I watched the Mexican film "Como Agua para Chocolate"/ Like water for chocolate and was entranced by the sensuality of the food and its power to mend and sometimes break relationship.
The phrase is used within Spanish/ Mexican communties and describes the sentiment that: one's emotions are on the verge of boiling over.
As a sensitive domestic being, this film felt like coming home; food being the centre of discourse and its power to stir emotions.
The context I am working with is spread over the political table of capitalism. I am interested in working with personal flavours within this political table to gauge where I am situated. Crossing cuisines of Aotearoa and India, I want to present old recipes with contemporary fusions.
Sitting in this table of corrupt junk food, I do not reconcile with only being a critic. I want to cook to create and explore a deep culinary journey that takes me across the diet of my ancestors to the food of my everyday.
Partaking in the production of cooking and testing recipes is critical to actively making space in this spread of junk food. By feeding those interested, those curious in my life, they might offer suggestions, might even invest in my restaurant, which will function as a bespoke platform for my inherited knowledge within my neo-Indo cuisine.
I prefer not to eat the food served to me by ghost chefs delivered by takeaway distributors. I have had my fair share of it. I doubt one could even call it "food", it is merely a space filler. Its lack of nutrition and relationship with the land and those who have cooked it has left me feeling distant and separated from the food itself. I feel unaccountable and sick to my core.
I crave relationship; I want the food my mother served me, even the challenging spinach portions in retrospect have strengthened my body and my appetite for variety in flavours. I crave the trust, and love that came from the hands that fed me; the local vegetable seller that served us his best produce with zest; the zeal and pride in the spice-mans eyes; the miller whose skin was unrecognisable, doused with white in his floury climate.
I am tired of playing food critic without actually having an alternative notion of genuine substitutes that your average domestic family could employ. I want to actively participate in the production of wholesome home-made local nutrition using a diverse array of local and handpicked ingredients for my guests; family, the hungry; the lonely; the curious; the conservative and the fussy.
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