Howdy, Dungeon Meshi Maniacs! How has your week been? Spent enjoying bowl after bowl of Tentacle and Kelpie Stew, Prepared with Undine I bet. I hope you were able to find a local restaurant that had it on the menu. I have to admit that it's been on my mind the whole week, DMMs. Not the monster aspect, though the Undine is a cool spirit. No, the actual dish that I made last week. The Ndizi Nyama. DMMs, what is "authentic"?
This update is going to be a short one, DMMs, but it's a topic that's on my mind. You always hear foodies talk about wanting an authentic experience when it comes to cuisine but what does that actually mean? Take the dish I made last week. How many of you had heard of Ndizi Nyama before you read the blog? Wow! That's more than I expected. For the rest of you, I get it. I've never heard of the dish either! I got lucky when I entered "Meat and Plantains" into Google. The thing is I found five separate recipes with five different ways to prepare the dish. Which was the "authentic" representation would you say? Ndizi Nyama is a dish from Tanzania but none of the webpages professed to be from Tanzania or even of Tanzanian descent. So my question is, did I have authentic Ndizi Nyama?
Of course it isn't and I would never claim it to be! I've never had the original so how could it be "authentic"? But this doesn't answer my ultimate question. Of the five recipes I found which was the real Ndizi Nyama? I think that is the problem when chasing the term authentic. Who gets to say what is or is not the real expression of the dish? Let's move from Ndizi Nyama to something more personal to me, Cornbread. As a scant few of you are aware I'm an Appalachian Slime, DMMs. I grew up with an idea of what cornbread is and how it should be prepared. Just like every other person in my hometown and County. And every one of them did it completely different! Some used lard, others used buttermilk. Some sifted cornflour, others just used premixes. Some put corn kernels in, others included peppers. The basics were the same for the most part; cornmeal, liquid, pan, heat. But no two families could claim theirs is THE cornbread recipe. I imagine it's the same with Ndizi Nyama. No two Tanzanian families do it the same.
Authentic is just a buzzword at the end of the day, DMMs. Yes. You can alter a recipe so greatly that it stops being the original dish. Ultimately as long as you follow the basics you've made the dish you were shooting for. Never let concern over whether you are making the authentic version of a dish stop you from trying. As long as you aren't putting sugar in it you have still made cornbread!
That's it for this week, DMMs! I'll be taking next week off but you'll want to be back in two weeks. The recipe has me a little worried. I'm making two separate dishes that I've never made before! One of which is an ingredient that I'm not sure I even enjoy. Should be fun! See you then.
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