Last weekend I was able to experience the real struggle of cooking on campus as a college student in the United States. The two recipes that I chose for this project were my family recipe of Kimchi (a spicy vegetable-based side dish) and the historical recipe of Minestra (Italian soup); both of which I have never attempted to cook before. My family recipe was quite easy to choose since kimchi has been a staple in my diet since I was young. It is curious to think that although my love for kimchi is immense, I have never attempted to try making it. Cooking kimchi was a way for my father to express how much he loved my sister and me, and how he was always willing to cook it even after a long work shift. This mindset of cooking -caring about the one you cook for- is what I have learned since a young age, thus I approached this experience as unique and exciting since the beginning.
On the other hand, the search for the historical recipe was an odyssey. I first started looking for a Colombia historical plate that I knew was first introduced in the XIX century. Nonetheless, at this period of time, Colombia hadn’t started the process of written formalization and systematization of the recipes, so it was not possible for me to find it. When I was interrogating my father and his girlfriend about historical cookbooks, they told me that most recipes in their time were passed down through verbal communication, which I believe is still a strong tradition instill in many South American cultures. Not being able to find the Colombian dish recipe, I opted for the online MSU library database. Searching for different titles and having in mind that I wanted to try an international recipe, I finally found a cookbook in HathiTrust database. This book contained recipes that to my surprise were mostly one paragraph long. As I read the Minestra soup recipe, I was glad of how easy it seemed to be, at least that was what I thought at first.
Accessing the grocery store for the fresh ingredients of the Minestra soup was not a hard task since college buses are running all the time. Nevertheless, to get the Korean ingredients I had to ask many people if they could drive me as the closest Korean store was one hour away walking. Although it represented a small obstacle, it created friction towards my excitement towards cooking. Later, I found myself inside the grocery store looking on google for reference photos of the fresh vegetables and comparing them with the ones in the stalls. I recognized some of them because those are the basic vegetables that appear in the vocabulary list they make you memorize in Colombia’s English classes. Nevertheless, I figure that the other elements in my To Buy list which I have never seen before in Colombian supermarkets were available due to the U.S’s vast system of imported products; diversifying the purchase options and making the indecisive consumers’ lives more difficult when the time to pick comes. Food packaging is taken seriously in this country, which somehow made shopping more convenient, but consequently influenced me to buy more than the necessary ingredients. In this nation, shopping for fresh ingredients is an expensive task to carry on, not only time-wise but monetarily. I run with the fortune that many other people don’t have; being able to have access to the supermarkets and be able to afford fresh food. As mentioned by Tracie Mcmillan, food is the only human necessity which the private market decides entirely on its delivery to the communities, without the U.S government interfering. This leads to unequal distribution of supermarkets and increases the chances for the poorer population to select readily available and accessible frozen food over fresh food. This system has not only made cooking healthy an endeavor but it has also trapped people from lower-income households inside a maze of expensive health insurance receipts and chronic diseases.
After purchasing all the products, I went to one of the kitchens within the campus open to students, although I had to go across it. I selected this kitchen because I knew I would find the basic cooking utensils, which is something really hard to find as a college student. With a winning mindset, I started cooking the Minestra. I looked at many videos of how to cut the vegetables, however cutting a turnip is harder than it looks, and my finger experiences the aftermath; a deep bloody cut. Yet, the hardest part was adding the seasoning since I couldn’t understand vague references, like a little saffron or a ‘‘bouquet’’. As a result, the soup was disastrous, the taste was edible but not many would enjoy it, to be honest. Taking into account that most of the historical cookbooks were targeted at the female population, we could infer that these vague references reflect the society’s idea of a woman; someone born inherently with the skills to cook, able to understand vague recipes, and thus meant to be in the kitchen. As Laura Shapiro commented, in the past, women would go grocery shopping only to maintain the hierarchy of the kitchen unchanged. From this, we can infer that most historical cookbooks took for granted the fact that part of the woman’s inherent identity was to be a cook, along with being a housewife and childcarer.
The next day it was Kimchi time. I believe that because I have seen my father make it and I have tasted it, it was easier for me to get the spicy sauce right. I felt proud of the end result, mostly I was proud that I would be able to pass down our family recipe and take part in this amazing tradition. Different students, who stopped by inquiring about the strong umami flavor, tried it and gave a satisfactory reaction. At that moment, I realized that cooking is another way of communication, by which you can create new strong bonds. Both experiences, completely different from each other, taught me that cooking is a privilege in today’s world, where accessibility to supermarkets, food, and kitchens is scarce or inequality distributed in many societies.