09/06/2016
History of Medina-Huang Kitchen Peanut Sauce
In recent years, Thai cuisine has steadily gained popularity and become a worldwide phenomenon. Thai food, along with other markers of Thailand such as gold-leaf temples and tropical beaches, situates Thailand on the map of desire and fuels the Orientalist fantasy of the ever-exotic Asian culture. Oftentimes, Thailand is known exclusively as a culinary heaven, in contrast to its relative invisibility a decade ago. Nevertheless, in the face of these contemporary conditions of racialization and the questionable visibility of Thai culture through food, I started a peanut sauce business—producing and distributing a condiment that is most often associated with Thai cuisine.
The peanut sauce recipe that I developed (and, subsequently, the business that I founded) is culturally specific, in terms of it being produced as part of my diasporic q***r experience. Neither a recipe passed down through generations nor a “traditional” family business, the peanut sauce that I make is a culmination of my journey from a kitchen-phobe to culinary experimenter and the evidence of expanding/strengthening q***r support networks. Without my q***r families in Los Angeles and the Bay Area who continuously support me in various ways, the peanut sauce business would have not taken shape. My peanut sauce company is certainly a family business, but one that challenges the traditional notions of family and lineage: q***r and diasporic. It is part of the process of self-building and sustainable living under capitalism.
If peanut sauce is a condiment that connotes authentic Thai food, the fact that I am making and selling it unsettles this assumption. As an ethnic Chinese person growing up in Thailand, I was already an outsider to Thai culture, particularly Thai cuisine, to a significant degree. In addition, like “Thai iced tea,” peanut sauce was not specifically invented in Thailand, but is a product of cross-cultural culinary development in Asia. Ironically, the word “peanut sauce” and the condiment recognized as such have no equivalent in Thai (the dipping sauce for satay dishes is simply called “satay sauce”). This means that “peanut sauce” is a term that is only culturally intelligible in the Western—specifically American—context. Authenticity is one of the major aspects of contemporary globalized culture that my peanut sauce business questions.
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Peanut sauce ingredients: peanut butter, soy sauce, sesame oil, rice vinegar, lime juice, filtered water, granulated garlic, and cayenne pepper. No MSG or added preservatives. Lasts over 6 months if refrigerated. "Best used by" date is indicated on product label.
