What even is food authenticity? Why we guard carbonara, and flatten chicken rice
1–10 of 102 posts
Re: What even is food authenticity? Why we guard carbonara, and flatten chicken rice
#2If we view carbonara through Asian cooking theory, then the recipe from Il Piccolo Talismano Della Felicita (1964) is probably the best, because the wine and onion adds acidity and sweetness for balance.
Re: What even is food authenticity? Why we guard carbonara, and flatten chicken rice
#3While it's true that you won't find published Carbonara recipes pre dating 1952, the Lazio region has had for centuries pasta dishes based on the same ingredients. And they are thoroughly documented.
Both gricia and amatriciana, too other famous pasta dishes from the same region use the same cheese (pecorino) and guanciale. In fact carbonara is nothing more than a gricia with egg yolks.
It just makes no sense to have parmiggiano or french cheese in a recipe coming from a region that did not have these ingredients in the first place and are not part of its culinary history.
And thus the point of authenticity is into rooting where the recipe originated with local ingredients.
Anybody's free to change the recipe all they want, but to call it carbonara when ingredients don't match is misleading the customer expecting a roman dish with roman ingredients.
Re: What even is food authenticity? Why we guard carbonara, and flatten chicken rice
#4Italian restaurant cuisine today is judged by whether it tastes like the way their particular Italian grandma made it.
Asian restaurant cuisine is judged by partly by how different (technique, taste, looks) the dish is from what they can make from home.
Re: What even is food authenticity? Why we guard carbonara, and flatten chicken rice
#5The older I get, the more I view identity as a sort of trap door. There's no there there that can stand up to sustained scrutiny. Everything has a history, everything is made of something other than what it is.
In the context of food, I laugh at notions of authenticity and tradition - unless the time scale is over 1000 years there's not much interesting to talk about.
Re: What even is food authenticity? Why we guard carbonara, and flatten chicken rice
#6I think what is so interesting is also, if you peel back the curtain, most recipes have standardized at a fairly recent point in their national mythos, depending on how long that is.
Recipes are a snapshot of economic and technological advances of the time, and whole classes of recipe are not available until certain technological watersheds, like
* precise temperature controls for ovens and stoves in the early 20th century
* cheap and health(ier) chemical leaveners in the late 19th century
* discovery of consistent vanilla pollination in the 19th century
* exchanges of ingredients in the Columbian exchange (tomatoes in Italy, potatoes in Russia, chilis in India and Korea, etc.)
Also our modern supply chain is very good at magicking away the seasonality and perishability of ingredients, so for example you had early Scottish shortbread primarily using rice flour because it was cheaper at that time.
Re: What even is food authenticity? Why we guard carbonara, and flatten chicken rice
#7Italian restaurant cuisine today is judged by whether it tastes like the way their particular Italian grandma made it. Asian restaurant cuisine is judged by partly by how different (technique, taste, looks) the dish is from what they can make from home.
Of course that situation may be reversed for people with a Chinese grandma instead of an Italian grandma.
Re: What even is food authenticity? Why we guard carbonara, and flatten chicken rice
#8Tribalism knows no bounds
Re: What even is food authenticity? Why we guard carbonara, and flatten chicken rice
#9Italian restaurant cuisine today is judged by whether it tastes like the way their particular Italian grandma made it. Asian restaurant cuisine is judged by partly by how different (technique, taste, looks) the dish is from what they can make from home.
Of course that situation may be reversed for people with a Chinese grandma instead of an Italian grandma.
No it’s not. Chinese restaurant cuisine is not defined by home cuisine at all. They are almost orthogonal.
You go to a Chinese restaurant to eat something that cannot be made at home, almost by definition. The only exception might be breakfast food.
Re: What even is food authenticity? Why we guard carbonara, and flatten chicken rice
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of course that situation may be reversed for people with a Chinese grandma instead of an Italian grandma.
No it’s not. Chinese restaurant cuisine is not defined by home cuisine at all. They are almost orthogonal. You go to a Chinese restaurant to eat something that cannot be made at home, almost by definition. The only exception might be breakfast food.
Indeed, same reason I don't usually go to Indian restaurants, I can just make the same thing at home with much fewer costs. The only ones I'd go to are specialized or well known ones, such as some South Indian places I've been to recently.
What's even more interesting is no one actually makes butter or tikka chicken at home, or has a tandoor to do so, but Indians also don't eat it outside generally, instead it's mainly foreigners who like those dishes.