41–50 of 102 posts
I cannot wait for a cultural shift away from respecting "authenticity" and "tradition" in food. It's fine to remember and recognize how things were often done. But the ridiculousness of saying New York style pizza is not pizza or that you have to make things the "right way" needs to go.
"If my grandmother had wheels she would have been a bike" is a bowdlerization of a much older phrase. As my Great-Grandfather, born in 1890 in Widz, Belaruz would say it "ווען די באָבע וואָלט געהאַט בײצִים, װאָלט זי געװען מײַן זײדע" (If my grandmother had balls, she would have been my grandfather.)
I believe that us, Americans are pretty good at bending international food to our limited ingredients, our own favorite chemicals, sweeteners (corn syrup in everything), our flour and butter (good luck to make pastries like in Europe, with our poor flour and butter). So I get it when Italians get offended by our poor rendering of carbonara... and feel that what we get here is off.
Nowadays, it is very difficult to find someone who makes brigadeiro or milk pudding without condensed milk, almost always using that ingredient plus sugar, which often produces a sickly sweet mush.
In fact, the whole history of how sugar, or sucrose, entered the human diet is fascinating. It brings together slavery, the exploitation of Indigenous peoples, plantation agriculture in Spanish America and Brazil, and the interests of kings, merchants, and so on. And Nestlé. :)
Food snobbery is so annoying. But as an Australian I can get behind coffee snobbery. Sorry, we're the best.
(actually I am a brisbaneite so this is fake but you know what I mean)
Food authenticity should only mean DOP or geographic identity (GI) regulation. Everything else is gatekeeping and power struggle. Im glad this discussion comes up every year with a hard hitting blogger recycling the same points for clicks because at least it makes a new batch of people think about it and the second order implications about identity in general.
Like "feta" which is a style of cheese across the balkans, if you look in Melbourne Qeen Vic markets you can find Greek, Turkish, Albanian, Bulgarian, Danish Feta, fighting it out when the lights are off... But no, now it's DOC/PDO and so we're going to have to change its name.
DOP/GI is a scam unless it's policed. People try to retconn things into it (prosecco)
Champagne, I can get behind. I don't mind Aus bubbles being sold as -style because they're bloody good.
I think there's an element of expectation-setting when we're talking about authenticity. Personally, I wouldn't sweat authenticity too much. There's excellent food to be had by mixing and remixing dishes.
While 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…
"If my grandmother had wheels she would have been a bike" is a bowdlerization of a much older phrase. As my Great-Grandfather, born in 1890 in Widz, Belaruz would say it "ווען די באָבע וואָלט געהאַט בײצִים, װאָלט זי געװען מײַן זײדע" (If my grandmother had balls, she would have been my grandfather.)
In your understanding, what is the point of the original phrase?