I have a really good friend who is Syrian. I love the Syrian sense of humor.
I was telling him about how I feel as though in a world of super specialized people at this stage in my career, I feel like an oddball. He says, ‘you’re like fusion food. But you have to have a clear and easily understood story. Who you are, what you’re selling. Otherwise, you will be confusion food.’
@sunscream I also think of it less as ‘the story to sell to corporations for work or personal branding’ and more of ‘also the same story I tell myself about who I am and what I care for’, that I can then use to guide me in all of my ‘am I on the right path? Is this fun and impactful?’ sort of questions I might ask myself.
The food parallel helps me (because I used to sell food)
Even though I never cooked when I was living in Southeast Asia (you.. really don’t need to), paying attention to food procurement and techniques helped me level up when I started cooking when I left that region.
(Eating street food there is often cheaper than buying ingredients and cooking yourself. In almost all SEA cities)
There’s a lot of stuff I felt I just ‘knew’ because I was around people who dealt with food all the time
How to pick fish, vegetables, where to get them. I think that’s the missing piece of information in a lot of English language books about food. There’s a lot you learn when your source of food procurement isn’t a supermarket, too. When stuff isn’t just in styrofoam and plastic and you can talk to an expert about what to get. I 100% credit my time in wet markets for my food knowledge and hate that they are maligned so much (wet markets aren’t what the racist covid coverage tell you they are)
Sometimes I read racist people talk about ‘how can Chinatown veggies be so cheap, must be bad’ as though Chinese aunties won’t also throw carrots and cabbages at you for going to a supermarket and getting inferior product that was much more expensive than Chinatown
@carrideen Chinatown veggies also have their own supply networks that supply just Chinatowns, and focuses only on veggies Chinese / SE Asian people eat
@Natalie yeah in California our farmer markets are great. I can get a whole weeks of veggies for $10 or less and still have enough to pickle / do something with it
@alysondecker yeah definitely a question of density, which is also why I like where I am in spite of many other issues (I never have to get into a car, or even transit, to shop at multiple places)
The Yemenis from Hadramawt went all over, including to Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia where I’ve spent most of my life. Many of the beloved dishes we think of as local, are Yemeni in origin (like all of the other food, it came from somewhere. Except maybe the food of the orang laut and other Indigenous people)
The tell tale sign is in the name! In Indonesia this would be called ‘nasi mandi’.
In Singapore I would say it’s fused identities with biryani generally, but you can still get mandi at places that self ID as Arab in origin or inspiration (Cafe Miriam, Artichoke)