Moluccas or the Spice Island conjures high adventure, bravado, and even romance. A compelling paper from Katharine McGregor and Ana Dragojlovic, ‘Songs from Another Land: Decolonizing Memories and the Nutmeg Trade’ appears, on the surface, to sustain that discourse. And, pardon, the term, there lies the trick or tricks of history.
The paper talks of the year 2021, designated as the 400th anniversary of the Banda Massacres, where the colonial might of United East India Trading Company began the decimation of the Bandanese with the aim of securing a monopoly on the global nutmeg trade.
The most interesting fact about Moluccas or Maluku Islands is that as early as 1512, Portuguese explorer Francisco Serrao had already come upon the islands, the journey driven not only by nutmeg but by another spice, cloves. The world when finally they had the chance to explore the Spice Islands-some seven of them-must have seen not only mercantilism but mysticism as well. What’s with these islands!
Without diminishing the crime against the Bandanese, the conflicts over nutmeg, cloves, and mace (the reddish covering of the nutmeg seed) eventually escalated between the British and the Dutch.
You might ask: What have these massacres-for there were many in the 16th century-to do with the more contemporary food vlogging? A lot and it has to do with the myopic approach to national (contentious ) and local cuisine (who determines what’s local?).
My interest began with Indonesian food. Of all the culinary traditions, I least know about those of Indonesia, our cultural neighbor with marked sociolinguistic affinity. Thailand has gone global. It’s cuisine can be found in tony restaurants. Malaysia by way of Penang and Kuala Lumpur have become common features, popular among tourists, culinary experts, and food vloggers. Then, it’s culinary silence for the fourth populous nation in the world-that’s Indonesia. Comes Adam Gottchalk. He has been asking monumental questions about food, traditions and identity. In one of his vlogs, which drew my attention, he poses an inquiry: What is Indonesian food? My interest piqued, I began looking at Gottchalk’s presentation. I am not exactly coming in from the cold.
I have been watching food vlogs ever since; in fact, facing me during breakfast are always these morning preparations from India and Pakistan. Why these two? Maybe ultimately that which world audiences comment on. I ignore that. What I see is hardworking people up at 2 or 3 in the morning pushing their pushcarts in the dark, cold and foggy New Delhi or Karachi. They park anywhere. As there is no explanation in English, I assume a lot: the rules are loose in these places, vendors can occupy any site they wish. I am tempted to ask: Like in the Philippines?
Regarding Gottchalk, I was expecting a culinary and cultural expert who would, as with others with Western lens, celebrate how unique, savory, and exotic Indonesian cuisines are. He does not do that. He immediately questions what makes a dish from an island in Indonesia distinct from another island. The question has been asked for a long time but, I guess, the food interlocutors settled for the general responses of the respondents. Or it could be a language deficiency?
As an Asian, I like also to challenge non-Asian food vloggers whether we really do not ask what makes our food unforgettable or what gives our humble day-to-day kitchen offering worth the discussion.
Adam Gottchalk is, however, pleasantly and intellectually relentless. He ransacks Indonesia history and how the State even went to the extent of intervening. In the case of Sukarno (some massacres here again as in our country), there was a move to identify a national dish. À difficult task, the State with the help of cultural experts ended up listing some 30.
And here is where the achievement of Adam Gottchalk stands out from among the numerous food vloggers who center their work on taste and delectation. Gottchalk finds a gap always between discussion of food to talk nearly cursorily of the dark histories involving food. It’s true what they say: great histories insert themselves between the decorative and pleasant. If you were not listening, you would have missed the second layers of insights. That while we are trying to discern how the cuisines in front of us are evolving and important, there are all the narratives in these islands and they will always be part of the tale. This is a saving grace for food vloggers-the critical eye to look behind and beyond the dish. The nation will never hate you for the reminder. The dire historical commentary is somewhat effaced. That is good. That is food diplomacy.
What about the Philippines? Gottchalk does not play kind to our country. And I like that. His critique of our cuisines comes in the form of questions: Why are our dishes mocked, maligned and dismissed as oily? In so many ways, those are the queries. I don’t have an answer except to say the extraordinary dishes we have cannot be found in upper- and middle-class kitchens and dining tables. They are out there in the hinterlands where special varieties of rice are extant and have a special niche in the household. They are there in rural areas where the subsistence economy has enabled people to tap rootcrops, turning them into original food, exotic to the outsider, filling for the communities that will not touch artificial additives.