Well recently, I had the privilege of travelling to the ruralest of rural villages in Oaxaca, Mexico. In these towns where doctors are a luxury and food is cultivated often on the side of cliffs, one can learn a bit about the origins of cuisine. Here time is scaled back a few decades and truckloads of wonder bread or exotic fruits are not options. However, in spite of their isolation, these people can somehow enjoy exquisite, flavorful food using only the resources around them.
As breakfast is cooked in an outdoor smoky stove, our local “chefs” whisked together some eggs from village chickens and cooked them gently in the giant leaves shown below, known as “hojas sanas.” These leaves are collected from trees in the forest just outside our bunkhouse and are actually quite delicious. The dish is topped off with traditional rice and beans to make a simple, yet flavorful Mexican breakfast.
And finally….at this tumbling waterfall, local residents tracked down and collected this green herb, known as “wild cilantro,” which actually does have a taste pretty similar to its namesake. Turned out it was the perfect complement to some early morning eggs, rice, and beans. And, just to throw in a little Vitamin C, we were sure to eat a few Mamey fruit…again collected from the trees outside.
Even though time has progressed and world trade is booming (and certainly none of us would prefer to live in such harsh, isolating conditions), almost all cultures can trace back their history to a time similar to this….Times when ingredients you ate were the ingredients you grew (or sometimes what was brought in by the last ship) and drive-thru cuisine was not an option. The story almost anywhere you travel is similar….centuries upon centuries of local people starting with few resources and getting creative over time. Prodding the forest for a wild array of flavors and spices (as they surely did in India), then cultivating the foods that were most well suited to the area, then throwing a little creativity into the mix. Thousands of years of creativity. Slowly….after trial and error and tradition and plenty of slow-cooking grandmas, it seems that cuisines emerged of a very local sort. The options created by world trade, then, could only make these cuisines better because of their foundation. Of course, it would be wrong to romanticize remote places who still have few resources and few crops....but it is amazing that even these places can usually enjoy a meal that is better than what you would find at Burger King.
So what about the roots of our Fritos? America may stand alone as the only country who has not had its thousands of years to develop its own unique fare. Partly due to our youth, but also likely due to our quest for convenience since colonization. Without being limited to the land, long standing native-American fare was ignored as we started our “cuisine” on a base of giant processing plants and mass production of under-par produce.
Of course, let's not forgot that we have rights to the all-famous apple pie, so that should redeem us a bit for sure. And luckily, we currently have the advantage of being the world “melting pot” so that an intricate array of foreign flavors can be found in most metropolitan areas (if they are not changed to suit American tastes). Can we still appreciate them given our long-time hum-drum diet of corn syrup, beef patties, and caffeine? Let’s hope so….or we citizens are certainly missing out :)
