What you grow up eating
I made a pot of 皮蛋瘦肉粥, also known as century egg and pork congee/rice porridge, yesterday. I finally found a recipe and method for making this dish which I can replicate every time, and that results in a perfect-to-me bowl of rice porridge. It's tasty and savoury and with a combination of flavours that I love. (The recipe I use is very simple, and although you can buy this dish when you go out for dim sum, I've made this version enough times now that I've perfected the method, and I think I might even prefer my home cooked version more than the restaurant version.)
Anyway as I was ladling out a bowl for myself, I got to thinking about how M only occasionally eats this dish when I make it. He seems to like it enough and eats it when we go out for dim sum, but I don't think he loves it as much as I do. And initially, when we first started sharing meals, I don't think he got the concept of rice porridge and didn't like the texture. It didn't help that most of his exposure to the dish came from my mum, who cooks Teochew-style rice porridge, which tends to be quite watery and gets its umami from the accompaniments you have with the porridge (which M didn't like). Over time, and through trying Cantonese-style rice porridge (like century egg and pork rice porridge) I think he can appreciate it as a dish and not just dismiss it as "overly watery rice". He even got used to the smell, flavour and texture of century egg! But rice porridge is not something he grew up eating and I doubt it will ever rank among his most favourite meals.
For me, growing up in a Malaysian environment with strong southern Chinese influences, the food I developed a palate for is very different to what M grew up with. His childhood environment, in Australia, had strong Dutch influences - he grew up enjoying bread, cheese, hagelslag. Nowadays we eat a variety of food - lots of Malaysian- and Chinese-influenced meals, and also some Dutch and Anglo-Australian ones. For health reasons we have had to cut down on the meat-heavy meals we used to enjoy, like pork roasts, bangers and mash and lamb chops, and I didn't make huge pots of snert this past winter. (Sometimes growing old is very boring.)
There's lots of food I eat now that I didn't have any opportunity to try until we moved to Australia. Sushi, spaghetti bolognese, Italian food, sausage rolls, cheddar cheese (all cheese, really - we only had Kraft processed cheese when I was a child!), Mexican food, northern Chinese food, northern Indian food, Greek food, Lebanese food, Yorkshire pudding, smoked salmon, olives, fish and chips... I think I take it for granted that I have so many options when dining!