Global delicacies

[Sir Tokyo Sexwale]

Delish

 

IN JANUARY we offered some recommendations on spicing up airline food. But for many travellers, the cuisine found on arrival provides greater cause for concern. When China's National People's Congress considered banning the consumption of dogs and cats recently, it served as a reminder of how challenging culinary differences can be.

 

Within Gulliver's Asian patch, national cuisines vary greatly, delivering challenges too diverse for a single blog post. In China alone, visitors dining with local hosts can encounter squelchy cow's stomach, fried unfilleted frog or boiled pig's brains. By comparison, Japan seems a pushover: raw fish may not be to everybody's liking, despite sushi's international fan base, but the fragrances of Japanese food are generally palatable to foreigners. Yet, as such interlopers may soon discover, challenges do in fact lurk, together with strict culinary-cultural mores. Hence it is to Japan that Gulliver turns in this case study.

 

Most particularly, he will focus on natto, a food that has achieved infamy among Japan's foreign residents. With lacings of British understatement, the BBC recently described it as "a fermented soy bean dish that many consider an acquired taste." This is too kind: quietly offensive, its whiff recalls a long-neglected, moulding food scrap. Indeed, that is pretty much what it is. Whatever possessed some long-gone cook to wrap this sticky brown substance in rice and seaweed (a common eating method) and swallow it is a mystery that has given rise to legends.

 

Be this as it may, natto is the food with which, sooner or later, the foreign visitor is likely to have to deal. The natto challenge usually occurs once the sake is flowing. Socialising between colleagues and with clients is an integral part of doing business in Japan: salarymen boast that in Japan business is done by "nomunication", a compound (of the punning type beloved by Japanese) of "nomu" (to drink) and "communication". And in Japan it is a rule that alcohol should be accompanied by food of some description. In circumstances such as these your straight-laced day-time interlocutor can turn into a gleeful tormenter—leaning across the table to goad you with the suspect morsel: "Try this. Foreigners can't eat it, you know". All eyes will fall upon you as you sit awkwardly on the floor. Your room for manoeuvre is limited: it is poor form to refuse food in Japan.

 

The classic get-out in such predicaments is to take recourse in vague allergies, but (notwithstanding the feebleness of such an excuse) Gulliver would recommend simply that you get over your aversion. Boldly taking the offered item could impress Japanese acquaintances more than any PowerPoint presentation. You will appear both courteous and game-for-a-laugh—two qualities prized in Japan.

 

As with a presentation, preparation is everything. During a former stay in Japan, Gulliver stumbled on a cure for his natto phobia and similar "acquired tastes". It might be called "combine and consume". In one useful recipe, for example, natto is mixed with slimy white yamaimo (mountain potato), raw egg and wasabi until it forms a thick, frothy paste that is slopped over rice and eaten—preferably quickly. (Beware: yamaimo can produce itchiness around the lips.) Fortunately, this dish is common in Japanese bars and, after regular practice, Gulliver came to appreciate both the mush and its constituent parts.

 

He confesses, however, that he has yet to overcome his revulsion to shiokara (pickled sea urchin), but then no method is infallible. If any reader can offer a solution—or indeed other tips on how to avoid social discomfort inflicted by foreign foods—then please do share.

[Tosh]

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[John am Rhein]

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[Sir Tokyo Sexwale]

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[muleskinner]

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[Buzz]

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