acquired a talent for conquest and colonialism, as well as industrial production. The year 1895 marked the end of the First Sino-Japanese War. It was an upset victory for the Japanese navy. No one in the West expected them to win a fight with the Chinese (this is how Japan took over Taiwan ). For this feat, Japan not only received an upgrade in its global status, but Western imperialists also welcomed Japan to their ranks. Japan annexed Korea (officially) in 1910. Ethnic Koreans now found themselves Japanese imperial subjects. Conscripted into the Japanese army, they moved around the enlarging empire. Many went to Japan in the early twentieth century, as forced laborers. By 1930, there were almost 300,000 Koreans in Japan. By 1940, there were a million. Another million came in the next five years, brought to offset the labor shortages. Not all of these people, of course, departed Japan at the end of the war. There were 600,000 Koreans who remained in Japan in 1946. I encountered their descendants as a study-abroad student in Hokkaido (summer 1998). The colonial experience naturally left its mark on Korean cuisine. Take gimbap or kimbap . It’s a local version of futomaki (sushi rolls). Korean beef also shaped Japanese foodways. Today, the Korean love of the meat is world famous. It, too, has a back story, being a legacy of an earlier conquest. The Mongol overlords not only brought dumplings ( mandu ) to the Koreans, but also BBQ. The Koreans did not turn the Japanese into beef (or kimchi ) lovers overnight, however. Before 1940, Korean food was virtually unknown to the Japanese population. Korean restaurants in Japan were few and far between; social prejudice, moreover, was rampant. As you might expect, the Japanese looked down upon the Koreans. Food scarcity, however, changed some of this. The Second World War caused food shortages in Japan. This was no accident. In an attempt to starve the Japanese into submission, the U.S. created supply blockades. The food shortages left the Japanese desperate. To get around rationing, ordinary people turned to the black market – and food stalls run by ethnic Koreans. Hunger also got Japanese civilians to try out foods that they once regarded as unclean. Offals, also known as variety meats, acquired their place in Japanese cuisine. Today, you can eat horumon yaki ホルモン焼き, offal sashimi, and sweet soy liver . These, too, are Korean culinary legacies of the 40s. A variety meat (Manchurian styled food, 2018) As conditions eased in the 1950s, the Japanese moved beyond innards. They began appreciating other foods their ancestors had scorned. This included beef, which until the 1960s, was cheaper than chicken or pork. A recovering Japan took advantage of the bargains – in Korean shops. There, they also encountered bulgogi and galbi. Today, it goes by the name yakiniku . A Japanese classic was born. Bulgogi: Before and After (April 2018) Source: Katarzyna Cwiertka, Modern Japanese Cuisine: Food, Power and National Identity A Bulgogi Recipe by Hunjin Jung (edited by Miranda Brown) This is the recipe that Hunjin Jung, a lecturer in Korean language, taught my students how to make in the winter terms of 2017 and 2018. Beef and Vegetable Mixture Beef, 600 g or 21 ounces (sliced 3 cm wide, 5 cm long, and 0.5 cm thick) Onions, 70 g [about 2.5 oz] Scallions, 100 g [3.5 oz] Carrots, 100 g [3.5 oz] Mushrooms, 50 g [1.25] Seasoning Soy Sauce, 9 T Sugar, 4 T Minced garlic, 1 T Sesame oil, 1 T Pepper powder, ½ t Water, 8 T Pear juice, 5 T Refined rice wine, 3 T (optional) Methods 1. Drain the blood from the beef and slice. 2. Add the seasonings. 3. Slice onions 0.5 cm thin. 4. Slice scallions and carrots 0.5 cm, slantwise. 5. Slice the mushrooms into bite-sized pieces. 6. Marinate beef and vegetables in the fridge for about an hour. 7. Cook beef mixture in the pan for 5 minutes on high. Turn down the flame and cook another 5 minutes on medium.

おはよう！Professor Brown has invited me to step in and take you to Japan for a quick tutorial on the food associated with the Japanese holiday of Setsubun 節分 (literally the seasonal divide, but as a holiday, the change from winter to spring). Below, I’ll give you a brief background and then walk you through how to make your own ehōmaki 恵方巻 (lucky direction roll), a traditional dish for Setsubun that is supposed to have originated in Osaka in roughly the 19th century. Now, as some of you probably already know, Setsubun is celebrated the day before the beginning of spring, usually 2/3, but this year—for the first time in 124 years!—it fell on 2/2. The holiday’s most iconic activity is mamemaki 豆撒き(bean tossing): throwing roasted soybeans at demons as you drive them from your house while yelling, “ Oni wa soto! Fuku wa uchi! ” (Demons out, good luck in!) You’re also supposed to eat as many beans as you are old, but we’ll skip that part, because in my case, that comes to more roasted soybeans than I feel like consuming. But these beans are a serious business! When I last lived in Japan a few years ago, I went to Shimogamo Shrine for Setsubun, and I was woefully unprepared for the many grannies who had come with bags to try to get the lucky beans tossed at us! (They did check to make sure that I had gotten some beans, too, once the melee was over…) Setsubun is more than just bean-throwing fun, however. The rites are linked to tsuina 追儺 (demon expulsion), a ritual purificatory practice that was carried out at the Japanese court but began in China, supposedly having arrived in Japan during the time of Emperor Monmu (683-707, r. 697-707). As old as these rites are, however, as I mentioned above, the “lucky roll” we’re making here is a much more recent invention. And despite its Kansai origins, the ehōmaki is now widely available throughout Japan as a Setsubun treat. When I’m outside of Japan, it’s the one thing I feel that I absolutely have to eat to mark the beginning of spring! So now, let me show you how you, too, can make your own lucky roll to get spring started right. The “lucky roll” should have seven ingredients, symbolizing the seven gods of good luck. According to https://www.thespruceeats.com/good-fortune-sushi-rolls-2031612 , these ingredients include, “ [f]or example, simmered shiitake mushrooms and kanpyo (dried gourd), cucumber, rolled omelet ( tamagoyaki ), eels, sakura denbu (sweet fish powder), and seasoned koyadofu (freeze-dried tofu) are used.” For all kinds of reasons (see: Midwest, pandemic, love of avocado), I prefer this version ( http://www.cuisinivity.com/recipe/archive/entrees/large_sushi_roll.php ), which is also simple enough to make with minimal props. The only thing you really need is a sushi mat. (And no, I don't usually wear a mask in my kitchen, but it's plum season! Below, a "tasteful" setsubun figurine with plums...) The recipe is pretty straightforward, so I’ll just focus on providing practical tips here. First, you can easily make the sushi rice (which is the first thing you should get started cooking) in a regular bowl. But if you’re going for fancy (or cheap fancy, in my case), you can use a hangiri. If you go this latter route, you’ll need to season it before you use it the first time. This means soaking it overnight with ¼ c. rice vinegar and water. Click on https://www.allaboutsushiguide.com/hangiri.html for more instructions. You’ll also want to fill it with water—which you’ll dump before putting in the rice—while your rice cooks. 2 cups of uncooked rice will make a little more than the 450 grams the recipe calls for. Next, prep the vinegar mixture for "sushi rice" while the rice is cooking so that it’s cool by the time your rice is ready. (I use regular Japanese rice, and it works fine.) Then, I suggest making the shiitake and the spinach. Dried shiitake work fine—they need to be soaked for about 5 minutes in hot water before you slice and braise them. If you think two looks too stingy, don’t be fooled. I thought that, too, and so I made 1 more (I couldn’t have 4 shiitake, after all, since that would be bad luck), and I ended up with too many shiitake. The spinach should be put into boiling water for just about as long as it took me to take this picture. While your spinach and shiitake cool, tackle the omelet. This always stresses me out, but it’s actually not that hard. I do recommend cooking longer on low heat and just letting it cook through rather than attempting to flip it. At least that’s what I do. I’m mentally scarred from when I tried to flip noodles in a wok in Thailand, and half of them ended up on the floor. But if you have better hand-eye coordination, have at it. By this time, your rice is probably ready, so transfer it to your dish of choice and start sprinkling the vinegar and mixing gently. (Remember to keep a bit of vinegar aside for the carrots.) When you’re done “flicking” your rice, just cover it and set it aside. I do not recommend setting it aside for too, long, though! Professor Brown called me in the middle of my roll making, and the rice for the second roll was definitely less well behaved by the time we were done chatting… instead, you should probably set it aside just long enough to slice up the rest of your ingredients. At last! The rolling. The big thing is to not overload your roll. My nori actually has lines on it, which made rice distribution easy. You don’t want to cover the entire piece, because the nori needs to stick together at the end. I then add ingredients more or less as my recipe does in order to ensure reasonable distribution. Then you roll it up! You’ll need to roll up the closest edge of your mat while you roll so that you don’t end up with sushi mat inside your dinner. Squeeze your roll gently as you go. And voilà! Since it’s an ehōmaki , don’t cut it! That would sever your good fortune. Instead, you should eat it facing in the year’s lucky direction (south by southeast for 2021) and in silence. My trusty assistant, 織田イワシ (ODA Iwashi), carefully monitored this from her perch (on my table!) in precisely the lucky direction. Happy Spring! PS You can also use this recipe for regular futomaki , as I did below with my leftovers. Be sure you have a sharp knife if you go this route, because sawing at a sushi roll…is not pretty. I suggest you slice the roll in half first and then into smaller pieces. Enjoy!