Why are ethnic foods trendy now?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I look at my Instagram feed and am met with beautifully displayed and watered down versions of Asian, middle eastern and and African cuisines. The girls making these recipes are not immigrants or POC but young, white rich women who “learned to cook in their kitchen and are foodies.”

I look at their recipes and it makes me a little sick. They’re using ethnic spice mixes and combinations of sauces that have so much history and context regarding the regions of the world in which they originate. I think of how white people used to eat pb&j now eat chicken curry and Korean tacos and naan.

As a POC it bothers me that our culinary heritage is discarded while a random white American person takes the basic idea and adopts it and presents it as their own.

So frustrating!

OP, it's unclear what your C in POC stands for. However, if you have prepared lasagna, brats, pizza, bagels and smoked salmon, tacos, sushi, cheese fries, and any number of other dishes, you have some explaining to do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would be impressed if a white person could cook good Korean food. Then, I'd ask to be invited over for dinner.

-Korean American

I can prepare two excellent Korean dishes (though neither requires a great deal of culinary expertise): Kimch Jjigae (just need to get gook kinchi) and I make a delicious marinade for beef (I use flank steak). When should I expect you? As compensation, I'd like you to teach me two more Korean Dishes.

Korean PP here..

I can make korean zuchinni pancake, jjangaji, and kalbi marindade (not nearly as good as my mom's though), and kimchee jigaee, too.

Would love to have a Korean food potluck. My mouth is now starting to water.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I look at my Instagram feed and am met with beautifully displayed and watered down versions of Asian, middle eastern and and African cuisines. The girls making these recipes are not immigrants or POC but young, white rich women who “learned to cook in their kitchen and are foodies.”

I look at their recipes and it makes me a little sick. They’re using ethnic spice mixes and combinations of sauces that have so much history and context regarding the regions of the world in which they originate. I think of how white people used to eat pb&j now eat chicken curry and Korean tacos and naan.

As a POC it bothers me that our culinary heritage is discarded while a random white American person takes the basic idea and adopts it and presents it as their own.

So frustrating!

Americans often cook Americanized versions of foods from other countries. What’s the issue? Most people in most cultures do this- adapt foods to their tastes.

I would never say my pad kee mow is the best and most authentic version out there. I’m not Thai, I’ve (sadly) never even been to Thailand. But my family likes eating it. I don’t know why it would make anyone sad that people are using new (to them) ingredients and spices in their cooking.

Not OP, and I can't figure out what her issue is.

But an issue that is coming up lately with international cusines, especially those from non-Western cultures, is that many white/European-descended chefs are starting to reproduce Americanized versions of traditional dishes without acknowledging their cultural history. Often, these are the same foods that non-white/European-descended authors and immigrants were made fun of for eating. But if a white, blond lady publishes it in the NYT, all of a sudden it's "cool" instead of "gross". Alison Roman is the epitome of this. And many Indian, Chinese, African, etc chefs are irritated by it.

Thanksgiving is an interesting holiday from this perspective, because many of the "traditional" foods are actually Southern soul foods that originated in Black communities. Yet we talk about them like the Pilgrims at them. It's a form of cultural erasure that historically marginalized groups feel acutely. They've been told for centuries that their cultures are inferior...now all of a sudden the supposedly "superior" culture is taking their cultural heritage and passing it off as their own.

Anyway, since this is DCUM the majority of you will reduce this to "get real problems!" or "does this mean I'm a racist for eating spaghetti?"...but maybe some of you will read this and learn a little more about the heritage of the foods you eat. It can be fascinating, and provides more understanding of our rich multi-cultural heritage as well as more knowledge of formerly repressed communities. For example, it was because of a dish someone once cooked on Top Chef that I learned about the history of the Gullah Geechee: https://www.bonappetit.com/story/bj-dennis-gullah-geechee

Maybe your traditional Thanksgiving food was originally inspired by soul food, but that is not universally true since we all actually eat quite different things on Thanksgiving. Except turkey, you would barely recognize the Eastern European food at my mom’s Thanksgiving or the Italian food at my mother-in-laws.

I have no idea what point you are trying to make, unless you're seriously going to argue that turkey, sweet potatoes, green beans, mashed potatoes, and dressing are somehow kind of a niche Thanksgiving meal and you'd just as likely find lasagna or Chinese hot pot on a Thanksgiving table.

FWIW, since I was a kid my Thanksgiving table has included a few different Indian subjis, but I'm cognizant that there's still a "traditional" American Thanksgiving menu to which food magazines devote an entire issue, newspaper food sections devote weeks of recipes, and the Food Network devotes an entire day.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Are they claiming they created the dishes? Are they calling it American cuisine? I have my doubts, but please provide links to prove me wrong.

Look at Alison Roman with her “chickpea stew” and “gentle lentils”.

She totally deserved to be cancelled for that. I'm fine with white people making international cuisine, but give credit where credit is due. She was acting like these were original recipes. Lady, you're making Chole and daal!!!

except if she called it chole or dal she'd be equally cancelled. what people REALLY want is for Alison Roman not to be allowed to do anything.

if a published chef has to give an international culinary history of each ingredient or technique, that's going to be pretty inconvenient. lentil's originally came from the Middle East anyway.

dp. I don't think she should be canceled for it. But, it does make her look ignorant, and also anyone else who doesn't realize that it's an ethnic dish and thinks it's a new American cuisine. If they came across someone who knew what it was, and they said that, "oh, that's an <ethnic> cuisine", and the ignorant person kept insisting it wasn't, guess who looks the fool.

Maybe Roman knew that most of her followers were too ignorant to notice.

I'm pretty sure that Alison Roman, who lives in multicultural NYC, reasonable assumes that her fans KNOW WHAT DAL IS. Come on.

Trying to appropriate a legume for a single culture is really something though.

Not exactly sure what happened, but it seems it was more than just using legumes in her cooking.

No one has a problem with another culture learning to cook their food. I sure don't - I'm east Asian. However, if a person pretends that it was something they discovered on their own and doesn't acknowledge that the cuisine with a twist is actually from x country, then that is shameful.

Maybe she just neglected to mention it? IDK.. I don't follow her. But, the issue is not other cultures learning to cook food from other cultures. It's pretending that what you created is not based on that cultural dish.

Did you read her newsletter? She wasn't pretending to invent dal. https://anewsletter.alisoneroman.com/p/gentle-lentils

And if she had called it dal she would have been equally open to critcism.

so basically the argument is she can't make anything with lentils.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would be impressed if a white person could cook good Korean food. Then, I'd ask to be invited over for dinner.

-Korean American

I can prepare two excellent Korean dishes (though neither requires a great deal of culinary expertise): Kimch Jjigae (just need to get gook kinchi) and I make a delicious marinade for beef (I use flank steak). When should I expect you? As compensation, I'd like you to teach me two more Korean Dishes.

Korean PP here..

I can make korean zuchinni pancake, jjangaji, and kalbi marindade (not nearly as good as my mom's though), and kimchee jigaee, too.

Would love to have a Korean food potluck. My mouth is now starting to water.

Isn't there a Korean fall holiday where you traditionally have an outdoor picnic?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Are they claiming they created the dishes? Are they calling it American cuisine? I have my doubts, but please provide links to prove me wrong.

Look at Alison Roman with her “chickpea stew” and “gentle lentils”.

She totally deserved to be cancelled for that. I'm fine with white people making international cuisine, but give credit where credit is due. She was acting like these were original recipes. Lady, you're making Chole and daal!!!

except if she called it chole or dal she'd be equally cancelled. what people REALLY want is for Alison Roman not to be allowed to do anything.

if a published chef has to give an international culinary history of each ingredient or technique, that's going to be pretty inconvenient. lentil's originally came from the Middle East anyway.

dp. I don't think she should be canceled for it. But, it does make her look ignorant, and also anyone else who doesn't realize that it's an ethnic dish and thinks it's a new American cuisine. If they came across someone who knew what it was, and they said that, "oh, that's an <ethnic> cuisine", and the ignorant person kept insisting it wasn't, guess who looks the fool.

Maybe Roman knew that most of her followers were too ignorant to notice.

I'm pretty sure that Alison Roman, who lives in multicultural NYC, reasonable assumes that her fans KNOW WHAT DAL IS. Come on.

Trying to appropriate a legume for a single culture is really something though.

Not exactly sure what happened, but it seems it was more than just using legumes in her cooking.

No one has a problem with another culture learning to cook their food. I sure don't - I'm east Asian. However, if a person pretends that it was something they discovered on their own and doesn't acknowledge that the cuisine with a twist is actually from x country, then that is shameful.

Maybe she just neglected to mention it? IDK.. I don't follow her. But, the issue is not other cultures learning to cook food from other cultures. It's pretending that what you created is not based on that cultural dish.

I don't follow her or get her newsletter or anything, and I can't see the recipe, but it appears to be a lentil soup cooked with lemon, garlic, scallions, cilantro stems, and turmeric. Are all lentil soups "dal," regardless of how they are made or what ingredients are used? I mean, she's not claiming she invented lentil soup. "Dal" is an Indian word; are non-Indians supposed to use it whenever referring to a lentil soup? Is her recipe from India? There is a Lebanese lentil soup with some similar ingredients -- what if she was inspired by that and all the people performing outrage on behalf of Indians are just ignorant of that soup?

What if she did call it dal? How many people would be outraged that it's not "authentic" dal? Or that a white person is sharing a recipe for dal?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would be impressed if a white person could cook good Korean food. Then, I'd ask to be invited over for dinner.

-Korean American

I can prepare two excellent Korean dishes (though neither requires a great deal of culinary expertise): Kimch Jjigae (just need to get gook kinchi) and I make a delicious marinade for beef (I use flank steak). When should I expect you? As compensation, I'd like you to teach me two more Korean Dishes.

Korean PP here..

I can make korean zuchinni pancake, jjangaji, and kalbi marindade (not nearly as good as my mom's though), and kimchee jigaee, too.

Would love to have a Korean food potluck. My mouth is now starting to water.

My marinade is really good - recipe came from a Korean American co-worker, who told me the secret is the pear (which can be tough to find). He focused on the science of it (the enzyme that tenderizes the beef) rather than the traditions behind it. I'll have to go tell him he did me a disservice.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Are they claiming they created the dishes? Are they calling it American cuisine? I have my doubts, but please provide links to prove me wrong.

Look at Alison Roman with her “chickpea stew” and “gentle lentils”.

She totally deserved to be cancelled for that. I'm fine with white people making international cuisine, but give credit where credit is due. She was acting like these were original recipes. Lady, you're making Chole and daal!!!

except if she called it chole or dal she'd be equally cancelled. what people REALLY want is for Alison Roman not to be allowed to do anything.

if a published chef has to give an international culinary history of each ingredient or technique, that's going to be pretty inconvenient. lentil's originally came from the Middle East anyway.

dp. I don't think she should be canceled for it. But, it does make her look ignorant, and also anyone else who doesn't realize that it's an ethnic dish and thinks it's a new American cuisine. If they came across someone who knew what it was, and they said that, "oh, that's an <ethnic> cuisine", and the ignorant person kept insisting it wasn't, guess who looks the fool.

Maybe Roman knew that most of her followers were too ignorant to notice.

I'm pretty sure that Alison Roman, who lives in multicultural NYC, reasonable assumes that her fans KNOW WHAT DAL IS. Come on.

Trying to appropriate a legume for a single culture is really something though.

Not exactly sure what happened, but it seems it was more than just using legumes in her cooking.

No one has a problem with another culture learning to cook their food. I sure don't - I'm east Asian. However, if a person pretends that it was something they discovered on their own and doesn't acknowledge that the cuisine with a twist is actually from x country, then that is shameful.

Maybe she just neglected to mention it? IDK.. I don't follow her. But, the issue is not other cultures learning to cook food from other cultures. It's pretending that what you created is not based on that cultural dish.

Did you read her newsletter? She wasn't pretending to invent dal. https://anewsletter.alisoneroman.com/p/gentle-lentils

And if she had called it dal she would have been equally open to critcism.

so basically the argument is she can't make anything with lentils.

Maybe she could make French lentil soup. Or cotechino with lentils. (insert eyeroll). I have no idea how "sharing a recipe for lentil soup" became "pretending that you discovered lentil soup on your own."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Are they claiming they created the dishes? Are they calling it American cuisine? I have my doubts, but please provide links to prove me wrong.

Look at Alison Roman with her “chickpea stew” and “gentle lentils”.

She totally deserved to be cancelled for that. I'm fine with white people making international cuisine, but give credit where credit is due. She was acting like these were original recipes. Lady, you're making Chole and daal!!!

except if she called it chole or dal she'd be equally cancelled. what people REALLY want is for Alison Roman not to be allowed to do anything.

if a published chef has to give an international culinary history of each ingredient or technique, that's going to be pretty inconvenient. lentil's originally came from the Middle East anyway.

dp. I don't think she should be canceled for it. But, it does make her look ignorant, and also anyone else who doesn't realize that it's an ethnic dish and thinks it's a new American cuisine. If they came across someone who knew what it was, and they said that, "oh, that's an <ethnic> cuisine", and the ignorant person kept insisting it wasn't, guess who looks the fool.

Maybe Roman knew that most of her followers were too ignorant to notice.

I'm pretty sure that Alison Roman, who lives in multicultural NYC, reasonable assumes that her fans KNOW WHAT DAL IS. Come on.

Trying to appropriate a legume for a single culture is really something though.

Not exactly sure what happened, but it seems it was more than just using legumes in her cooking.

No one has a problem with another culture learning to cook their food. I sure don't - I'm east Asian. However, if a person pretends that it was something they discovered on their own and doesn't acknowledge that the cuisine with a twist is actually from x country, then that is shameful.

Maybe she just neglected to mention it? IDK.. I don't follow her. But, the issue is not other cultures learning to cook food from other cultures. It's pretending that what you created is not based on that cultural dish.

Did you read her newsletter? She wasn't pretending to invent dal. https://anewsletter.alisoneroman.com/p/gentle-lentils

And if she had called it dal she would have been equally open to critcism.

so basically the argument is she can't make anything with lentils.

PP here..

I don't follow her; my statement was more generic.

Yea, if she is making soup with lentils, and a couple of ingredients that's not really specific (tumeric is not that specific to Indian cuisine; other cultures do use it too). I don't see that as a problem.

I make a chicken marinade with tumeric, but it's based on a latin recipe, not Indian.

As a PP stated, there's a lot of crossover of recipes, but certain things are VERY ethnic specific, like kimchee (Yep, I'm Korean).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would be impressed if a white person could cook good Korean food. Then, I'd ask to be invited over for dinner.

-Korean American

I can prepare two excellent Korean dishes (though neither requires a great deal of culinary expertise): Kimch Jjigae (just need to get gook kinchi) and I make a delicious marinade for beef (I use flank steak). When should I expect you? As compensation, I'd like you to teach me two more Korean Dishes.

Korean PP here..

I can make korean zuchinni pancake, jjangaji, and kalbi marindade (not nearly as good as my mom's though), and kimchee jigaee, too.

Would love to have a Korean food potluck. My mouth is now starting to water.

My marinade is really good - recipe came from a Korean American co-worker, who told me the secret is the pear (which can be tough to find). He focused on the science of it (the enzyme that tenderizes the beef) rather than the traditions behind it. I'll have to go tell him he did me a disservice.

yes, Asian pear or kiwi works, too. Local Harris Teeter carries Asian pear, but you can also go to hmart or lotte to get them.

Add some soda - like ginger ale, or sprite or coke for additional sweetness. Not too much, though. I once added a whole can, and the beef basically disolved over the grill. That's how tender it became. LOL

Dang it.. I'm really hungry now.


Why do you say he did you a disservice?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Are they claiming they created the dishes? Are they calling it American cuisine? I have my doubts, but please provide links to prove me wrong.

Look at Alison Roman with her “chickpea stew” and “gentle lentils”.

She totally deserved to be cancelled for that. I'm fine with white people making international cuisine, but give credit where credit is due. She was acting like these were original recipes. Lady, you're making Chole and daal!!!

except if she called it chole or dal she'd be equally cancelled. what people REALLY want is for Alison Roman not to be allowed to do anything.

if a published chef has to give an international culinary history of each ingredient or technique, that's going to be pretty inconvenient. lentil's originally came from the Middle East anyway.

dp. I don't think she should be canceled for it. But, it does make her look ignorant, and also anyone else who doesn't realize that it's an ethnic dish and thinks it's a new American cuisine. If they came across someone who knew what it was, and they said that, "oh, that's an <ethnic> cuisine", and the ignorant person kept insisting it wasn't, guess who looks the fool.

Maybe Roman knew that most of her followers were too ignorant to notice.

I'm pretty sure that Alison Roman, who lives in multicultural NYC, reasonable assumes that her fans KNOW WHAT DAL IS. Come on.

Trying to appropriate a legume for a single culture is really something though.

Not exactly sure what happened, but it seems it was more than just using legumes in her cooking.

No one has a problem with another culture learning to cook their food. I sure don't - I'm east Asian. However, if a person pretends that it was something they discovered on their own and doesn't acknowledge that the cuisine with a twist is actually from x country, then that is shameful.

Maybe she just neglected to mention it? IDK.. I don't follow her. But, the issue is not other cultures learning to cook food from other cultures. It's pretending that what you created is not based on that cultural dish.

Did you read her newsletter? She wasn't pretending to invent dal. https://anewsletter.alisoneroman.com/p/gentle-lentils

And if she had called it dal she would have been equally open to critcism.

so basically the argument is she can't make anything with lentils.

DP here. This newsletter appears to be from this year, whereas the dust-up with Roman happened a year or two ago. I am assuming that at this point she is really careful about attributing the foods she cooks.

[Anonymous]

For anyone interested in a deeper take on what went on with Roman, this isn't a bad summary: https://www.thelily.com/alison-romans-comments-about-chrissy-teigen-and-marie-kondo-lit-a-fire-heres-why-its-still-burning/

A key passage:

It’s also an issue of whose voices are amplified. Here, too, America is contending with a long history of inequity, according to Tompkins. “Some of the earliest sense of what American cooking was was represented by cookbooks written by white women,” she says. “But so much of it was invented by African American women in the North and in the South.”

That trend has continued today: One analysis showed that the vast majority of New York Times recipes for Chinese, Indian and other ethnic cuisines were written by white writers.

If there weren't a history of marginalizing these communities (and chefs from these communities) and generally treating them as inferior, I don't think this would be such a big deal. But all of you pretending like colonialism, racism, and oppression doesn't exist and it doesn't impact the way foods are integrated into cultures are kinda delusional.

[Anonymous]

Op here. It’s not so much that white people are cooking our food. It’s that our food is not acknowledged for its brilliance and taste or receives any culinary acclaim unless a white female makes her version of it. She then gets so many comments about how delicious it is and sells books and gets Instagram likes and profits off of it. POC cooks hardly ever have a following or make profits of recipes from their own heritage. White people steal their recipes and sell them and get money and acclaim.

Also I was made fun of for eating curry and rice most days as that what my mom made. I was told my food was too gooey and smelled too much. Now I see Half Baked Harvest get so many likes and comments on cooking a similar recipe with the same spice music. It makes my blood boil.

[Anonymous]

I am Indian American and love peanut butter.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I would be impressed if a white person could cook good Korean food. Then, I'd ask to be invited over for dinner.

-Korean American

Hee. I hosted a Korean family for dinner and made course after course!! I went with “what I can cook” so it was very white Americana with a lot of alcohol. Some kind of manicotti pasta dish, salad, etc. and for dessert an apple cinnamon pie, crumble crisp thing. The dad adored it all. His son is studying here and this is all the food they ❤️ Love. The son ate double everything. I served what I know with love. We had a delightful time.