Mandazi & chevro, my faviourite foods I'll never find at an Indian restaurant.
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Growing up, I always felt a sense of connection to cultural foods as a gateway to understanding my family's complex cultural identity because it was a cultural aspect I could connect with and interact with. The cultural meals I grew up eating and cooking represented my grandparents' lifestyle in Africa, differentiating everyday meals, such as paratha and daal with celebratory meals like kuku paka and sev. Cooking food with my grandparents became a celebration because it was always accompanied by a story from back home associated with the cooking and consumption of that food. Thus, many of my cultural foods became integral to our celebrations, integrating an aspect of our cultural identity into our Western lives. I started associating sev and kuku paka with Eid, mango juice with Christmas, Bombay toast with sleepovers, coconut milk with the beach, channa bateta with winter, and so on. As part of the south asian diaspora, my cultural foods have been an integral part of my cultural identity, specifically understanding the cultural context in which I am a product.
However, cultural authenticity about food has always been something I have struggled with. As someone whose family experienced an untraditional migration journey, landing in East Africa, Bangladesh, Spain, and eventually Canada, my family's cultural cuisine has adapted dishes and culinary tricks from each country, creating a unique cultural cuisine. My experience with my cultural cuisine is so complex it's hardly authentic. Cuisine, like many other aspects of my unique cultural mix, doesn't fit in the bounds of any ‘authentic’ culture. Growing up eating Mandazi with chai, or makai paka with Palau displays the blend of cultures that is inseparable from my cultural identity. Our culture could never be considered authentically Indian or authentically East African because of the interconnectedness of each culture within our cuisine. Further, the Indian food I grew up eating, including chapati, aloo gobi, or guvar, was never featured on the menu for our local Indian restaurant. However, as Buettner argues, at least in the UK, a majority of mainstream Indian restaurants appealed to the taste of the white majority, creating a menu that emphasized their preferences. Growing up in a white-majority neighbourhood, I can see why a similar practice may have also shaped the menu of Indian restaurants around me.
I have regarded my unauthentic cuisine as authentic to our cultural experiences as it emphasizes the diversity of our cultural history. Our dishes reflect my family's interactions with the culture from each part of our complex migration journey. Most importantly, they represent my family's adaptability in integrating themselves into a plethora of cultures and our food represents the products of such integration.
Buettner discusses the idea of culinary authenticity, especially its representation in the UK and its relation to the generalization of South Asia. Buettner argues that in the West, Indian cuisine has become understood as an umbrella term that includes foods from all of South Asia including Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and more, according to the white majority. This generalization disregards any sort of authenticity because it doesn't consider the cultural differences between every South Asian region Generalization of Indian cuisine has also challenged my understanding of the authenticity of my cultural cuisine, especially since none of it is represented in mainstream Indian cuisine. I have always wondered if it was truly authentic, or even Indian at all because I never saw any of my cultural food featured at any Indian restaurant. I have realized now, that the validation of cultural authenticity i have been searching for, I had relied on the white majority to give to me, one that would never understand the complexities and diversity of South Asian cuisine.