tasting the world by Mclane for Comm 1 TF 10:30-12

McLane, Daisann. "Tasting the world: eating while on the road fills us up in a wealth of ways. (Real travel: how to be a traveler, not a tourist). " National Geographic Traveler. 19.5 (July-August 2002): 34(2). Academic OneFile. Gale. University of the Philippines - Diliman. 4 June 2011
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Full Text:COPYRIGHT 2002 National Geographic Society
Proust channeled his childhood with a cookie; I get in touch with my inner traveler by eating a slice of ham. Or sipping a rich, fruity glass of Sangiovese. Or plunging my fingers into a warm whole-wheat crepe filled with potatoes spiced with cumin and turmeric and topped with coconut or coriander sauce. (Eating such a dish with steel utensils--rather than with my hands, as the Indians do--would spoil the taste, and the experience.)
To travel is to live, intensely, the life of another place. And when I truly fall head over heels for some part of the world, I want to absorb it by every means possible. How else, to explain the fried locusts that I enthusiastically munched in Oaxaca (they are actually tasty enough, bathed in lime juice and washed down with a shot of good tequila), or the toasted grubs I sampled at an Aboriginal community not far from Uluru, in the Australian outback? (Also surprisingly yummy, a bit like fried eggs.)
But back to that slice of ham. It is not just any ham, it is jamon iberico de pata negra, carefully air-cured for at least 15 months (as required by law). I am eating it now, in my mind's eye, in a little tapas bar on a side street near the Prado Museum in Madrid, having elbowed my way through the crowd and staked out a sliver of space at the packed, smoky bar. My territory is secured when the waiter acknowledges my presence by placing a tiny dish of fresh, briny olives, stuffed with anchovies, on the bar, in front of my hand. I seize the moment of his attention to order a sherry--a Manzanilla, nicely dry--and the aforementioned jamon, which is sliced, slowly and deliberately--almost ritually--by the bartender's assistant. Maybe it's that moment of vulnerability--my ham-anticipation gaze--that breaks the ice. Or maybe it is just that there are no outsiders at tapas bars (or sushi bars in Japan, or bacari in Venice, or anyplace else where food is consumed among strangers who are bumping elbows).
In any case, the man at my left suddenly says to me, in Spanish, "You really like jamon de pata negra, eh?" (Why is it that language teachers never explain to students, struggling through dumb textbook conversations and boring conjugations, that what is at stake is not the grade at the end of the semester but an entire culinary future! Study hard and you will be rewarded with homemade foie gras or unexpected dim sum.)
The man in the bar is, indeed, a madrileno, so enthusiastic about his country's soul food that he drags me, along with several of his companions, to each of the other little tapas bars on the street. In every bar he orders several varieties of jamon, stabs thin slices on a toothpick, and offers them to me, carefully watching my reaction as the ripe, salty oils of cured meat melt in my mouth, an essence of Spain to remember always.
Getting to this moment of food ecstasy in a foreign land is not always a simple matter. People buy guidebooks to point them to the "right" restaurant in a particular place, often not realizing that in the year or two lag between the guidebook's research and publication, the chef at the "right" place may have stomped out of the kitchen and opened his own place down the street (a place that is, of course, not in your book yet).
I take the guidebooks with a grain of salt, preferring to follow my instincts. All restaurants, I'm convinced, have a karma--a vibe--that you can feel even before walking in. On the road, I usually choose my eateries by details that strike me at the moment I pass a place. Good smells can draw me in, as can a pretty, thriving window box full of flowers and herbs, or a painstakingly hand-lettered menu posted on the door--all are signs that there are proud, caring owners within.
Instinct led me, one lunchtime in Macau (the former Portuguese territory that's a one-hour ferry ride from Hong Kong), to a Chinese restaurant near the main square that appeared past its prime, but, in the window, had a menu written in elegantly calligraphed strokes. I entered to find a room full of big round tables covered with white tablecloths, each one set for eight persons. The waiter, speaking no English, welcomed me over to sit at the single large table that remained empty; the others were filled with convivial groups of businessmen and families with children.
I was a bit self-conscious to be taking up so much space, but I also was hungry, and when I spotted a tray of steaming bowls of noodles topped with meat and broccoli coming out of the kitchen, I forgot about shame and sat down. Pointing to an entry on the (thank goodness) English menu that said "Noodles in soup with beef and vegetables," I waited to be transported into Macanese culinary heaven.
Soon my bowl arrived, fragrant with a hint of star anise, a signature spice of Chinese cooking, and I dug in greedily with my plastic chopsticks. To my horror, a heavy mass of noodles caught on those chopsticks, and promptly slid back into the bowl, splattering soup all over the tablecloth and my shirt. Those yummy noodles each seemed to be about six feet long, coiled and tangled in the bowl like unruly hair, and as slippery as eels. I pulled, trying to break the noodles into manageable length. They stretched defiantly like rubber bands and refused to break.
Just as I was about to do what I thought would be the most humiliating thing I could do in this situation--ask the waiter for a fork--I found out just how much more embarrassed a foreigner can get over a bowl of noodles in a Chinese restaurant. The waiter, noticing my distress, approached. In his hand was no fork, but a pair of tongs--and a pair of scissors. Lifting my noodles with the former, he proceeded to cut them with the latter. I imagine this is what Cantonese parents in Macau do for their six-year-olds at the supper table, sort of the Chinese equivalent of mommy slicing the roast beef into bite-size pieces.
I bent my crimson face into my bowl of noodles, hoping that the other patrons (all of whom were observing every detail of the foreigner's struggle) would think I was flushed from the heat.
My recovery was swift, for two reasons. Thanks to the waiter's intervention, I could now eat my delicious lunch without the soup plopping on my lap.
But, most of all, it is because I know that embarrassment is a temporary state. I knew that what would last, long after I'd returned home, is the memory of these mouthfuls of Macau.
Columnist DAISANN MCLANE is spending the summer in Hong Kong, studying Cantonese and working on her noodle-eating skills. She writes regularly for the New York Times, and her articles on culture, food, and music have appeared in Rolling Stone and Vogue.
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