Comparative kitchenology
My friend, a terminal sociologist and recovering Chinese-American, spontaneously sent me this email:
White people! White people have all kinds of ridiculous gadgets and toys in their kitchen. They’ve got 16 different knives, an eggbeater, a slicer, a dicer, a cheese grater, and all kinds of other wacky shit. My dad has one (1) big fuckoff cleaver, and chopsticks.
What can white people make in their kitchens that my dad can’t? Grits?
I found this both incredibly humorous—particularly because it was in my apartment a few weeks ago that he pointed to the Ikea knives in the Ikea knife holder on the Ikea butcher’s block and said, essentially, that he wasn’t in Kansas anymore—and quite accurate.
In Taiwan, every form of food I ingested was cooked with nothing more than:
- A bowl
- A wooden stick
- A metal cutter
How is this possible? Obviously the paradox of choice and maximization of individual freedom so intrinsic to American consumer culture play a big role in this, but maybe also it’s that Chinese culinary accoutrements have merely been refined over millennia. There’s an efficiency implicit in the—excuse the misnomer—Spartan, function-over-form aesthetic of the Chinese kitchen.
Clearly, then, while both Chinese and Americans might be said to place great weight in the skill of a chef, the former would almost certainly define “skill” as a learned ability, whereas the latter might pay more attention to the pomp and circumstance around the person.
Perhaps I’m making drastic leaps of logic, but stay with me. Entertain the possibility that the above is correct, if only because it’s so contradictory to certain research that claims Chinese pay more attention to context than Americans.
When you look at the picture on the computer screen at right, where do your eyes linger longest? Surprisingly, the answer to that question might differ depending upon where you were raised. Americans stare more fixedly at the train in the center, while Chinese let their eyes roam more around the entire picture, according to research by psychologist Richard Nisbett, PhD.
Interesting, no?
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- Published:
- 09.14.09 / 9pm
- Category:
- musings
- Tags:
- anthropology, culinary informatics, cultural-differences, racial identity, sociology, sweden's got more than just hot chicks
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– cannot be bought. Taste, creativity and sense of composition among them. These skills are partially learned abilities and partially raw talent. 
