Authenticity

The quest for culinary authenticity is something of a trap: it carries with it connotations of legitimacy and fosters a value-hierarchy that suggests a desperate need for validation.  It also denigrates the perfectly beautiful tradition practiced anytime people migrate from one region to another, and bring their own techniques, ingredients, and sensibilities with them.  Entirely new cuisines are built on such a foundation, and we would be the poorer for not having such examples as Cajun and Creole dishes in the world.

I do understand the value in sampling something in its original or traditional form, but I object to the notion that variations or evolutions are somehow less worthwhile or merit less respect.  I certainly enjoyed the display of a medieval castle’s kitchen when I was traveling in Europe ten years ago, but I am a modern cook.  I have access to ingredients, seasonings, and equipment that would bewilder either of my grandmothers, let alone the cooks in 16^th Century Castle Stirling.  I have a spirit of adventure that leads me occasionally to ill-advised experimentation.  Fusion, properly done with a care for the properties of the ingredients and what they can bring to a dish, is a wonderful thing.  Adding Thai red curry paste and Holy basil to the chicken salad?  Brilliant.  Adding wasabi to every darn thing on the plate? Yikes.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m something of a stickler for accuracy, and have no patience with something named misleadingly, whether it is a local restaurant’s “ceviche” made from smoked salmon and olive oil in almost incomprehensible disregard for what a ceviche is supposed to be all about.  It may have been a wonderful dish, we’ll never know as it is no longer featured on the menu, but it wasn’t a ceviche.  Whenever a dish is utterly defined by the ingredients or the technique, it is important to stay within certain  parameters if you wish to retain the original name.  Otherwise, it’s re-naming time.  Re-name!  It will win more fans, as it will not be savaging the expectations of the diners.

Italian-American cuisine seems to get it right.  Many dishes are named as brief descriptions, which probably helps.  Penne alla Vodka describes the pasta shape (penne) and the outstanding sauce feature (vodka).  Penne alla Vodka is usually a slightly creamy, tomato based sauce that is simmered with vodka to bring out the alcohol-soluble flavours of the tomato.  The exact composition will vary from cook to cook (Italians excel at understanding that two sisters will make the same dish quite differently from each other, and consider this a good thing), but the dish is broadly similar.  Sure, there might be whispered surprise if you did something completely different – adding mushrooms, for example, or peppers, but it would be understood that you are the chef and it is up to your discretion.  Change the pasta shape, though, and suddenly you’re back to re-naming.  It should be noted, however, that often a pasta shape is chosen expressly for its particular properties with regard to a certain sauce, and there are certainly combinations considered optimal within the traditions.  Toy with them as you will, you will eventually understand why the canon was set just so.

Hotly contesting the merits of including or excluding certain ingredients in a given dish can be a stimulating pastime.  Take, for example, chile con carne and its modern cousin, “chili.”  In its most traditional form, chile con carne involves chunks of meat slowly cooked in a sauce made from the soaking and grinding of dried chile peppers, with a few select seasonings.  Mentioning that you like beans in your chili might get you shot in parts of Texas – or at least win you a severe tongue-lashing.  While the beans/no beans debate is familiar to us northerners, the great tomato/no tomato debate rages just as fiercely.  Opinions run strongly as to which species of meat should be used, the cut of meat, whether beer, or even wine, should be used as part of the cooking liquid, the presence and form of onions and garlic, the use of fresh chiles, and whether the gravy should be smooth or chunky.  The discussions can go on all night with neither side winning any ground, and that’s without even addressing the issue of vegetarian chili.  Chili is one of those dishes that can tell you a lot about the maker, just by what is included, excluded, and accompanying the dish.  Made with beans and poured over spaghetti, you have Cincinnati-Five-Way.  Some Texans serve it alongside or over rice, others insist on cornbread – the flat, unsweetened, slightly dense bread of the south, as opposed to the lighter, sweeter and more cake-like cornbreads of the north.

The chili that I grew up with, and therefore will always be chili to me, is a version using ground beef, tomatoes, and beans.  The only peppers were found in the commercially mixed chili powder until I was a teenager, when fresh jalapenos got added to the mix with hilarious effect on the unsuspecting family.  It’s a type of chili that is comfort food to me, but I recognize that it bears little resemblance to its chile con carne antecedent, and it is not the only kind of chili that I make.

The thing of it is, what we think of as authentic merely represents the state of a cuisine when we encounter it.  Certainly, it helps if the dish has some long-running pedigree, but how far back must one go?  If an Italian dish contains tomatoes, it certainly is not older than 1492 – at least not in that particular formulation.  Is it therefore unauthentic, because it uses an ingredient that is not indigenous to the region?  This seems to be both the most obsessively accurate and the least desirable of definitions, laying waste to vast quantities of recipes that are routinely enjoyed throughout the world, simply because global commerce has made certain ingredients more readily available.  Trade is nothing new.  It has shaped the world both economically and politically, and trade in food items has historically been at the top of the import/export business.

So, what makes a dish authentic, if we are not to relay solely on the use of indigenous ingredients?  The best that I can come up with is this:  if a dish (if not its components) originated in a particular region and is readily available throughout the region, it is an authentic dish to that region.  “But, sushi!” You might cry, from Canada’s west coast.  Well, a little bit yes, but mostly no.  The crux of it is that sushi originates in Japan and, while here on the west coast we do have a distinctive number of dishes that are quite different from sushi that is served in Japan, ultimately the spirit and the intent of the dish is the same.  Vancouver has developed a unique and signature style of sushi based on our locally available ingredients, concurrent culinary trends, and Canadian sensibilities.  It may not be Edo-style or even Nare style – arguably the most traditional form of sushi – but it is very good.  It deserves, perhaps, a name modification to specify it as West Coast Sushi – although as a regional variation it gets a pass as the accepted norm here – its natural region -  and restaurants offering a more traditional approach may well clarify their offerings as Edomae or Kansai sushi.

So much in the name of a dish raises the expectations of the diner.  Certainly, a savvy customer is going to realize that cassoulet served in a Vietnamese restaurant – not at all unexpected, given the French occupation of Vietnam – is probably going to vary quite considerably from that served in Toulouse.  In fact, cassoulet and its ingredients are as passionately debated in France as chili is in America.  Like chili, the ingredients deemed acceptable vary from region to region with ardent competition over whose is better, and of course, whose is more authentic. Partisans of a particular style will not be shy to voice their views in a café, on a street corner, or in the market.  There’s something good natured about it, almost a little indulgent.  Each party goes home knowing smugly that he has defended and justified his variation, which is, of course, the right one.

There is something in the spirit of a dish that will let you know, if you consider carefully, whether it will brook any variations.  It is possible to be too slavish to the concept of authenticity, and in taking that approach one would miss out on an amazing amount of wonderful food.