People often identify themselves or others by the food they eat. I guess for some it even becomes a point of national pride, as the BBC points out in a report about the latest nations to join the EU:
Mamaliga is so central to Romanian life, that Bulgarians sometimes refer to Romanians pejoratively as Mamaligi – though the dish exists in Bulgaria too, under the name kachamak.
One elderly Romanian voiced anxieties about Romania’s membership of the EU, telling BBC correspondent Oana Lungescu: “We’ll no longer be able to make our mamaliga, because we’ll have to eat sliced bread wrapped in plastic with a food safety stamp on it!
But do the Bulgarians mean it in a positive or negative fashion? What would New Yorkers think if everyone started calling them Bagelers? The funny thing is, Mamaliga not only exists in Bulgaria but many other parts of the world under the more common name of Polenta.
…a cornmeal dish popular in Italian, Savoyard, Swiss, Austrian, Croatian, Slovenian, Serbian, Romanian, Bulgarian, Corsican, Argentine, Brazilian, and Mexican cuisine, and it is a traditional staple food throughout much of northern Italy.
Will Romanian cornmeal-based dishes survive an onslaught of competitive foodstuffs? Hard to say, but it seems highly likely, especially if someone manages to market it to the EU or beyond as a more traditional, unique, or essential element of Romanian life (or maybe BalmoÅŸ is a better candidate). Actually, it did not take long to find exactly that kind of discussion already underway:
Again, with Romanians things are more complicated and tricky, because ‘mamaliga’, as many other things Romanian, is not just food; there is a whole symbolism behind the poor innocent ‘mamaliga’. The mystery dwells in, at least, few aspects: how ‘mamaliga’ is cooked; our history; how we dealt with our history across time.
[…]
Here is the trick: ‘mamaliga’ is made of corn, which is the peasants’ bread, is thick but not as consistent as bread, is not baked but boiled to a certain point. You eat it fast; the leftovers are not good, as it is with bread. If is chilling out too much, then ‘mamaliga’ is not good; if is not boiled enough is flawed. So, there you go to an ad-hoc manual in defining Romanians: we need to boil to the hottest point until we take any action; even so, we might get it wrong if not boiled properly or chilled out too much.
Look deep within your bowl and you may find the secrets to understanding geopolitical security. Reminds me of the movie Tampopo as I mentioned once before — the Japanese quest to create the perfect bowl of ramen. If nothing else, this story again just takes us back to the old saying “you are what you eat”.