"Carrot Kimchi" and the Relationship between Food and Culture

Do you have a student or neighbor whose family is from another country? About 28,000 Vermont residents are foreign born (about 4.3% of the total population).¹   You may be interacting with someone who cherishes their comfort foods as a link to a distant home. There are two main things I wish to say about this experience: sharing cherished foods with Americans can be a sensitive topic and it can be challenging to find traditional ingredients in stores around here. 

I cherish Russian and Korean dishes which I grew up eating but which are not common here in Vermont. However, I hesitate to share these foods with friends or coworkers. When I share these foods, it does feel special, sensitive, and personal because it’s linked to home.  

Too often, I’ve heard comments about the ingredients or flavors which make me self-conscious or sad, even if they’re not meant to be hurtful. Usually people will compare the food to something familiar (“this tastes like watered-down macaroni and cheese,” “this tastes like Sprite”) or comment on the ingredients (“Seaweed? Herring mixed with mayonnaise? Quail eggs?”).  

How can we support a student, friend, or neighbor to talk about the food that they love, without making them feel judged or shy because it doesn’t fit the flavor palate of Vermont? An invitation from the author: Don’t comment, just experience. 

Here are a few tips on how to respectfully try food from someone else’s culture:

  1. Try not to compare “this is the X version of that”. Let it stand on its own, rather than being a foreign “version” of something you’re familiar with.

  2. Just take it in: the smells, textures, flavors, sounds. Eat silently; maybe throw in a “wow this is delicious” or if it’s not delicious just say, “wow, thank you for sharing, I’ve never tried this before”.

  3. When it’s time to break the silence, ask the person questions about their personal experiences, such as “Is this food connected with any specific memories or events for you?” “Is this difficult to cook or buy?”

Another issue that first or second generation immigrants to VT may be dealing with is access to ingredients. After 6 months of living in the Pioneer Valley, I am increasingly hungry for (dare I say desperate for) food that is tangy, spicy, sour, fermented, and not-oily, all at the same time. Unfortunately, the nearest Asian food market is over 30 minutes away by car and it doesn’t always have the ingredients I’m looking for.

Perhaps many of the 28,000 foreign-born residents of Vermont are feeling the same desire for that “ahh, home” feeling that comes from eating the dishes your grandma used to make. 

This doesn’t just happen for foods from your family’s culture. When I lived in the Middle East, Korea, and Australia, I found myself really craving burritos. A lot of restaurants were offering a salad wrapped in a tortilla and calling it a burrito. It turns out, the deliciousness of Mexican food is proportional to your proximity to Mexico. 

Reflecting on her own memories of West Indian and Chinese home meals, Lachelle Antonia-Gray of Hunger Free VT noticed that "food is a thread that connects us to our heritage cultures, and it's usually one of the last things to get severed." 

When people get uprooted, their connections to places, ingredients, language, and clothing all tend to fade away as people assimilate into their new communities, but food traditions tend to stick around a few generations longer. If someone knows about the food of their grandparents, they can more easily connect with the people, traditions, and emotions of their heritage cultures. 

Assimilation is not always voluntary. A state like Vermont may not have the ingredients you had at home, forcing you to stop using traditional ingredients. Making a Thai curry last night, I had to substitute worcestershire sauce for kaffir lime leaves. It tasted…okay. 

This is an experience that immigrants have been navigating for thousands of years and all over the world. In the 1930s, Stalin forced Korean immigrants onto trains bound for Uzbekistan, bringing only what they could carry. Holding on to their traditions of making kimchi, these Koryo-saram started making a non-spicy kimchi out of carrots because there was no napa cabbage or chilies to be found. Perhaps they, too, tasted a spoonful of their new creation and said “I guess it’s…okay.” This dish is still served across Russia and Central Asia, appearing on menus as “Korean carrots”.

Blending Korean traditions with Russian ingredients helped this culture survive. To this day, I personally know many Koryo-saram who can’t speak Korean but who can cook “Korean carrots”. I can even buy this side-dish at the Russian grocery store in downtown Greenfield, MA where I live. 

So, if you’re interacting with first or second generation immigrants, two things they may be experiencing are: sharing cherished foods with Americans and creating new “fusion” dishes by substituting traditional ingredients with ingredients you can buy at Hannafords. 

Here are some projects Vermont communities have done to address food access for new Americans:

By Adelaide Petrov-Yoo