Regional Cuisine as Cultural Inertia. From Adam Balic
In huge haste because I’m on the point of driving to the US and my (expletives deleted) Mac Book computer is on the brink, but I really wanted to send you to this well thought out post by Adam Balic.
Here’s his conclusion.
Effectively one reason why many people suggest that Bœuf à la Bourguignonne is not a regional dish is because we have a decent amount of documentation on the development of the dish.
But is this relevant? How many “regional” dishes are considered local/native/ours simply due to lack of documentation? Or if there is documentation, does that help at all?
Recently the the origins of the iconically Scottish Haggis were shown to be common to both England and Scotland. This caused much outrage amongst the easily angered in Scotland.
Currently in Italy food as cultural identity is being heavily politicized.
When it comes to food and cultural identity, opinions seem to range from the charmingly naive to savagely racist. Which is one reason why I love living in the UK. The cuisine in the UK is dynamic, respectful of its past, but open to new ideas and most importantly, the British are not so paranoid about their own cultural identity that they fall into all the usual depressing cliches. After all, from some perspectives, a well defined “regional cuisine” looks a lot like cultural inertia.
My comments will have to wait, though it won’t come as a surprise that I largely agree. But I urge you to read Adam’s full post here.
