{"id":12857,"date":"2016-03-30T10:06:15","date_gmt":"2016-03-30T17:06:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailywaffle.com\/stage1\/?p=12857"},"modified":"2018-07-30T09:27:54","modified_gmt":"2018-07-30T16:27:54","slug":"the-sporkful-other-peoples-food-american-but-not-american-enough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dailywaffle.com\/stage1\/the-sporkful-other-peoples-food-american-but-not-american-enough\/","title":{"rendered":"Other People’s Food: American, But Not American Enough"},"content":{"rendered":"
\u201cI cook food that\u2019s not Indian, of course, in my house. I feel like it would be a hard sell for me to write a general vegetarian cookbook or to sell that through, versus selling through an Indian cookbook, even though I\u2019m an American.\u201d - Chitra Agrawal, ABCD\u2019s of Cooking and creator of Brooklyn Delhi<\/span><\/em><\/cite><\/pre>\n
The Sporkful<\/a> kicked off a series of episodes discussing \u201cOther People\u2019s Food,\u201d exploring what it means to cook another culture\u2019s food. The first installment included an interview with Chef Rick Bayless, widely regarded as a pre-eminent expert on Mexican cuisine. It sparked a not-new discussion about white privilege in food.<\/p>\n
That was last week. And I\u2019m still thinking about it.<\/p>\n
Episode 2: \u201cWhat\u2019s ‘Poor People\u2019s Food?’\u201d peels off other leaves of this onion, including the value we put on ethnic cuisine. \u201cMost Americans would hesitate to pay $30 for Chinese food, but they wouldn\u2019t bat an eyelid to pay hundreds of dollars,\u201d for others, said Krishnendu Ray, chair of the food studies department at NYU. In large part it\u2019s because if we think a \u201ccountry is doing well economically, we tend to upgrade our estimation of their culture\u201d and our perception shifts from \u201ccheap ethnic food\u201d to \u201cexpensive foreign food.\u201d<\/p>\n
What really resonated with me was author Chitra Agrawal\u2019s comments about trying to get her cookbook published. Profit and exposure are critical points in this discussion about other people\u2019s food. There is not\u00a0just one problem — with a white person being deemed an authority on other people\u2019s food — but also with people of other races and ethnicities being put into a box.<\/p>\n
Has there been a cooking show with an ethnic face cooking \u201cAmerican\u201d food without giving it some ethnic twist? Why is that? I\u2019m American. My mom and my grandmother were born \u201chere,\u201d we ate hot dogs and beef stew and tuna casserole just like everybody else. But could there ever be an American Classics cookbook or show with a face like mine on it that doesn’t use culture as a gimmick? I doubt it.<\/p>\n
In talking about the marketing of ethnic cookbooks, Dan Pashman, host of the Sporkful, noted that marketers are trying to figure out how to sell as many books as possible, and \u201c[t]hey\u2019re very risk averse. They want to buy something that\u2019s like 50 percent the same as something that\u2019s sold.\u201d<\/p>\n
What\u2019s the net impact of that? Same crap, different day. American tastes are hardly being changed or challenged. And if they are, it\u2019s at a snail\u2019s pace.<\/p>\n
Outside the foodiest pockets in America, few\u00a0will have learned much of anything about other\u00a0cultures’ foods. After the buzz dies down around Korean food, another cuisine will move to the fore. Eventually food manufacturers will take notice of that cuisine being trendy, and in a year or so it\u2019ll show up in the frozen food section at your grocery store. Inevitably, it\u2019ll be dumbed down to its base parts and called something like \u201cAsian stew with rice\u201d or some other equally generic, potentially inaccurate, but familiar<\/em> category. And will we have learned anything about the culture or the history of the dish? I think we know the answer.<\/p>\n
Although Pashman has said on Twitter<\/a>, they\u2019re not trying to come to conclusions on the Sporkful, there has to be something \u2013 some suggestion of where we go from here. Simply saying we should be\u00a0more mindful is a cop-out. Otherwise, this will have been a good topic to raise and a fine conversation to have with very little to show for it. I hope that\u2019s not the case.<\/p>\n
The Sporkful\u2019s Other People\u2019s Food series continues this week with three more episodes (now a 5-parter). <\/em><\/p>\n
Listen here<\/a>.<\/p>
 <\/div>
\r\n   \"logo\"\r\n   
\r\n      Food Advertisements<\/a> by\r\n   <\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/center>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cI cook food that\u2019s not Indian, of course, in my house. I feel like it would be a hard sell for me to write a general vegetarian cookbook or to sell that through, versus selling through an Indian cookbook, even though I\u2019m an American.\u201d – Chitra Agrawal, ABCD\u2019s of Cooking and creator of Brooklyn Delhi…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1115,31],"tags":[1167,1168,1166,1165,1170,1164,1169],"class_list":["post-12857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cooking","category-op-ed","tag-chitra-agrawal","tag-dan-pashman","tag-krishnendu-ray","tag-other-peoples-food","tag-podcast","tag-the-sporkful","tag-wnyc"],"yoast_head":"\nOther People's Food: American, But Not American Enough - DailyWaffle<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Michelle\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/dailywaffle.com\/stage1\/the-sporkful-other-peoples-food-american-but-not-american-enough\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/dailywaffle.com\/stage1\/the-sporkful-other-peoples-food-american-but-not-american-enough\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Michelle\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/dailywaffle.com\/stage1\/#\/schema\/person\/699f5bbc3243018b1b4177972fd4c932\"},\"headline\":\"Other People’s Food: American, But Not American Enough\",\"datePublished\":\"2016-03-30T17:06:15+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2018-07-30T16:27:54+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/dailywaffle.com\/stage1\/the-sporkful-other-peoples-food-american-but-not-american-enough\/\"},\"wordCount\":591,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/dailywaffle.com\/stage1\/#organization\"},\"keywords\":[\"chitra agrawal\",\"dan pashman\",\"krishnendu ray\",\"other peoples food\",\"podcast\",\"the sporkful\",\"wnyc\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Cooking\",\"Op-Ed\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/dailywaffle.com\/stage1\/the-sporkful-other-peoples-food-american-but-not-american-enough\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/dailywaffle.com\/stage1\/the-sporkful-other-peoples-food-american-but-not-american-enough\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/dailywaffle.com\/stage1\/the-sporkful-other-peoples-food-american-but-not-american-enough\/\",\"name\":\"Other People's Food: American, But Not American Enough - 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