Does a Kamala burger exist?
As someone who loves politics, cooking and eating (not necessarily in that order), I’m waiting for the moment current American frontline politics’ most talked-about cook offers her bespoke burger recipe. (If she has one, that is.)
After all, the burger has always reflected the American story, as food writers Priya Krishna and Tejal Rao recently noted (gift link).
After “decades of tinkering and reinvention”, they wrote, the burger has become “a lasting, ever-evolving American genre, like jazz or the Hollywood movie”. A representation of America at its best, the burger remains rich with history but always changing. Taking cultural (and spice cupboard) ingredients from new generations of Americans, the burger gets infused with different traditions and flavours, creating the quintessential “portrait of America”.
If that sounds like a lot of hype over nothing more sophisticated than a ground meat patty stuffed between two slides of bread, consider this. The 11 burgers with which Ms Krishna and Ms Rao illustrated their piece were staggeringly different from each other but also, somehow, very similar and therefore, familiar. Epitomising the different tastes and cultures of America, each still recognisably remained a burger, which is to say the basics were pretty constant. No matter the kind of burger or where it came from in that vast country called America, it remained, in essence, bread encasing some form of protein, all zhuzhed up with trimmings.
The 11 burgers they listed included a cheeseburger from Oklahoma City; a Campechana (taco-burger) from Austin, Texas; a Lao burger “crammed full of Lao ingredients” from Seattle; a Lagos mashed bean version from Brooklyn and Houston variations such as chapli burgers, beef rendang smash burgers and cheeseburger samosas for Ramadan.
The variety was delicious and impressive.
All of them were creative and culturally diverse variations on the original theme. All were indisputably linked — e pluribus unum, from America’s kitchen! All were joined together as a family of products that could only have emerged from America. In some ways, these burgers could be said to end the debate over whether multi-cultural countries should facilitate the salad bowl or melting pot. These burgers were both — their ingredients had their own logic, presence and taste while harmonising with each other and forming an attractive combo.
One has to wonder if Kamala Harris makes her own particular burger. And if so what is it like?
As a biracial person who loves to cook the dosa (from South India) just as much as greens with bacon (from the American Deep South), a Kamala burger (if it existed) would probably be…surprising.
Originally published at https://www.rashmee.com
