What type of potato chips do you like? What style of bread do you prefer? How do you like ochro (okra) to be cut if you are to eat it?
We eat with our eyes long before the food actually touches our lips. The appearance of food shapes our attraction to it and our willingness to eat it. Think about it. Cast your mind back to when you were growing up and how certain things were prepared and presented. Consider children, and how in order to get them to eat certain things, you have to cut them into particular shapes or sizes to entice them to eat. As adults, some of us have grown up only knowing one way to cut and prepare a particular ingredient to be cooked, employing a specific technique. Sometimes we are turned off by those things because we don’t find them appealing. But then, through travel, exploration, eating at the homes of friends and families, we notice they prepare those same ingredients, using the same cooking technique, however, the shape, the cut, the size, is different, and suddenly we can’t seem to get enough of this thing. It is not that it tastes different, it is just shaped and cut differently.
Let’s look at a few things that we eat regularly, noting how their cut, size and shape impact our perception and consumption.
BREAD
Penny loaf, plait or sliced? What’s your preference? With Penny loaf, you don’t really need to slice open the bread, you simply turn it on the side, pry it open, and chuck whatever you like inside – cheese, a piece of sausage or other cured meat, fried fish or even a little pat of butter that melts in the still warm bread. How many of these small loaves can you eat? Consider your emotional and psychological response to this ole time favourite.
Plait bread – Christmas is coming, Pepperpot will definitely be in the making, and majorly important to the eating of Pepperpot is the type of bread that you will have with it. No soft, airy, foamy sliced bread. You want the bread thick and hearty. You want it so that you can tear and pull off large chunks of the bread to mop and soak up the sauce. Texture is important to the enjoyment of this type of bread as well as its shape.
Sliced bread is pre-cut and screams portion sizes and sandwiches. You may prefer your bread to not be pre-sliced because you want to cut thick slices.
POTATOES
We are talking chips here, and not the crisp type. What type of fries do you like – crinkle cut, steak cut, thick cut, skinny or wedges? Notice how you may get your chicken from one establishment and the fries from another. Shape and size matter. Think of how you like to eat your fries and why a particular type is your preference – generally or when they accompany certain things.
BAKES
We would need multiple columns to talk about all the different types of bakes there are. Therefore, restricting ourselves to float bakes, which shape do you like? Round, square or triangle? And what considerations go into you liking one shape over the other? It’s the same dough, so why do we prefer one shape over the other?
FRIED GREEN PLANTAINS
Chips (as in crisps), tostones (twice fried), fries (regular-short) or long, cut into strips? Same fried plantains but to be enjoyed based on preference of how we like to eat fried green plantains.
As you know, I cook and eat green plantains every week, in a variety of ways. However, since the beginning of the year, after seeing a video on YouTube of the green plantains being cut into long thick fries, the length of the plantains, I knew I had to give it a try. It’s crazy, but I reacted to seeing the plantains being cut and fried as if I had never fried green plantains. I make plantains fried that way all the time, the only difference is that I would cut the plantains in half (crossways then down the middle), then into strips to make them in the style of fries. Since seeing that video, at least once a week, I cut my plantains into long thick fries and feel all fussy, like I am eating something different. It’s weird I tell you.
INFLUENCES
What do you think contributes to shaping these preferences?
Traditional practices – I mentioned this earlier in terms of how we grew up having certain things prepped and cooked. As we grow and have our own families, we pass on these practices to other generations.
Religious and symbolic meanings – Think of the many festivals and holidays we observe, mark and celebrate. We make special foods and drinks and we prepare them to specific standards because they are representative of particular meanings. Take for example, our beloved Chinese cake, which is a type of moon cake. Though an everyday pastry, in Chinese culture, the mooncakes are round, representing completeness and reunion.
Regional preferences are based on local ingredients and cooking methods. I have heard a friend of mine say repeatedly that there is nothing like a Corentyne curry. She makes that statement based on how the curry is cooked (technique, type of heat and atmosphere), the quality of the masala and even the ingredients themselves.
Notice when we have a craving or yearning for certain things, people would say you would have to go to Berbice, Essequibo or some particular part of the country to get it? That’s what’s available there and what is used to make some of the same things that would be made in town but with a different ingredient and perhaps shaped differently.
Practical considerations – Are you one of those who like to eat chow mein with a side of white rice? Do you cut your potatoes into large pieces when adding to stews or curries? There are many things in a lot of cuisines that are served and put together in various ways that were born out of a need to make-do and to stretch things. Though we may be able to have more, entrenched in us, is how we grew up cooking and eating, and these practices have now become a part of the norm in our consumption of certain dishes.
Modern influences – Thanks to food media, globalization, and trends, how we cook, what we make and eat offer many experiences that we may not otherwise have known.
What are some of your preferences for the shapes, cuts and sizes of certain ingredients?
Cynthia
cynthia@tasteslikehome.org
