Growing Up With Herbs & My Thai Family
I remember my grandmothers always creating different Thai dishes when I was a child. Every time I tried to learn a recipe, the dish would usually consist of 10 different herbs, some spices, either chicken or pork, and some vegetables found at the local 99 Ranch market. Some of these herbs don’t even exist in the 99 Ranch market so we would have to make the occasional trip to Bangluck Market. As for the rest, my dad grew whatever herbs we couldn’t find at home in our garden. The herbs were more important in the dishes than the spices and every dish had the spiciest Thai chili, which my dad also grew in the garden.
I always knew the Thai names of the herbs, but I never bothered learning the English names until I met my boyfriend. Describing the herbs was nearly impossible for me so I googled the names in Thai, using the roman alphabets. Sometimes they had names in English, and other times they kept the Thai names. Sometimes I wonder if the herbs didn’t have English names because nobody bothered to give the herbs an English name or the herb was left with the Thai name to preserve the original name. Either way, many people, who are not from Thailand or even South East Asia, would not know the names of these herbs. In the same way, many people mistaken the names of the spices from India.
When I first saw this post, I didn’t know the name of these spices. I don’t know if I will take the time to search for the names either. I do know that the finely crushed red pepper is not cayenne. I stare into this post, reading the tags and the comments and questioning the idea behind the post. Somehow I find myself thinking about one of my recent readings, “Names Can Wait”: The Misnaming of the South Asian Diaspora in Theory and Practice by Amardeep Singh. I began to relate this post to the reading because I couldn’t name the spice since I’ve never encountered any of the spices before. It made me feel distant from the photo yet somewhat close to home.
The reading is not completely far off from the post in my opinion. In short, this reading is about the second-generation South Asian American immigrants who have been called either ABCD (American Born Confused Desis) or FOB (Fresh off the Boat). But the complexity in the reading is focused on the idea that the marginal groups, who normally form into diasporic community because of exclusion, are faced with names in which assimilates everyone in that regional area into one culture. The author explains:
…catachresis is what occurs when an object is misnamed because there is no proper name for it. “American Indian” is an example of catechresis. Since there was no single ethnic term to describe collectively all the different civilizations in the western hemisphere before European discovery and conquest, “American Indian” emerged as the dominant denotative term — a term applied to indigenous civilizations from without.
Relating it back to the spice post, if that post didn’t say that the finely crushed red pepper isn’t cayenne, most people would have said cayenne. Why? It might be easier to name something that is seemingly familiar to the larger community than learning the actual name for the spice.
I’m not sure if I am hitting the point on that post, but it made me feel like I also wanted to post a picture of different herbs and spices from Thailand. I also wanted to represent herbs and spices from my parents’ homeland because people in America don’t fully differentiate Asian food culture as being too different from one another unless its East Asia compared to South East Asia/South Asia. But even then, some people assume that everything in Asia is just simply Asian which redirects the problem back to misnaming.
More times than often, I get mistaken of being Taiwanese from Thai because people assume that Thai is just short for Taiwanese. I don’t want to be surprised by that anymore. Sometimes, I try to channel positive energy by understanding that they don’t know enough geography. And then I teach them about the distinction between Thai and Taiwanese. Sometimes the respondent looks interested in the lesson. Other times, they don’t care enough to try to distinguish the culture because to them; Asian is Asian.
I’m grateful to know that the Thai food culture uses various types of herbs to enhance the flavor of the dish and it’s difficult to recreate the dishes without the proper herbs. The post made me realized that there are so many fascinating spices within the world that it’s important to learn where they are from. But mainly, in relations to people, it’s important to understand that there are different communities within a region that do not assimilate to a singular name. The communities have different traditions, cultures, and beliefs that contradict the singular name given to those communities.
