Delineating the Subjective From the Objective in Garbage Food

Or What Does Me Liking Mango Cocktail Say About Who I Am???

The whole premise of this blog is that many things about how we view life are based on how we’ve lived life. Our perception of things is wholly subjective, and formed by our experiences. This is especially true with food. Whether we want to admit it or not, our tastes are molded by what we taste (or what we grew up tasting) most frequently.

13 year old me would consider bland that which my 13 year old son considers spicy. Perhaps a tiny bit of that is because of something inherent to our biology. But mostly it is because of how willing we were to chew our food growing up. When I was a little kid, I refused to eat. I would just sit at the table with food in my mouth for minutes on end so my frustrated mom started putting achaar (spicy Indian pickle) in every bite. Those pickle laden bites have influenced how I perceive the world culinarily in god knows how many ways. And sometimes, when trying to decide how much cayenne powder to put in a dish, I regret not having done the same for my own son who has grown up on a steady diet of Western food.

But a few things about life turn out to be objectively true. Even in food. I grew up thinking the corn I ate was delicious. Turns out, if you grow up in farmland Illinois, the late summer corn is objectively delicious. It is so fresh and so sweet, you don’t have to cook it. At my friends’ houses during the late summer, moms would slice it and give it to us as snacks. It was like candy. At home, we would throw late summer corn on the grill just long enough to get the lightest char on it. As I have grown up, I have tried the corn elsewhere. It is just not as good. But more importantly, you have to cook it. Objectively, that says something.

Funny thing is, it is really hard to know which of your truths are subjective and which aren’t until way later in life. And even then, only if you take the time to do a lot of independent fact checking. And often, the deeper you think about it, the less sure you are about where the subjectivity starts and where the objectivity ends. Such is the insidious power of subjectivity.

Just how precarious is our current reality and how much is it built on seemingly trivial things that we experience that just…built up steam over time? Like a snowball that rolls down the hill of life only to appear as an avalanche when we stop to ponder about it in our 50’s. One pickle laden bite led to many pickle laden meals and boom - you wind up with a lifetime enjoyment of spicy meals. How much worse would my life be culinarily if I just…swallowed my food when I was 6?

Growing up, I thought my mom was a tremendous cook. This is an objectively subjective stance for people to take: there are way more people who think their moms are great cooks than there are objectively good cooks out there. Again, our tastes are molded by what we taste. But as I have grown older, as I have eaten more people’s cooking, and more importantly, as I have heard more people opine about my mom’s cooking, it turns out, objectively speaking, the near unanimous opinion of everyone who has eaten my mom’s cooking is that her food is vastly superior. With objectivity, there is safety in numbers.

But even herein, teasing out the subjective from the objective is hard and leads to uncomfortable (albeit tasty) truths. There are things that my mom made that I always assumed were great culinary feats that I later found out were…not. My mom is such a good chef she has the ability to culinarily hoodwink you. Many of these examples I found out later in life, as I tried to make them myself. I would gear up for a huge dose of culinary knowledge only to have her say “oh that. That dish is just a hack I made up. It is garbage food.”

Or even better (worse?) there are instances where I would wax poetic about a culinary masterpiece she makes only to have her say something to the extent of “oh you simpleton”. I was never really sure whether the derisiveness was meant for her or me in these situations. Neither leads to a good place. And more importantly, I am still not really sure how I am supposed to feel about my enjoyment of these particular dishes.

Garbage food is critically different from peasant food and even trashy food (my friend Melissa makes a mean pretzel salad). Peasant food is what it is and claims to be nothing more: plebeian fare made of commoner ingredients. You had to heighten the flavor because the ingredients were so basic. And over generations, these strategies of enhancing flavor became fertile grounds for some of the world’s greatest food traditions.

Garbage Food is faking it from the get go. The whole thing is a hoodwink. One of my son’s favorite dishes I make is an “Alfredo sauce” that he thinks is some of the best he’s ever had. It is mostly cream cheese and garlic powder and takes 10 minutes to make. Chris Choi has a whole series of Broke Boyz cooking that is precisely rooted in this. Ready made ramen soups hacks (kewpie mayo emulsions are yum) are in this category too. My mom makes her “shorshe batta” (mustard seed sauce) shrimp - a culinary equivalent to a Bengali delicacy deep track - in the microwave!

The philosophical problem with garbage food is that it confuses the lines of that which is objective and subjective culinarily. Our subjective perception of these dishes is that they are the heights of gastronomical achievement. Yet we have objective understandings of what’s required to produce “high cuisine” and garbage food…ain’t it. Worse still, garbage food starts to undermine things we more fundamentally know to be true about what differentiates food from cuisine, and how we ascribe worth to each of it. It is intellectually delicious and mentally a bitter pill. All at the same time.

But I digress.

The all time greatest, undisputed champion among culinary hoodwinks is my mom’s Mango Cocktail. Growing up, this was served when we had guests over and there were never leftovers. It was the perfect follow up to a meal of rich, heavy, Indian food that would be served at gatherings of friends and family.

Whenever we had these family gatherings, I always did mental calculations. What I would have for dinner the next day (or two if really lucky) was predicated on what kind of leftovers we would have and on which family friend cooked what. If my Kaki wasn’t assigned the mangsho’r jhol it was a great tactical blunder. My Mita Mashi was the only person who should have rightfully touched anything with dhal in it. The only vegetables I would eat would be the ones Shikha Mashi made. And sweets were the realms only Deepa Mashi or my Pishi were allowed to touch as far as I was concerned. As people ate, I would take note and curse every person that took a ladle full of my preferred dishes. But one thing was always constant. There was never any Mango Cocktail left over.

For years, I was actually scared of even trying to make the dish, despite the fact that I would get pangs of longing for the flavors. Mango cocktail is creamy and sweet and fruity and refreshing. The flavors are exotic and tropical yet comforting and soothing. Finally a few years ago I broke down and asked her for the secret. “What??? You’re asking how to make that? That’s garbage food.”

I was floored.

This is garbage food??? And she proceeded to tell me the secret. And my mind was blown. See below for the recipe.

Mango Cocktail

Get a large can of mango puree. Add a large can of fruit cocktail in heavy syrup. Add a little bit of half and half if you want. You really don’t need to. Serve. That’s it. WTF???Garbage food is a wonder and a curse.

Have you got examples of garbage food in your life? Let’s talk about it! Leave a comment below.