11-09-2013, 11:31 AM
I wrote a letter to the editor of NZherald, because I was bloody sick and tired of New Zealand cooking shows. Seriously, tonight I just saw this dickhead pretend to cook 'japanese food' by adding copious amounts of miso paste into a mixture of seemingly random, what he would call 'exotic', ingredients (a few weeks ago, he just smeared a ridiculous coating of miso mixed with gochujang onto salmon and baked it. In his restaurant menu, kimchi costs $7.80. Kimchi is supposed to be served free in Korean restaurants). He literally cooked soba noodles (wrongly, I may add.), chirashizushi, and yakisoba (using hokkien noodles instead of proper yakisoba noodles...) because he was trying to 'put a japanese twist on spaghetti bolognese'.
I'm just sick of these pompous assholes exploiting other people's cultures, expecially mine, and pretending that it's 'chinese inspired' or worse, actually calling their abominations the real name of the dish. This is what racism has evolved into, today. Anyway, I elaborate in my letter below.
In the last couple of years, the New Zealand television audience has been bombarded with an array of homegrown cooking programmes, such as 'The Food Truck', 'Testing the Menu', and 'Family Recipes'.
The popularity of these kinds of programmes has grown rapidly, and has blasted the presenters into sudden fame.
However, I as an individual, and as a home cook, would beg to differ from the disparate crowds of fans tearing apart the bookstores purchasing Michael van de Elzen's cookbooks.
The three shows I mentioned all form their basis on the well established 'new twist to old recipe' concept. I do not stand alone when I say that I find these shows and the chefs obnoxious, and their cooking anything other than insulting.
It astounds me, the lack of cultural understanding there is in each and every episode of 'The Food Truck', and lack of respect for the ingredients. As Michael van de Elzen has turned his programmes into an exploration of the cuisines of different ethnicities, he does not seem to realise how irritating his flippant manner is and that his food, which he calls 'healthy versions', are actually insults to the cultures which he perverts and diminishes by nomination. Almost the exact same trend follows in 'Family Recipes', except personal insult is added to cultural.
'Testing the Menu', apart from being an aimless waste of thirty minutes which would be better spent looking at HD photos of the constituent ingredients the presenter uses, again is a permutation of this lack of cultural understanding that permeates the higher-end of celebrity chefs. An apparent 'Japanese version' of Spaghetti Bolognese, turns out to be a horribly debased dish of yakisoba, which real chefs in Japan would devote their entire lives to perfecting. Chef Nic Watt also ignorantly forgets that Japanese cuisine already has its own array of western fusion dishes, developed over decades, including a dish equivalent to bolognese, the popular spaghetti dish 'Naporitan'.
These shows, dare I say, flow with the remnants of racism even. William Howard Taft's use of the term "Little brown brother" in reference to Filipinos comes to mind in regard to the cultural belittlement which is perpetuated by these 'cooking' shows. I for one am tired of these pretentious and privileged chefs diminishing my culture and the cultures of other minorities in New Zealand.
The food world needs to understand that cuisine is an integral part of a culture, and the pompous, uninspired and disrespectful treatment of another culture's food is only another part of the cultural insensitivity and racism that is interwoven into today's society.
What has happened to the days of Julia Child and Delia Smith, where food is treated with the utmost respect, with humility, and entertainment is made without the expense of exploiting and perverting another's rich culture?
I'm just sick of these pompous assholes exploiting other people's cultures, expecially mine, and pretending that it's 'chinese inspired' or worse, actually calling their abominations the real name of the dish. This is what racism has evolved into, today. Anyway, I elaborate in my letter below.
In the last couple of years, the New Zealand television audience has been bombarded with an array of homegrown cooking programmes, such as 'The Food Truck', 'Testing the Menu', and 'Family Recipes'.
The popularity of these kinds of programmes has grown rapidly, and has blasted the presenters into sudden fame.
However, I as an individual, and as a home cook, would beg to differ from the disparate crowds of fans tearing apart the bookstores purchasing Michael van de Elzen's cookbooks.
The three shows I mentioned all form their basis on the well established 'new twist to old recipe' concept. I do not stand alone when I say that I find these shows and the chefs obnoxious, and their cooking anything other than insulting.
It astounds me, the lack of cultural understanding there is in each and every episode of 'The Food Truck', and lack of respect for the ingredients. As Michael van de Elzen has turned his programmes into an exploration of the cuisines of different ethnicities, he does not seem to realise how irritating his flippant manner is and that his food, which he calls 'healthy versions', are actually insults to the cultures which he perverts and diminishes by nomination. Almost the exact same trend follows in 'Family Recipes', except personal insult is added to cultural.
'Testing the Menu', apart from being an aimless waste of thirty minutes which would be better spent looking at HD photos of the constituent ingredients the presenter uses, again is a permutation of this lack of cultural understanding that permeates the higher-end of celebrity chefs. An apparent 'Japanese version' of Spaghetti Bolognese, turns out to be a horribly debased dish of yakisoba, which real chefs in Japan would devote their entire lives to perfecting. Chef Nic Watt also ignorantly forgets that Japanese cuisine already has its own array of western fusion dishes, developed over decades, including a dish equivalent to bolognese, the popular spaghetti dish 'Naporitan'.
These shows, dare I say, flow with the remnants of racism even. William Howard Taft's use of the term "Little brown brother" in reference to Filipinos comes to mind in regard to the cultural belittlement which is perpetuated by these 'cooking' shows. I for one am tired of these pretentious and privileged chefs diminishing my culture and the cultures of other minorities in New Zealand.
The food world needs to understand that cuisine is an integral part of a culture, and the pompous, uninspired and disrespectful treatment of another culture's food is only another part of the cultural insensitivity and racism that is interwoven into today's society.
What has happened to the days of Julia Child and Delia Smith, where food is treated with the utmost respect, with humility, and entertainment is made without the expense of exploiting and perverting another's rich culture?
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