Day: October 3, 2020

“When I am abandoned by their sweet-voiced catechism, I forget how long to braise the ribs of beef” (Truong, 20). This excerpt from the beginning of The Book of Salt comes from Bình’s reflection upon his work with “collectors.” They have strict rules about how to cook and seem only to care about how Bình’s (and previous chefs’) past trauma translates into his cooking, rather than his emotion and character alone. By staying and working for them, Bình would not have been able to explore his skills and take culinary risks, which seems counterproductive for cooks because many of the best dishes were created on accident. The first dish I thought of upon reading this section was lemongrass beef ribs. It has always been a side dish staple for my brother and my orders of rice dishes at Vietnamese restaurants since we were young. Lemongrass, the herb that gives the recipe its unique flavor, is found mostly in and around Oceania and South/Southeast Asia. There are two types, called West Indian and East Indian lemongrass, and both are generally found in those aforementioned regions. Used not only in cooking but also medicine, it is revered as an important ingredient because of its ability to aid digestion among other health benefits and is used in many cuisines of the part of the world it is native to, including in Vietnam, Thailand, and Sri Lanka. However, lemongrass is not a very popular ingredient outside of the areas discussed earlier, especially in Europe and North America. I thought that the inclusion of this ingredient and its implications towards certain Vietnamese dishes spoke to Truong’s attempt to reconcile Bình with leaving Vietnam and now having to cook French food instead of traditional dishes from home. By working for the collectors, Bình feels he is losing his authenticity and self. Lemongrass beef ribs is a dish I myself have found myself longing for during cold winters in upstate New York but I would be hard pressed to find it or the ingredients here, unless I go to the few and far between Vietnamese restaurants and Asian grocery stores in Ithaca.

Here are two recipes I found, if anyone’s interested in making lemongrass beef ribs! – https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1017979-vietnamese-braised-pork-ribs and https://irenamacri.com/recipes/lemongrass-beef-short-ribs/

Sources:

Grant, Bonnie. “Uses For Lemongrass” StackPath, 5 July 2018, blog.gardeningknowhow.com/tbt/lemongrass-history-and-uses/.

“Lemongrass Oil – History, Usage, and Benefits of Essential Oil.” Lemongrass Oil, New Directions Aromatics Blog, 1 June 2017, www.newdirectionsaromatics.com/blog/products/all-about-lemongrass-oil.html.

CW: sexual assault, abuse, trauma, death, cannibalism

While reading “Venus in Two Acts,” my mind was initially drawn to fond memories of reading Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief and learning about the Greek and Roman gods and goddesses, one of which being Venus, the Roman Goddess of Love and Beauty. As I read through the article, I was conflicted. I have been told for so many years to read books of famous Black authors such as Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou, Ralph Ellison, and so forth. But so many narratives of Black lives have been centered on the trauma and abuse of Black bodies. As someone who has experienced sexual assault, it is incredibly difficult to stomach the graphic details of those before me and their lives. What is even more difficult though, is reading the version in which it was consensual and enjoyed, as if there was love in the abuse and love in the generational trauma of becoming property and losing your tradition and sense of self. Our trauma should not be the defining qualities of these narratives, but reading this article was extremely powerful with giving “the nameless and forgotten” (Hartman 4) their humanity back but also trying to balance the fine line of death. As we try to educate ourselves, we get faced with sheer numbers and become desensitized (5) to the realities so many faced. Hartman essentially gets us to consider how difficult it is to represent the life of one who has no written history, the one who has been forgotten, as aforementioned (12). These people were not blank canvases for people to project their fanciful whims of love and loss, but real tragedy, perseverance, and humanity all intertwined.

While reading, the author poses the question “Who is Venus?” (2). It is not just one person, they recount, but many nameless people commodified and later reads “[t]he archive is, in this case, a death sentence, a tomb, a display of a violated body, an inventory of property…” (2). I began to connect this reading with something I found on Twitter about the reason finding Egyptian mummies is so rare nowadays is because people used to eat them. I went and did some research and found that “human remains were a common ingredient in medicine…Europeans were cannibals” (Dolan). They did this to treat anything from epilepsy to headaches as they believed that blood had vitality within it according to 16th and 17th-century physicians (Dolan) [“even though cannibalism in the newly explored Americas was reviled as a mark of savagery” funny how hypocrisy persists through generations, but I digress”]. This trend of treatment died out (no pun intended) in the 18th century as Europeans discovered soap. Interestingly enough, Dolan argues that the trend of using one human body to heal another has not died out, as we donate blood and organs and that is deemed acceptable (I would not want to grind up a skull or put someone’s body fat on my aches to treat my pain thank you very much). The more you know.

Works Cited:

Dolan, Maria. “The Gruesome History of Eating Corpses as Medicine.” Smithsonian.com, Smithsonian Institution, 6 May 2012, www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-gruesome-history-of-eating-corpses-as-medicine-82360284/.

Hartman, Saidiya. “Venus in Two Acts.” Small Axe, vol. 12 no. 2, 2008, p. 1-14. Project MUSE muse.jhu.edu/article/241115.

Riordan, Rick. Percy Jackson & the Olympians #1: the Lightning Thief. Hyperion, 2005.

Albert Chong was born in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1958 to merchant Chinese Jamaican parents. His mediums are photography, installation, and sculpture, and his works touch on personal mysticism, spirituality, and race and identity. To me, his still life photography is especially profound and quite meta, as he incorporates old family photographs with his own to create a new photograph that attempts to connect separated pieces of his past and present in order to get at shaping his own identity. With these photographs, he includes props such as flowers, fruits, plants, and other food items that simply celebrate the beauty of the image and objects and/or tie in other cultural/racial/ethnic aspects into the meaning of the image. Since we are exploring the significance and meaning of different foods in the Asian and African diaspora, I want to emphasize the different food props Chong uses. Some reoccurring food objects in Chong’s photography works include eggshells, apples, pineapples, coconuts, and bananas. Below are his works including such food items: in order Ascension 1994 from his Color Still Lifes collection; Figurative Still Life 1982-85; and Throne for Gorilla Spirits 1993 from his Throne for the Ancestors collection.

The Thrones for the Ancestors:

In Throne for the Gorilla Spirits, Chong utilizes salted cod skins to cover the chair, the throne, to touch upon his Jamaican roots. He describes a bit of salted codfish’s origins, and I go further in its origins in this post:

Salted cod is made of Atlantic cod, which is found in the North Atlantic Ocean. It is a hearty fish of large size, can be caught just using nets, and ideal for human consumption during any time in history. Records and research show that fishermen on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean have been eating cod since the earliest times. Preserving cod likely began sometime during the 8th-9th centuries by Vikings. Called stockfish, the preserved cod made its way to be adopted by the Basques, and as a result, was soon introduced to other European seafarers (English, Portuguese, Neapolitans). To prepare stockfish, one would have to soak it in water for just the right amount of time to avoid sogginess or leatheriness. The fish would then be hung to dry. It was only until John Cabot’s discovery of Newfoundland that salted cod became known. On the North American coast, Cabot hit the Atlantic cod jackpot. However, Newfoundland’s different climate (more humid) made it difficult to dry the stockfish. So, the solution was to salt it before drying it, resulting in salted cod. Around a century later, salt cod became a large export from Europe in Atlantic trade. However, it was actually sugar that made salt cod an economic phenomenon. With the rise of sugar production came the rise of the demand for slaves. All these slaves needed to be fed somehow, and plantation owners were unwilling to sacrifice their land to cultivate other crops or animals for food. So, in short, salt cod would feed all these slaves in the Caribbean.

Chong already describes the significance behind using salted cod (skins) in his throne dedicated to the gorilla spirits. The gorilla spirit represents gentle and nurturing nature, wisdom, leadership, and nobility. I would need to learn a bit more about the gorilla spirits that Chong dedicates this throne to, but I interpret the fruits surrounding the throne to be offerings, and for the salted cod at the base of the throne to call back to Chong’s own base–his ancestry.

 

Citations:

Chong, Albert. Ascension 1994. 1994.

Chong, Albert. Figurative Still Life.

Chong, Albert. Throne for Gorilla Spirits 1993. 1993.

Lee, Alexander. “A History of Salt Cod.” History Today, 11 Nov. 2019, www.historytoday.com/archive/historians-cookbook/history-salt-cod.