In the dream, I was making a case that Yemeni food taste the way it does because of the war, and Lebanese food tastes differently because there’s no conflict there. It made a lot of sense, the case I was making, in the dream.
I’m now thinking, in my waking life, how a war or conflict affects the cuisine of a place.
“I think the food would get worse,” said this journalist I met earlier who recently wrote about several pieces about Crimea, “because it’s so much harder getting the right ingredients.”
Which, of course I agree. But that also feels like the obvious answer.
The question wasn’t if the cuisine would taste the same, the question was how would it change? And change doesn’t necessarily mean worse. Sure, if the baba ganoush, for example, doesn’t have all the right spices, it may arguably be a worse baba ganoush.
But what if the recipe were tweaked? What if you add some things that are available and not other things, and also different spices and then call it something else. If that something else is delicious, can it stand on its own as a delicious something else, or is it still just a worse baba ganoush?
Where I’m coming from is that humans like things that taste good, and humans are adaptable, and when you throw in the wild card that is war in there, the result is not necessarily worse food.