Food for Thought

My students often ask me what the 'typical' food of my country is. This is something that I'm not used to thinking about back home. In Ecuador, people pride themselves on their adherence to traditional cuisine. Traditional cuisine varies a bit from region to region, but as Ecuador's such a small country (comparatively speaking), the bulk of it tends to be largely the same across the whole country. You've got your secos--basically meat-based dishes cooked in a sauce (never enough!), served with a large heaping of white rice and perhaps some menestra (stewed beans). In this I'll go ahead and count any dish whose primary components are meat and rice. You've also got a whole category of plantain-based foods, some of which also combine fish because those seem to be Ecuador's most abundant resources. There are infinite bowls of liquid--among these I will count all of the caldos, locros, cremas, encebollado, and ceviche (because what is ceviche if not just fish in a bowl of lime juice?). There are wrapped corn dough foods like humitas, quimbolitos, hallacas (or hayacas because spelling is kind of a joke here), and Ecuadorian tamales. And the crowning achievement of Ecuadorian cuisine, in my opinion, is mote con fritada. Now, obviously that doesn't cover everything, but that's the general makeup of the food landscape here. What you won't find much of is deviation from tradition. Culinary experimentation is seen as sort of a novelty for aniñados and pelucones (rich people). Aside from KFC and chifa, which is Ecuadorian-style Chinese food, foreign culinary influence is largely limited to mall food courts and trendy urban neighborhoods in Quito and Guayaquil. At home, people cook what they've been cooking since the advent of farming in this region.

I have a very hard time explaining what 'typical' American food is. I'd like to think of it as what's on the Applebee's menu, but even that is littered with things like steak quesadillas, Thai shrimp salads, and three cheese chicken cavatappi. Hell, even hamburgers and hot dogs, those all-American fast food staples, are actually German. There is so much foreign influence in our food that we can't even separate it out from our own identity. You could argue that Southern soul food was born on our land, but it was still heavily influenced by West African slaves. And even then, I don't think that that sort of food accurately represents the whole of the United States. How many pig pickin's do you really think are happening in states like Washington and Connecticut? If I can't define American food by what we have available to us in the States, then I must define it by what we don't have available to us outside the States, which brings me to: Kraft.

The central unifying theme of food that we eat across the United States that is not eaten in other parts of the world is that A LOT of it is processed and packaged. Look at recipes designed for the average American cook and you'll see ingredients listed in such quantities as: 1 can of diced tomatoes, 1 package of instant pudding mix, 1 brick of Velveeta, or 1 tub of Cool Whip. My Pinterest boards are full of 'quick and easy' recipes that I can't make because they call for things like Pillsbury Crescent dough or canned frosting. I had to google the components of Bisquick because even though Bisquick is just flour, baking powder, salt, and a fat, recipes just assume you don't want to go through the trouble of mixing in a couple more ingredients. When I think of the impact that giant food manufacturers have had on American cuisine, I think of casseroles and all those horrid jello salads from the '50s, '60s, and '70s. And while we might have moved past awkwardly-molded meats, in the modern day we've replaced them with frozen-everything. Back before I entered the Peace Corps, I was a single, recent college grad cooking for one, and nearly everything I ate came from the freezer or a can. With more and more Americans delaying or forgoing marriage, having fewer kids, and working longer and harder for less pay, it only makes sense that we would gravitate toward foods that don't spoil as quickly and require spending less time in the kitchen. For a long time, processed and packaged food was the thing that paved the way for the nutritional success of Americans (until cheap sugar got the better of us), and from that legacy we derived many of the foods that I believe are uniquely American.