Agreed, in cooking terms curry basically means “sauce”. But oddly enough, the curry leaf is not used in that sauce! One is more likely to find the leaves sprinkled upon dosa or other southern foods rather than sauce-based dishes.
As for appropriation, I am not sure how Germany adapting currywurst via England is any more or less a matter of appropriation than adapting it via India. If being on the same continent made one exempt from claims of appropriation, then this would not be at issue between Mexico and the US either.
No, this isn’t correct at all. There are numerous cuisines that have dishes with sauce and rice (from Iran to Afghanistan to China) that you would never call curry, and the fact that the dishes came with rice weren’t relevant to the term, that’s just the staple from that region of the planet. It also refers to a particular flavour profile and set of ingredients.
All foods we call curry are at least in some way derived from Indian dishes, Currywurst uses English Curry Powder (which isn’t English at all, it’s just a particular type of masala imported from India by the British, and commonly used in regional curries there), the Japanese curry recipes have a similar history (distinct to Thai or Malaysian curries for example, no British involvement with them). I can’t think of any examples similar to Indian curry that wouldn’t be called curry either.
Curry is what 17th century Europeans called dishes from the Indian subcontinent. That’s literally where the name comes from even though it has been refined a lot over a few centuries as all words have.
Kaeng is not Indian.
EDIT
After googling a bit I’ll concede it’s not rice with a sauce, but curry as an English word still comes from Europeans calling all dishes from India curry.
I think the “cultural appropriation” thing is, frankly, bullshit. Do we ban Kenny Wayne Shepherd from playing blues because “cultural appropriation?” If so, do we likewise ban Jessye Norman from singing operatic arias?
Cultures that don’t exchange and remix things from other cultures stagnate and die (or at best become backwaters).
Pretty much. Sizzling some seeds and leaves in oil is a tarka, and poured over the completed dish. What most people outside of India call a curry would be considered a sautéed masala.
I used it as an example of the absurdity of even talking about culinary cultural appropriation. But the dialog just reinforces that apparently you can’t culturally appropriate from Europeans, any more than a non European can “appropriate” from anyone. In the other thread, when I asked if it was appropriating for a Pakistani musician hearing Slack Key and just adding it to her music without expensively traveling to Hawaii to study at length with the masters, I got mumbles and crickets.
Pretty much. Sizzling some seeds and leaves in oil is a tarka, and poured over the completed dish.
I didn’t mean as a tarka, you’d start with them and then add the onions and chillies and other ingredients on top. Though it is used in tarkas as well, but tarkas are mostly used in daals rather than curries.
I know that’s where it comes from, I even said so in my first reply to you! But like you yourself have just said, it refers to Indian dishes, not any random dish with a sauce, you wouldn’t call an Irish stew a curry!
Let me try again to try and explain what I have been saying.
First, Europeans in the 17th century called all Indian food curry, as well as many foods from the countries around India. That’s how dishes like kaeng are called curry in English despite not originating from India.
Second, curry powder was not an Indian recipe a European brought over and sold as bottle of authentic curry spice. It was made to emulate the flavors by request and became a popular spice blend in Europe.
Third, curry’s unique regional blend of spices and a wide assortment of preparations are Indian. The preparation of curry is common as an ancient preparation of food in many areas around the globe. In the same way Pacific Islanders were fermenting seafood without any Northern European influence, dishes that are prepared the same way curry has been popped up everywhere because people like food that tastes good.
Fourth, Currywurst takes a European spice blend and combines it with other ingredients to make a European dish. At no point in that chain did anyone claim Curry Powder had no association with Indian culture, nor did someone buy pre-portioned spice blends from India and say they were the first to invent curry.
If we circle back to the burrito story, the issue was this food stand becoming popular and getting funding to open a brick and mortar when the story from the owners goces the impression that went to Mexico in a December where they pressured a regional food industry reluctant to give the information away, sneakily watched the preparation anyways, and then figured out the pieces they were missing from their notes and began to capitalize off that. It’s not that white people are not allowed to make Mexican food, it’s that vacationing in a poor country and coaxing a trade secret style recipe out for personal gain can be an asshole thing to do.
Look, if I make Cook’s Illustrated’s recipe for curry flavored cashews I’m not making an Indian dish and the recipe doesn’t claim that you are. If I opened up an Indian themed restaurant reminiscent of The Love Guru that served “authentic” curried cashews at the bar, I’m definitely profiting off other cultures with no respect to them whatsoever. And before you say that is a ridiculous example, I found out a white guy opened a 90s hip-hop themed fried chicken restaurant today reading about that BurritoGate stuff.
I agree with your breakdown both of curry and appropriation. But one problematic area I have found is that defining “other cultures” (as I emphasized in the above quote) can be tricky, because it suggests an unambiguous default culture. Not unlike when I hear people use the terrible term “ethnic food”, and wonder how they don’t realize that any food can be said to have an ethnicity.
In a contemporary cosmopolitan US marketplace (if such a contradiction can be said to exist), many put forth that they and their traditions are “American” despite nearly all being imported from elsewhere. There is surprisingly little discussion or consensus about how one first establishes what one’s own culture supposedly is. It can be uncertain for those who were raised in a practically or even nominally multicultural environment.
Like I’ve said several times now this is flat out wrong. There are numerous styles and types of masalas (depending on dish as well as region), English curry powder is basically just a standard ‘main-course’ Madras masala (it came from this region because it was a main administrative centre of the Raj and also a big spice port). The only way it might have been adjusted to suit English tastes might have been to reduce the chilli content, though traditionally you’d add the chilli separately to taste anyway, you also see a ‘hot’ mix with the chilli added for convenience, but the old English curry powders would have been mild mixes.
Third, curry’s unique regional blend of spices and a wide assortment of preparations are Indian. The preparation of curry is common as an ancient preparation of food in many areas around the globe. In the same way Pacific Islanders were fermenting seafood without any Northern European influence, dishes that are prepared the same way curry has been popped up everywhere because people like food that tastes good.
Repeating the same incorrect thing isn’t going to make it any more true. The way curries are prepared was unique to India up until relatively recently, when both the Indian migrants and traders, and the British spread the cuisine throughout the world. If there were cuisines in other parts of the world being prepared using techniques and ingredients that were also used in the Indus Valley Civilization, they weren’t similar enough to call them curries, it’s probably a stretch to even call that early Indus Valley stuff curry, it wouldn’t have even remotely resembled what we call curry today.
Fourth, Currywurst takes a European spice blend and combines it with other ingredients to make a European dish.
Again, not a European spice blend.
This is not an accurate description of what happened, there’s no trade secrets involved in making a tortilla, and there’s nothing assholish about picking up a few cooking tips.
Not sure why you think curry flavoured cashews aren’t an Indian dish. Spicy snacks with cashews, chickpeas, gram flour noodles, lentils, peanuts and similar have been an Indian staple for hundreds of years.
If I opened up an Indian themed restaurant reminiscent of The Love Guru that served “authentic” curried cashews at the bar, I’m definitely profiting off other cultures with no respect to them whatsoever.
It’s certainly possible to style a restaurant using insulting stereotypes, or do it in a classless and/or gimmicky way, see Irish themed pubs for another example. Even then though, the originating culture is usually just as responsible for exporting such gimmicky representations (and they don’t have any problem with this), so you can’t really complain if the locals imitate it themselves, that’s what the market expects.
And before you say that is a ridiculous example, I found out a white guy opened a 90s hip-hop themed fried chicken restaurant today reading about that BurritoGate stuff.
You need to look hard at the people who are at the forefront of the appropriation movement, and what motivates them.
Some of it comes from actual people who are personally paying the price for having their spiritual practices more or less monetized and mocked. And those people often have a pretty good point.
But a lot of what I have personally encountered are people who are self appointed guardians of practices that they don’t really have anything to do with. Their motivations are more complicated. As far as I have been able to tell from observing and interacting with them, a lot of it is based on their personal feelings of powerlessness. Being angry about appropriation allows them an excuse to scold or punish people whom they envy or despise. There are other motivations, I am sure.
But in Burritogate, the objects of scorn are a couple of people who at least superficially seem to be young, healthy, reasonably attractive, and wealthy enough to go on road trips to Mexico and start an expensive business. In most of the images, they also seem pretty happy. They seem to be just the sort of people who have it too easy, and need to be brought down a few notches.
That is just a very superficial appraisal. IRL, they no doubt have the same struggles and obstacles that everyone else has. I have no idea of their backgrounds. But neither do the people most enraged.
It is very unlikely that this is really about the tortillas.
That being said, it would have been a much better plan from the outset to have pledged a decent percentage of their profits to go back to benefit the ladies of Puerto Nuevo.
I agree that mockery is not appropriation, it’s just stupidity. But true “cultural appropriation” occurs when there is appropriation without appreciation. I’ve read that white men collecting blues records is “problematic” and is appropriation, an idea I totally reject, because of the true appreciation factor (and also because wtf, seriously?). Real cultural appropriation, a bad thing, happens when someone, often a corporation, thinks it can make some major cash by stealing someone else’s idea, in most cases an idea founded by and identified with a certain culture, and without any thanks, permission, or at least some small kickback. But in our zero tolerance society (where did we learn this, the stupid anti-drug ads?), any kind of appropriation, with appreciation or not, thanks or not, openly shared or not, is considered a dire offense. If this trend continues its current trajectory, learning a foreign language will soon be considered a terrible, colonialist act.
[quote=“caze, post:93, topic:101818”]
Like I’ve said several times now this is flat out wrong. There are numerous styles and types of masalas (depending on dish as well as region), English curry powder is basically just a standard ‘main-course’ Madras masala (it came from this region because it was a main administrative centre of the Raj and also a big spice port).
[/quote]Curry Powder was literally bottled in Britain and sold in 1780 using British recipes. That is centuries after the initial uses of similar words seen in European cook books, but your account of a spice blend handed to the British to bring to Europe is not one I can find online. If you could provide a source it would help, but this is the first mention of what we know as curry powder. www.bl.uk/learning/timeline/item104061.html
[quote=“caze, post:93, topic:101818”]
Repeating the same incorrect thing isn’t going to make it any more true. The way curries are prepared was unique to India up until relatively recently, when both the Indian migrants and traders, and the British spread the cuisine throughout the world. If there were cuisines in other parts of the world being prepared using techniques and ingredients that were also used in the Indus Valley Civilization, they weren’t similar enough to call them curries, it’s probably a stretch to even call that early Indus Valley stuff curry, it wouldn’t have even remotely resembled what we call curry today.
[/quote]To say no food in the world was similar to curry is an odd stance to take. What are you calling the unique aspects of curry preparation that were never used outside India?
That’s literally what happened, and why people wrote about it. And the tortillas are unique sounding, the dough is stretched and rolled flat which are not typical steps in preparing tortillas. They even said they encountered unique tortillas on their road trip and that’s why they pressed people for a recipe.
[quote=“caze, post:93, topic:101818”]
Not sure why you think curry flavoured cashews aren’t an Indian dish. Spicy snacks with cashews, chickpeas, gram flour noodles, lentils, peanuts and similar have been an Indian staple for hundreds of years.
[/quote]How is a dish with a handful of ingredients used in Indian cooking an Indian dish? What is Indian about it?
[quote=“caze, post:93, topic:101818”]
Even then though, the originating culture is usually just as responsible for exporting such gimmicky representations (and they don’t have any problem with this), so you can’t really complain if the locals imitate it themselves, that’s what the market expects.
[/quote]I’m not reay sure what this sentence means, or that any of it is true. Are you saying there is no one in Ireland that doesn’t want their culture captured with St. Patrick’s Day? Because that’s absolutely false - or does bringing the free market into the discussion make the first part more meaningful?
[quote=“caze, post:93, topic:101818”]
Nothing wrong with that in principle either.
[/quote]What principle?
Hawaiians adopted the Portuguese machete / cavaquinho and gave it re-entrant tuning to make the soprano ukulele. So how long then does it take before an appropriation becomes part of a culture? Or is that one OK merely because Hawaiians are Polynesian? And on that note, I also know a lot of Mãori who play a mean blues guitar (not just the Mãori strum). And my Chinese wife, she loves to cook Italian style. Although she’d argue that she’s merely stealing pasta back as it got to Italy along the Silk Road anyway …
Or maybe, could it be that just as “there are no races, there are only clines” that there is no such thing as culture either, merely people trying to work out how to get on with their neighbours?
Let me tell you a story of pesonal food cultural appropiation.
My mom, born and raised in rural Galicia in Spain, used to be the maid & cook for a Jewish family in Venezuela in the 50s-60s. Of all the great memories she had of that (for what my mom tells, they were wonderful people, and the first time she worked as “service” where she was treated nicely), on that job she learned how to do some kind of pastry that is like a small bundle of a paste of ground nuts, raisins, honey and sour cream put in an envelope of crust and baked.
Everybody in our family loved those things, so it became our special stuff to have on Christmas and birthdays. To this day, I’ve tried several times to identify what is the original name of the thing but every time I’m not sure and I forget the possible candidates. Since I remember, they are called by my family “musius”, because in Venezuelan slang a “musiu” is a foreigner. So we were a family of musius enjoying musius that we got from other musius.
Now mom is like 80 years old and I dont know how to fry eggs without burning the house down, but I would very much like to keep the recipe (and find out once and for all what is the original name), but for me and my relatives, they will always be musius. Because that is what culture is, the macro scale accumulation of exchanges like this, with all the confusion, misunderstanding, loses, creative leaps and transformations that it entails
I absolutely think that the uke is a Pacific Islander cultural thing. It just is not exclusive to them. My great grandmother played one as well.
My point here would be that if someone saw a uke being played somewhere, and tried to lecture the player that they are appropriating Hawaiian culture, they would be annoying and wrong.
