An American woman touring Bhutan with her husband mentions in her blog of November 25, 2014 that she felt dissatisfied with the meals they were served during the trip. A paragraph from her blog http://www.mindbodygreen.com/0-15930/the-secret-to-perfect-happiness-and-other-lessons-from-bhutan.html reads:
".......The Food
In Bhutan, the meals were all pre-set, meaning you didn't order from a menu. Every lunch and dinner was the same: plain white rice, sautéed veggies in oyster sauce, and mystery chicken stew. The few nights we finished dinner in fifteen minutes, from start to finish. We weren't drinking alcohol, so there was no reason to hang out in the hotel restaurant. We usually arrived at dinner hungry and looking forward to eating, but the seemingly rushed experience sent us back to our room, feeling disappointed."
I know after having lived here for just over five months that while it is not the most famous of cuisines in the world, plain white rice, sautéed veggies in oyster sauce, and mystery chicken stew are not all there is to Bhutanese food. Still, the American lady's blog set me reflecting on the food culture of Bhutan, seeing it mainly through my Indian eyes, from an Indian point of view.
India has a cuisine that is world famous. Why is it famous? Is it because of the variety of cuisines within India? Why is Indian cuisine so varied? Is it because of the huge number of spices and ingredients that go into it and that have been available to us for millennia, or is it because of the variety of techniques that are used in cooking it? Or is it the human element involved in the cooking of the food? Do the ingredients make a good chef? Or can a good cook make great food no matter what the ingredients? I am not sure. But I guess the more the ingredients, the more the combinations, the creativity, the experimentation, the innovation. Unfortunately though not irrationally, all of this creativity and experimentation gives rise not only to greater analysis, dissection, and critiquing of the food, but also to passion, rapture, preoccupation and even obsession with food! We take in the colour, the texture, the fragrance of the food at a glance. We get put off by the size or shape of the piece of meat or vegetable in a dish. We lose our appetite when we encounter food smells that are unfamiliar to us. All this before we even put the food on our plate, let alone take a nibble. Indians are among the most fastidious about food. Yet it is a very important belief in our culture that to turn up our noses at food, to criticize it or waste it is to disrespect the Annadevata or Annapoorna. Annapoorna is Laxmi, the goddess of abundance, and abundance in its oldest and truest sense is measured not in terms of money, gold, wealth and riches but in grain and food in the granary. We have some of the poorest people in the world who often go without food, and in some parts of the country even starve to death. Food is life and as such it should be respected and valued. A beautiful belief, yet one which we (myself included) lose sight of in our passion for food!
Perhaps all cultures that have a great culinary tradition are guilty of this paradoxical behaviour - the more we love food, the more nitpicky and critical we are about it!
In complete contrast to the average Indian, I must admit that in the five months I have been here, I have never ever seen or heard a single Bhutanese go into raptures about food, or about a specific dish on the menu at any lunch or dinner that I have attended (and I have met quite a few Bhutanese at quite a few events where there has been food). Whether it is a Bhutanese wedding banquet or a reception at a five star restaurant or a dinner at someone's house or a picnic or a meal at a restaurant, the interest in the taste and quality of the food is minimal. Food neither depresses the Bhutanese nor makes them ecstatic. They display the same equanimity towards food as they do towards most other things.
At the risk of sounding cliched, they eat to live, not the other way around. They eat what they produce, and embellish it with only very few, easily available ingredients from neighbouring countries. They use quick, basic techniques that the availability of time in a long day in the field and the cooking infrastructure would allow. Just to give an example, if cooking gas is used, the uninterrupted supply of gas cylinders and refills would depend on the regularity of transportation, which in its turn would depend on the weather, the quality of the roads, and the landslides en route! The availability of fancy or foreign ingredients would depend on all of the aforementioned factors as also the perishability of the ingredients themselves. As a result while it is an agrarian economy that is plentiful in red rice, corn, buckwheat, fruits and vegetables, we notice that most food is simply cooked or dried, steamed, ground, beaten, roasted or sometimes pickled, and consumed with or without the addition of a minimum of spices and condiments, so that it has a more or less neutral or natural taste as in the 'zou' (tiny, crunchy puffed rice') or beaten corn that is often consumed dunked in a warm beverage. Chillies are the only ingredient that spike the Bhutanese food and lift it substantially away from otherwise neutral flavours. Fruit is mostly consumed fresh or in dried form, rather than in the form of jams, jellies, juices, halwas, tarts, compotes, sauces, gateaus, souffles and cakes that we in other parts of the world are so fond of.
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Crunchy 'zou'
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Being a small, landlocked, mountainous country in which transportation is a challenge even in this second decade of the 21st century, is it surprising that the culinary art or culinary variety has not developed as in countries that are large, that have coastlines and all weather ports, geographical and climatic variety, and that have had land and sea trade routes with other countries for centuries if not millennia?
Modern day Bhutan has no shortage of electricity, the roads are getting to be of better quality, more widespread and well connected, tourism both to and from Bhutan is increasing, air connections with Bhutan are multiplying, media exposure is ever growing, experiments with all kinds of produce not traditionally grown or produced in Bhutan are being conducted (the recent Mountain Hazelnuts Venture in Mongar and the older Swiss-like cheese made in Bumthang are cases in point), and the Bhutanese are being encouraged to go into agro processing to widen the country's industrial base.
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| The Mountain Hazelnut Venture in Mongar |
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| The Bumthang cheese has a pleasantly neutral taste similar to Swiss cheese |
All of these factors may lead to the development of a more sophisticated and varied Bhutanese cuisine in the decades, or more likely in the centuries to come, for all world famous cuisines have taken that long to evolve into what they are today. Events like the upcoming food festival that will highlight and showcase Bhutanese food will provide a fillip to this process of evolution. (To read more about the food festival go to http://www.kuenselonline.com/bhif-biff-music-plus-the-food-of-lifea/). More creative uses of local produce may result in time to come - for instance the local, slightly crumbly and neutral tasting, white cheese may be put to uses other than only in all the varieties of datshi, that most famous of Bhutanese dishes made by melting and cooking this cheese with either potatoes, chillies or mushrooms, to name the few combinations I have eaten. But then again this experimentation and innovativeness may not happen - maybe the Bhutanese would like to keep things just the way they are, maybe they would not want to become like all the rest of us who often look and behave as if we live to eat, for whom food must be delicious or nothing, for whom the taste and appearance of the food has the power to control how we feel about the world on any given day!
Coming back to the blog that set me thinking about food in Bhutan, the American blogger says at the end of her blog "On the last day of our stay in Bhutan, we started appreciating the nuances of the food, the variations in the flavor of the sauce or the way the vegetables were cooked, or the unexpected presence of greens. Gluten- and dairy-free were mostly out the window for the week, and we stopped caring that our small meals weren't always enough to satisfy our hunger. .....(It is).a lack of choice that fuels the national happiness quotient they (the Bhutanese) often talk about. I realized that I don't need some of the things I thought I did to be happy. I don't need to have my meals always be delicious and balanced....... I need simple, clean and satiating food."
I have found this to be true myself. All that is really needed when hunger comes a-calling is fresh, clean, wholesome and reasonably palatable food that satiates the appetite. Whatever we eat beyond what the stomach needs is because the palate and the eyes like it, and this is the part of the meal that causes us pain while seeming to give us pleasure. Having said that, I don't completely agree with the blogger when she says that there is a complete lack of choice - this is not strictly true. In their daily lives, the Bhutanese show and exercise a strong preference for Indian food apart from their indigenous cuisine. Their preference could easily have tilted towards Chinese cuisine, considering that the Bhutanese and Tibetan cultures are closely linked (and Tibet being a part of China is most certainly influenced by its food culture), but it has not. This goes to show that they are neither completely disinterested in food, nor are they completely without food choices. They just don't let it rule their lives and their happiness. This attitude, which seemingly regards food more as a means of sustenance and less as something that gives pleasure, probably accounts for the fact that one rarely sees an obese Bhutanese!
While I happen to be a member of the nitpicky-about-food tribe, I think that it would not be a bad idea to start the new year by refraining from complaining about food, criticising it, and obsessing about it, and just give thanks to Annapoorna for the abundance she bestows on my household. It is easier said than done, but I sure am going to give it a try!
As I sign off though, since this blog entry is about Bhutan's 'foodamentals', one thought I leave you with is that Bhutan is not without its own food paradoxes. A staunchly Buddhist country, I am told it does not freely allow fishing or the slaughter of animals for food. Yet the Bhutanese definitely like their meat a lot. So what do they do? They import most of their meat, poultry and seafood in frozen form and feel light of conscience and happy that their Buddhist principles have not been compromised! Notwithstanding this interesting paradox, and to give them credit for trying to stay true to their Buddhist ideals, butchers' shops and meat counters in supermarkets remain strictly closed on certain holy days of the week or month (I am not sure how these days are fixed), which must pinch the Bhutanese and sorely test their will power I am sure!
