How to bastardise traditional recipes.
Respect the recipe.
There have been many occasions on this blog and in my actual, real, physical existence where I’ve managed to work myself into a contorted fit of rage over some people’s inappropriate recipe modification and bastardisation, when it comes to certain traditional dishes. I have great respect for time honoured, traditional recipes, those amazing dishes and techniques which have been handed down through time for each generation to enjoy. Often based in simplicity, or surrounding a fundamental technique of cooking practice, these recipes stand for something great, they have a ubiquitous name and often represent an entire avenue of cuisine.
It took some time before I managed to fully vocalise this point of view. At first I was merrily jumping on the food blogger bandwagon, happily latching on to any name I thought fit for use with whatever recipe I had just come up with, whilst simultaneously contributing to the decline of civilisation as we know it. That might seem like a wild overstatement, surely some of these old, historic recipes are vague in the outset anyway, one could also argue that the contemporary development and modification of traditional recipes is an intrinsic part of our modern history, as is the case of language’s development. However, just as equally, one could argue that anything historic should be fiercely protected and preserved so that we can watch and understand the bygone times of our world in their original state.
After a deep, prolonged philosophical and existential struggle, I fell on the side of being a culinary preservationist, if such a thing exists. In a one man struggle to protect our history, I dress up at night in my skin tight bat-suit and creep out into the internet, fighting back against those recipes which betray our collective cultural cuisines. I still understand that there’s a need for people to adapt recipes in certain ways, such as catering for dietary requirements shouldn’t stop people from experiencing the full breadth of tastes in this world, but there’s also a fine line to tread between modification, diversification and then simply put, the bastardisation of recipes. There’s three distinct categories to understand.
Let me be clear.
Recipe Modification.
Modification is the creative embodiment of our progressive cuisine. Taking ideas, recipes or foods and modifying them to create something different and new. In this respect they are not trying to recreate the original inspiration, but to develop something different, something new, something changed. This is an eye on the future, the development of where we have been, taking us to where we are going. I see modifying as somebody taking something that already exists and making it their own, changing it. Seeing as all ingredients exist in the world and have done for quite some time, almost all recipes are merely modifications of the ones that have gone before. As in music, it is claimed that nothing is new, however that doesn’t mean that nothing is great, far from it, especially in food there is ample room for greatness to be achieved and one shouldn’t be confused by the words great and complex, because they do not go hand in hand.
Recipe modification is taking inspiration from others and history, then putting an individual spin on it and owning it, making it yours. As a quasi-life-lesson, this is an important point. Owning personal opinions is highly important to development as an individual, because happiness is not found whilst living someone else’s life. The temptation is all too easy to piggy back other peoples opinions, which saves the soul searching involved in formulating a personal life view, or one can fall back on the easy route of talking collectively, as if we all share the same opinion as everyone else, which of course, we don’t.
So when someone takes an existing, traditional method or recipe and puts their own spin on it, it’s important to nod to the source, respecting the point of inspiration, but it should be clear that this is something new through the way it is named and described, which also defines the identity of the ownership of that particular recipe, making it clear this is something new.
Recipe Diversification
Diversification. I see this as the natural spreading of a recipe’s wings to include the excluded parts of our gastronomic society. This is the gentle diversification necessary to meet the requirements of markets, countries and diets. For instance, making recipes dairy free, or gluten free, or adapting a recipe to recognise the fact that some ingredients simply aren’t available in certain countries. Although I understand that it’s easy to argue the soul of a recipe might be compromised by doing so, it’s up to the writer of the recipe to realise where that fine line lies and I would definitely stop what I was doing if I felt that was the case. This recipe diversification is answering a perfectly reasonable human need and to eschew any alternatives unless utterly faithful to the original could be seen as elitist. I feel happier being inclusive and recognising these requirements are always going to exist and as such are better done considerately.
These recipes might take on the hallowed name that a traditional recipe holds, but in the age of the internet they will always feature a clearly stated addendum to recognise how and why this time honoured dish has been adapted to our modern world. These aren’t the ones masquerading as being improvements on the original, merely alternative options for those that require them.
Recipe Bastardisation
We’ve hit the bottom now, we’re scraping the barrel. You’ll have to excuse me if a raging torrent of vitriol exudes from the page, because I get quite stroppy about this. Bastardisation is the taking of beautifully time honoured recipes, techniques and traditions, then modifying them, but without taking ownership of them. It’s through this process that lovely, simple, powerful foods are taken and demolished into over-complicated over-flavoured over-sweetened pastiches of their original selves. Yes, I’m looking at you, America. You don’t need to add extra spices, extra flavours or extra sugar to a recipe to make it ‘better’, you just need good food to start with.
Whilst writing my recent piece about garlic facts (yes, there’s a lot to learn from little garlic) I came across this blog post about Bruschetta from Frank at Memorie di Angelina.
It evoked some quite strong feelings from me, because I feel his pain, even though I’m not Italian, American, or Italian-American. I regularly witness this compulsion amongst people who feel the need to try and ‘improve’ (note the inverted commas) some of the most historically simple and beautifully elegant recipes around. I love the fact that in the link above, he stresses that bruschetta is simply toasted bread, lightly rubbed with garlic and drizzled with oil. Also the fact that it’s incredibly important to have fantastic bread and superb oil. You don’t need mountains of flavours, spices, garlic pastes et al, you just need to respect the elegant simplicity of the original dish and use good ingredients.
Bastardised recipes are those recipe where someone has taken the original, sacrosanct recipe, utterly ignored the soul of it and added all sorts of unnecessary bits and pieces, then passed it off under the name of the original recipe, despite having utterly debased it and betrayed it’s culinary intent.
Which is where ‘THE BEST XXXXX IN THE WORLD’ recipes come in. Invariably these are bastardised recipes where someone has misconstrued their own opinion on the way that dish should taste as being the same as everyone else’s. Of course, the sad fact is that many people take this at face value and assume the content within is indeed, simply the best in the world, perhaps presuming it’s been verified as such through a rigorous process of randomised, double blind testing, rather than just because one of us bloggers decided they’d get more traffic by naming it thus.
Playing the fool.
One of the biggest things that I learned in the first year of writing my blog was that it’s very easy to have too many ingredients and over-complicate flavours. Why was I making my life so complicated? I always thought I needed more flavours, something extra to elevate the taste. But there’s more than enough beauty in simplicity. There’s a famous saying attributed to various people, which is that any fool can make something more complicated, however it takes a touch of genius to move in the other direction. On the basis of that, the bastardisation of elegant, simple recipes by adding more flavours and ingredients is the act of a fool. So every time I write a recipe now, I look at it and think “what can I remove”, not “what can I add”.
And it also proves that Bruschetta, made simply with garlic, great extra virgin olive oil and the best bread available is the work of a certifiable genius.
Disclaimer: All of the views stated above are my opinions which I’ve developed over the time I’ve been producing my blog. In that time, I’ve researched, experimented with and implemented various styles and techniques in a quest to find what I like. There’s a chance I’ve toyed with things that contradict what I’ve said above, however as I exist as a perfectly normal, illogical human being, any apparent hypocrisy is perfectly healthy, as my opinion today may not be the same as my opinion 6 months ago, and probably differs from my opinion 6 months hence. Our perceptions of the world change over time, this piece is just a snapshot of where I’m at today, Wednesday 30th March, 2016.
