Food, culture and memory

Or, how an unscratchable itch was finally scratched

It's not surprising that my food preferences have changed a lot over the last 3.5 years. Living in a foreign country changes several things about your life. How you relate to particular foods is one of many changes.

Loose and tight cultures

You know the fish joke about a passing fish asking the neighboring fish, "How's the water?" The other fish says "Water? What is water?"

We easily can forget that from the moment we wake to the moment we fall asleep (and even in our dreams), culture defines how we perceive the world. It's our water.

One way of characterizing cultures is by how loose or tight they are. For example, Singapore has 20,000 people per square mile, compared to 50 people in New Zealand.  If you try to import chewing gum into Singapore you can face a fine of up to $100,000, or even jail time. I doubt New Zealanders or Americans or any country with lots of elbow room can grasp the reasoning behind such massive punishment.

"During the 1980s, city workers struggled to keep up with cleaning chewing gum waste, which became a public crisis. The sticky wads gummed up mailboxes and elevator buttons, and even jammed apartment keyholes and the sensors on subway system doors, causing frequent malfunctions. In a place with so many mouths per square mile, the solution was simple: get rid of the temptation. By 1992, the sale of gum was prohibited in Singapore, and people caught selling the chewy treat faced hefty fines."

I imagine that right now some of you might be reaching for some penalty-free gum. Or at least thinking about it.

The implication of the gum story is that Singapore has to be a tight culture or it would be overwhelmed by careless behavior, simply due to its density.

In general, cultures under heavy threat need to be tight cultures. We shouldn't judge that loose cultures are better than tight cultures, or vice versa. Sometimes a single country can be a mixed bag. For example, in America some states are tighter than others, while the country as a whole is fairly loose.

What does this have to do with food?

Food traditions are manifestations of our cultural biases. In Bali, which is a loose culture, you can eat anything you like or open any kind of restaurant that you can dream up.

The Balinese are so confident in their own ancient, spiritual culture that nothing threatens them. If you simply follow the rules regarding setting up your business, hire locals and pay taxes, the Balinese won't care about the food you serve.

But it's not all black and white. Italy, which I would characterize as a loose culture, has intense pride about their cuisine. So even though an enterprising entrepreneur might want to offer Chinese food to tourists who might be burned out on pasta, the neighborhood would not look upon the idea favorably and might potentially reject it.

Scarcity

One aspect of living in a foreign country will be that some food needs to be imported. If you really want Spanish manchego cheese in Bali, you might be able to get it at the one cheese import shop on the island. But if the store doesn't carry it you're out of luck.

How big of a problem is it? Well, are you individually loose or tight? If you're loose you can go with the flow and buy an alternative. Or even limit your intake of cheese because the local culture is not a cheese culture.

If you're tight you might negotiate with the cheese shop owner and perhaps he will special order the manchego cheese just for you.

Memory

One of the things that happens to people over time is that they return to the same memories at various times. If those happen to be food memories then the food might become a craving.

About twenty years ago I spent a month in Italy with my wife (at that time) and our 3 year-old son. It was a long flight from California to southern Italy and by the time we arrived in the little town of Ravello we were exhausted.

We found a restaurant right next to the town square, with string lights hanging from a beautiful arbor covered in old vines. As the waiter showed us to our table he pulled the white sheet and tightened it up with a professional, Italian flair. We were going to have a good meal here.

I don't remember the dishes we ate but I do remember the complimentary lemoncello liquor he served us at the end of the meal. It was chilled and packed a luscious punch. Bursts of lemon, powerful alcohol, and sugar syrup to round it off. Man did it hit the spot.

Every now and then, in the middle of Bali, that memory of the string lights, the white table cloth, and the lemoncello come to me. I've looked around for lemoncello in the tourist grocery stores and have not had any luck.

Recently I met Christopher (Christoforo in Italian). He owns a new pizza place in my neighborhood of Pererenan. On my second visit, after having a delicious spicy pepperoni pizza, Christopher gave me a free shot of his homemade limecello. Lemons are imported to Bali and are expensive, but there's a native lime tree species that has small but very tasty limes.

So here I am in Bali with a shot of chilled, limecello in my hand. Sipping this glorious liquor, for free, with a native Italian who's been making pizza for 17 years.

It required a loose culture, a strange memory, and a slight twist: lime instead of lemon. But a crazy food craving that surfaced halfway around the world from it's origin, is now on my lips.

Mamma mia