Authenticity

I have been reading a lot about authenticity recently. It has made me look at the food of New Orleans and Louisiana to try to define what may be authentic about it. I think that after many bowls of gumbo and many people's versions of red beans and rice, I have come to a conclusion. This is likely to be an unpopular notion.

When we are familiar with the cuisine, I think that we consider authentic to be what we know. That means what we remember from early family life - what Mom or Dad or Aunt Jane served - defines authenticity. So if my mother took shortcuts and used prepackaged shortcuts or added cream of mushroom soup to her oyster bisque (she didn't), I might find that to be authentic. The younger person may say, never, it is only authentic with cream and homemade stock. But neither of us was around in 1900 when oyster bisque was made in some other way to make it authentic.

So if we have no early memory of food to benchmark authenticity how can we do it? I think that if local people eat the food, even as it is evolving, then it is authentic. Yes, food can be made the way that it was in 1875. But just because it is historically accurate doesn't make it any more authentic than the way we make it in 2009. Food changes: we begin to add garlic, we begin to omit blood sausage, we add wine, we experiment. As food evolves it remains authentic because it is still eaten and identified by the people in the area.

No cuisine remains alive if it is static, so historically accurate does not define authentic - eaters do. I have eaten many version of Salade Nicoise in the US and in France. In Nice this salad is served tossed in a bowl or on a plate. It is not a composed salad, but a tossed salad. As I traveled west along the coast in France, I was in Provence when ordering the Salade Nicoise was composed. I would venture to say that dispite the fact that I know this as a composed salad, that what I ate in Nice was authentic.

More Red Gravy

Making red gravy and tomato sauce made me think a lot about authenticity. When I made the sauces I made my grandmother's sauce the way she would have, not the way I would have today. Similarly, I made the red gravy the way I had learned to make it from cooking with friends, not the way I would have made it. Of course, I did it that way so that we would have a true test, especially since the same cooks, Sara Roahen and I, were making both dishes.

But being a child of New Orleans, I would normally put green peppers in my tomato sauce, even if my grandmother wouldn't have. Being a child of Sicilian grandparents, I would still add my anchovy to red gravy for depth of flavor. Making these dishes very different made chosing between them easier. This one tastes like Italy. This one tastes like New Orleans. But when we cook, we carry all of these things around with us, and our food, regardless of recipes and faithful renditions of food remembered, is personal. And I think that this is what makes it authentic.

As I get older I am more anxious to remember and leave the memory, either in writing or on tape, because I feel like a bridge to an earlier time. The food is the continuity. I am not sure how to keep that continuity from being interrupted. That is where a lot of my energy goes right now, to finding a way to keep the connection between the past and the future. It used to always happen in the kitchen, and without as many people cooking, I have not seen another bridge forming. The kitchen connection isn't sacred, but some connection is necessary. I want to find it.