Comments on: What the Hell Does Authentic Mean, Anyway?

By: ejm

ejm — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I've just recently blundered onto your blog (via "Too Many Chefs") and I must say, I do like your style, Barbara. It's my feeling that the authentic hot and sour soup is the one that meets the expectations of those who are eating it. How's that for loosey goosey??

So if this can be achieved by substituting something for unavailable duck's blood and still not have the taste compromised then it's authentic....

(Besides, there must be as many recipes for authentic hot and sour soup as there are authentic Chinese people.)

-Elizabeth

By: Karyl

Karyl — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Well you also have to think of the fact that even “authentic” Chinese food didn’t all come from China. There has been foreign rule enough times, one would assume Mongol and Manchurian dishes were intergrated into the culture at some point (though my history class didn’t so much focus on food – good thing because I tend to get hungry in the middle of it as it is).

By: Barbara Fisher

Barbara Fisher — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Hello, Elizabeth! I remember you from Too Many Chefs.

I think that your "loosey goosey" definition of authentic in relation to food is a pretty good one.

And yes, I think that there are probably many very different regional and personal variations on authentic hot and sour soup recipes out there.

Hello, Karyl--nice to meet you!

The goat cheese dish I mentioned in the post is common in the north of China and it is most certainly Mongolian in origin.

One thing that most Americans forget or simply do not know, is that China is very ethnically diverse. In addition to the Mongolian and Manchurian influences on the cuisine, you have many different tribal people, such as the Hakka, whose cuisines are distinctive, yet, still Chinese.

The study of Chinese cuisines is a subject that will probably engage me for the rest of my life, and I still will not learn all there is to know. There will always be something new for me to study.

By: Karyl

Karyl — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Hm… is this not the Barbara I know then? I suppose it’s silly of me to think everyone linked on Bryian’s blog is someone I’ve met, considering how many people he knows. Of course it would help if I remembered that Barbara is only her SCA name.

Er, anyway, for some reason I woke up thinking about it again, and even thinking of food we consider so essentially “American” tends to come from other places. Hamburgers… those are one of those foods that gets identified with the US all the time. Though why I woke up thinking of hamburgers I will never know.

By: Noddy

Noddy — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

We’ve been dealing recently with questions of “authenticity” in some work we were doing, and handled it by offering the original recipe and its source and then the recipe we redacted out of it. This experience taught us to tie the word “authentic” to a specific time and place. Take bread. We can’t say for sure when the first loaf of bread was ever made, which means we’ll never know what the original bread was like, but we can talk about “authentic San Francisco sourdough” because it ties the bread to a specific place, and to a reasonably narrow time.