The nature vs nurture of food: 11 (No chilli, no flavour)

A friend from my teenage days came over on a three-month course, before being joined by his wife and going off to Europe on a 21-day 19-city tour.

    When they came back to London for their last three nights prior to flying back, they stayed in the empty flat of someone I knew at the time.

    On their first night, I bought fish and chips for eating in. There was a brand new, 340g size bottle of chilli sauce in the flat. They poured so much chilli sauce over the fish and chips that it was a sea of red on the plate.

    I left them to their own devices on the following two nights, then went to see them off. They told me that they had fish and chips again on their third and last evening in London, and that they'd replaced the chilli sauce because they'd polished off the whole of the previous bottle between the two of them in two sittings.

(London, 1985)

The nature vs nurture of food: 07 (Habits from upbringing)

 

The Chinese generally use soya sauce in the cooking process, or as a dip, but not for adding on to a dish once it’s served up.  Not even by an individual for his/her own portion  — it doesn’t work, anyway, as the helpings come by the chopstickful, so it’ll be too fiddly adding a drop of soya sauce to each chopstick helping of food.

    I grew up being taught never to ask for soya sauce as a dinner guest, even if I found the food bland for my taste, because it implies that the cook had not got it just right in the kitchen.  Adding soya sauce to one’s food at the dinner table could, therefore, be insulting to the cook.  

    I apply the same principle when eating out in a restaurant.

 

    Even eating fish and chips, which I love, I instinctively hardly ever add salt or vinegar or ketchup, the most common condiments for it.  I eat it plain, as it is.

    That’s the nurture bit, from how I was taught as a child, and it has stuck right through my life.

    If I’m given a salad without the dressing, I’ll eat it plain (although I enjoy salad dressings).  

    Again, the nurture element:  I don’t add extra to the dish at the table.

    That’s how deep conditioning goes.  In me, anyway.

Advice from a man (London)

The floating pub Tamesis Dock kitchen ran out of fish fillet for the fish and chips dish, so I was sent out to the cash and carry place (selling to caterers, not to the walk-in public) to buy some.  It was my first time there on my own.

Picked up a trolley outside — like one of those airport trolleys for conveying luggage: flat and long.  Customers obviously buy in bulk here.

Had difficulty pushing the trolley through the entrance.  It was reluctant to move forwards, and kept veering left into the wall.

An employee who spotted this — an Indian man in his 50s — said to me, “Don’t push it.  Pull it along, like you would a husband, and it'll follow you.”

(London, 2019)

*See also Marital bliss series (1-6)

Marital bliss:  1 (https://piccola-chinita.blogspot.com/2018/02/marital-bliss-01-london.html)

Marital bliss:  2 (https://piccola-chinita.blogspot.com/2018/02/marital-bliss-02-london.html)

Marital bliss:  3 (https://piccola-chinita.blogspot.com/2018/02/marital-bliss-03-london.html)

Marital bliss:  4 (https://piccola-chinita.blogspot.com/2018/02/marital-bliss-04-london.html)

Marital bliss:  5 (https://piccola-chinita.blogspot.com/2018/02/marital-bliss-05-london.html)

Marital bliss:  6 (https://piccola-chinita.blogspot.com/2018/03/marital-bliss-06-london.html)