Authentic ethnic foods.

[boomchakabowwow]

i like to cook stuff from different regions. every time i go on vacation in some country, i put aside time for a cooking class. i seek out classes where they teach about the history as well as the actual cooking. (the Peru class was especially awesome. there are big Chinese influences to the food!)

having said that, i don't think everything needs to be perfect. my Philippine coworker just informed me that you cannot use Tamari in place of their local soy sauce. i stopped myself short from telling her i used rice wine vinegar..instead of that coconut vinegar. hah. i bet she brings me a bottle of Red Swan tomorrow.

i think its how we got to where we are at in food. people adapt with the ingredients they have on hand. its super fun if some YouTube cook makes (Paella is a great example) a dish and the commenters all chime in.."that the wrong rice for Paella, that is not authentic" i saw a video where they used arborio rice!. the horrors.

i love tweaking dishes. some of you all are hitting dishes out of the park on that food thread. As i got older, i keep my food comments to myself. i don't make ugly faces if someone eats something i don't like. i don't tell them they are cooking it wrong either. unless it is a well done steak..that is just too wrong!!

 

[Runner_up]

Well done steak....

The horror

 

[LostHighway]

i like to cook stuff from different regions. every time i go on vacation in some country, i put aside time for a cooking class. i seek out classes where they teach about the history as well as the actual cooking. (the Peru class was especially awesome. there are big Chinese influences to the food!)

having said that, i don't think everything needs to be perfect. my Philippine coworker just informed me that you cannot use Tamari in place of their local soy sauce. i stopped myself short from telling her i used rice wine vinegar..instead of that coconut vinegar. hah. i bet she brings me a bottle of Red Swan tomorrow.

i think its how we got to where we are at in food. people adapt with the ingredients they have on hand. its super fun if some YouTube cook makes (Paella is a great example) a dish and the commenters all chime in.."that the wrong rice for Paella, that is not authentic" i saw a video where they used arborio rice!. the horrors.

i love tweaking dishes. some of you all are hitting dishes out of the park on that food thread. As i got older, i keep my food comments to myself. i don't make ugly faces if someone eats something i don't like. i don't tell them they are cooking it wrong either. unless it is a well done steak..that is just too wrong!!

For the most part I agree that this authenticity business is often carried too far. I don't think food anywhere is static, new tools, new ingredients, and new influences are frequently incorporated. A close friend commenting on requests for "authentic" burritos observed, "Do you really want an authentic Sonoran burrito, because that is basically just a hunk of beef in flour tortilla?"
I will, however, offer a couple caveats: one, I think there is a place for preserving traditional methods and recipes, change is fine as long as some record of where things came from (and hopefully the skills to recreate them) survives. The second caveat is that I think honest labeling matters -"inspired by" or "derived from" or whatever is fine but when a dish or a drink bears little or no resemblance to the original I think it is a bit disingenuous to still use the original nomenclature.

 

[BillHanna]

Well done steak....

The horror

Last year, I gave my then five year old a piece of medium steak. “Um. I think this is kinda overcooked.”

First of all, how dare you. Second, good job kid.

 

[valgard]

i like to cook stuff from different regions. every time i go on vacation in some country, i put aside time for a cooking class. i seek out classes where they teach about the history as well as the actual cooking. (the Peru class was especially awesome. there are big Chinese influences to the food!)

having said that, i don't think everything needs to be perfect. my Philippine coworker just informed me that you cannot use Tamari in place of their local soy sauce. i stopped myself short from telling her i used rice wine vinegar..instead of that coconut vinegar. hah. i bet she brings me a bottle of Red Swan tomorrow.

i think its how we got to where we are at in food. people adapt with the ingredients they have on hand. its super fun if some YouTube cook makes (Paella is a great example) a dish and the commenters all chime in.."that the wrong rice for Paella, that is not authentic" i saw a video where they used arborio rice!. the horrors.

i love tweaking dishes. some of you all are hitting dishes out of the park on that food thread. As i got older, i keep my food comments to myself. i don't make ugly faces if someone eats something i don't like. i don't tell them they are cooking it wrong either. unless it is a well done steak..that is just too wrong!!

I only feel somewhat of an inclination to make that kind of comment when the person posting the dish claims it's "authentic". Hardly possible to make "authentic" ethnic food outside the place of origin, you make due, and sometimes (stressing this word), the tweaks are actually even better!

Easy example, I can't make "authentic" Cuban roasted pork here. For one, the pork tastes quite different, the diet is completely different and maybe even the variety. And second, sour oranges are something I haven't found in any market around me, and they're at the heart of the marinades we use in Cuba for pork. I make due with a combination of lemon or lime and sweet oranges .

 

[AT5760]

Too often “authentic” means “the way X place did it” or “how I grew up with it”

Here in America, I’m not sure anything is authentic except maybe hyper-local dishes made by a specific restaurant or two - such as skyline chili.

I’m part of a local FB group here in Omaha. Watching native Nebraskans debate the authenticity of one place’s chimichangas vs another makes my head want to explode.

 

[M1k3]

Too often “authentic” means “the way X place did it” or “how I grew up with it”

Here in America, I’m not sure anything is authentic except maybe hyper-local dishes made by a specific restaurant or two - such as skyline chili.

I’m part of a local FB group here in Omaha. Watching native Nebraskans debate the authenticity of one place’s chimichangas vs another makes my head want to explode.

BBQ!

 

[erickso1]

Ketchup on spaghetti.

 

[tchan001]

Philly cheesesteak

 

[GorillaGrunt]

+1 for the name matters - it’s all about what your brain expects upon hearing it compared to what you experience upon eating it. As to how authentic or traditional anything is, that is fuzzy and subjective - before 500 years ago there were no potatoes in Ireland and no tomatoes in Italy.

 

[Lizzardborn]

Ketchup on spaghetti.

This is literally how I grew up eating them. If you want to put it to the next lever - try adding some nice crumbled Serbian/Greek/Bulgarian white cheese - like feta. Lots of it. Actually you can even omit the ketchup - instead of making a sauce next time - just add some nice feta style cheese.

I think that culinary traditions are extremely important to be preserved and respected. Not followed blindly - but if you deviate - don't market it as authentic if people that live in the place it originated won't recognize it as such.

 

[Paraffin]

It's an interesting topic. I think there are two categories of cookbooks and web sites. One is the kind that attempts to instruct from the source as much as possible. The other is the kind that tries to adapt to Western American/European tastes (for lack of a better word), and may represent something more like what you'd find in a local "ethnic" restaurant adapted to those tastes in a country far from the source.

Personally, I want to educate myself enough to know the difference, and decide where I want to be along that spectrum when I attempt to cook the food myself. I may not even want "the real thing" in some cases, but I want to know where a recipe sits on that spectrum.

For example, if you want to learn "real" Chinese cuisine (which I know is vast, and not a single thing), you'll have to fight through all the cookbooks and web sites that are based on the Cantonese Chinese-American restaurant cuisine. Like "Breath of a Wok" for example, which is almost entirely recipes from the expat Cantonese/Chinese-American cuisine with sugar and thick sauces.

The Fuchsia Dunlop, Barbara Tropp, and Caroyln Phillips cookbooks are closer to the source, and I had to learn how to appreciate Chinese recipes with no sugar, and salt or hot chili instead.

Another example: When I lived in Miami there was a small family-owned hole in the wall restaurant that served the usual generic Americanized Thai food on the menu. Masaman curries, all that. At the back of the menu if you knew where to look, there was a small section of Northeast Thai dishes that could be cooked on request. Things like green papaya salad with laab; different in taste and preparation from the Americanized dishes with thick sauces at the front of the menu. I learned about that difference and how to cook at least a little of it with some research.

Knowledge is the key. You have to know where you want to be, on that spectrum of meals adapted for a foreign palate vs. the local cuisine.

 

[GorillaGrunt]

I f_____g love green papaya salad with laab, there‘s a Thai place downstairs from me that is so much like a family operated restaurant in an immigrant neighborhood in NYC. They also have Laotian food so I’m not sure if they’re Hmong or from a border region or what, and I’ve not been to either country, but the food is way better than most gringo-oriented Thai places.

The question is what defines the dish and how many degrees of freedom constrain it: how much can you change eggplant parmigiana before it’s something you’d never find in Parma? How much before it’s something you’d never find in Italy? Is American eggplant parm a distinct dish, or a variation, or a reprehensible bastardization? And if you chef it up until it transgresses (or transcends) those constraints, and it‘s delicious, does it matter? Personally I think this is where terminology comes in: in the latter case if you serve it to me as eggplant parmigiana I’d say no it isn’t, but if you call it something else it’ll be more enjoyable.

 

[Michi]

To me, the most important thing is whether it tastes good. If it looks good, too, that's even better.

Authenticity is a tough thing to call. Clearly, there is a point where a dish has diverged so much from the original that it no longer deserves the name. I still get angry every time I see "bagels" at a supermarket here. They are made with the wrong flour. They are not boiled. They are not dense and chewy. And they don't have a shiny super-thin crust. Instead, they are ordinary boring soft and fluffy bread rolls with a dull surface that are shaped into a torus. That's not a bagel, but false advertising.

Having grown up in Bavaria, I consider myself something of an expert on traditional Bavarian dishes. Serve a pork roast with an opaque sauce instead of a clear sauce, and it's no longer a Bavarian pork roast (even though it might be excellent). Yet, to someone else, that same roast is "Bavarian" simply because it is served with bread dumplings ("Knödel") and red cabbage, and spiced the same (and, in all honesty, tastes almost identical).

For other cuisines, as a rule, I really don't even have a way to judge "authentic". In some cases, I can trust in experts and, if I've spent significant time in some country and sampled the food there (and talked to lots of locals), I might know a little bit. But, in general, the best I can say is that I think it's "authentic".

And the next time I see a "Bavarian" potato salad with mayonnaise, I shall turn into an axe murderer…