Defining Dish

Is there a dish that defines your upbringing? Your regional identity? One you’re willing to fight for should someone dis your dish’s cultural uniqueness? My friend Lisa and I are at book club where I ponder these questions waiting for the discussion to begin.

We are anxious to discover what the other readers think of this month’s pick.  It was written by an American immigrant food writer on a quest to cook dishes in a region, of the region, that could define the region.  The cover looked inviting, and the back matter had me excited. I imagined a trip around the world with descriptions of each delicious bite, but what I got was a haughty history lesson.  “If these people liked the book, I just don’t know what to think!” Lisa had declared earlier, over our beautiful meal of branzino at a fabulous Italian restaurant a few blocks from the bookstore. She refused to finish reading; it was so annoying.

The discussion begins, and we needn’t have worried if we would be the minority dissenters. The opinions of the vociferous group are unanimous. All consider the food critic condescending, even the member who calls himself condescending.  All through my reading, I hoped for a Ratatouille moment, when the writer is changed, heart and soul, by a dish so sublime she concludes in love and peace, bestowing cultural clemency on this dish that unites us all.  But alas, she ends with an argument about who owns her childhood staple meal.

A young Armenian woman who emigrated as a child, is quiet all evening until she finishes our discussion by exclaiming how upset she was by “every stupid, stupid word in this book,” and expresses her hopes that readers don’t envision immigrants like that “stupid, stupid” food writer.  Wow, I think, while my inner-Pollyanna pleads, “Shouldn’t food gather us around a table instead of being weaponized?”

And yet, at discussion’s end, while sharing foods our members brought from different cultures, I am itching for a fight when I hear a claim that the Hummingbird Cake we are offered is not, in fact, a Southern dish.  “Southern Living featured it in an article in 1978 after the Jamaican Tourism Board published the recipe to promote their island produce,” the cook announces.  Well shut my mouth!  Which of my other native dishes are in doubt? The pear salad I tried to revive after SL’s recent Instagram blow-up?

In truth, the pear salad of my childhood did not actually bring my family to the table with joyful harmony.  This strange little salad, a lettuce leaf topped with a canned pear-half, a dollop of mayonnaise, a sprinkling of grated cheese, and a cherry on top, was prepared to each of my mother’s picky children’s specifications.  One refused the mayo, one the cheese as well, and another just wanted the pear and cherry. 

This simple offering did not make it into my marital meal repertoire, due to my husband’s mayonnaise aversion.  (I may have told you before that all my mamma’s best recipes required onion and/or mayonnaise, neither of which Dan will tolerate.) Once I saw SL’s recent article about alternative pear salads, one of which replaced the mayo with cottage cheese, I decided to give it a new birth, lovingly plating and placing it before my husband.  Dan made a show of trying a bite, but when we cleared the table, I picked up his uneaten salad and said, “Not working for you?”

“You do know I don’t really care for pears, right?”

“You always liked Aunt Libby’s pear salad.”

“That’s pink fluff, mostly Jell-O and whipped cream. That doesn’t count as pear salad.”

I leave book club and go back to the drawing board in my mind, seeking a unifying dish that won’t start another civil war like my pear salad did. What defining dish might feed a Yankee husband and satisfy my Southern taste buds? Any suggestions?