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■Fai
Hong Kong has long been acclaimed as(v.被譽為) a gourmet's heaven. Take a walk around the city, and you will find restaurants that specialize in cuisines from different parts of the world. The media also seem to work together to present the same picture of Hong Kong. As you surf from channel to channel on the television, you are bound to chance upon two or three cooking programs. Similarly, newspapers and popular magazines always carry a story or two on food. Even when you are too sated(adj.吃膩了) to take another bite, you can still eat vicariously by feasting your eyes on colorful pictures of sumptuously prepared dishes.
Yet, the very serious food lovers have their complaints about the state of cooking in Hong Kong. They point to the great exodus(n.大遷徙) of famous chefs from Hong Kong at around 1997, and argue that the best Chinese food that made Hong Kong famous at one point can now only be found in Chinatowns over the world. As for non-Chinese food, well, who has ever tasted anything authentic in Hong Kong anyway? Thai food tastes like Vietnamese, Italian is represented by pizza and overcooked and soggy pasta, red curry is no different from green curry in flavor, and sushi and sashimi prepared from stale fish are taken to be the best that Japanese cooking has to offer. It is all in all a big disappointment.
The fact is that different people come to food with different expectations. On the most basic level, people partake(v.吃光)food to keep themselves alive. As long as one has enough of a balanced diet, it matters little how the food is prepared. On the next level, one can become more discriminating(adj.講究). The ingredients have to be fresh, and the cooking has to be done just so(adv.剛好). Over the holidays, I attended a seminar on food writing, which brought home to me the idea that food can be enjoyed not only physically but intellectually as well. The speakers of the seminar were of course referring to the way a good piece of food writing can open ways for us to understand a culture.
Look at a carefully researched cookbook with many recipes that have been tried and tested, for example. As long as a reader with some fundamental training in cooking can produce decent food by following the instructions, the cookbook can be said to have fulfilled its primary purpose(v.phr.達到基本目的). If the book is illustrated with drawings and pictures, that would be an added bonus.
Ideally, however, a cookbook should provide even more in that it should expound on a way of life. In that sense, it is almost a work of cultural history. The best cookbooks not only teach the readers how to cook but also deliver in-depth information on how a cuisine develops. Such an account may begin with a description of the geographical location of the region, its climate and vegetation. A country that has a long coastline is likely to develop a diet that relies heavily on seafood. The book may also go into the beliefs of the people, which explain why pork dishes are not to be found in a Middle-eastern cookbook. For a similar reason, until recent years, there are very few recipes of beef in Japanese cooking.
Delving into the history of food also gives rise to intriguing thoughts about a culture. Modern Chinese cooking calls for peanut oil in most of its dishes, and it is difficult to imagine what Chinese food would be like without it. However, peanuts are not an indigenous product in Asia. They are what is sometimes called a New World crop because they originally grew only in the Americas. In other words, like tomatoes and a host of other food items, peanut was not known to this part of the world until regular trade routes were established that linked all the continents together. Inevitably, the question comes to mind: what was Chinese food like before peanuts made their journey across the Pacific?
As foods from other places become more and more available in Hong Kong, perhaps it is time for us to consider questions such as this.
■kingfaitam@gmail.com
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