Why Exploring a Cuisine is Best Done Inauthentically

When in your kitchen, do as you do

Lately, I’ve felt the strongest desire for culinary exploration that I can remember. The lockdown has imposed a scarcity of resources, forming conditions ripe for culinary ingenuity that I’ve drawn plenty of inspiration from. At the same time, the lockdown has derailed my travel plans, leaving a void for adventure that I yearn to fill. With plane tickets out of the question, I thought: what better way to simulate an adventure and explore a new cuisine than to be a foreigner in my own kitchen? Thus, with a few simple pantry ingredients on hand, I set my culinary sights to a place I’ve always wanted to explore: Italy.

Italian food, from the rich and meaty sauces from the north, to the light and bright dishes from the south, and the infinite number of pasta shapes in between, offers so many templates to play with. Despite how ingrained Italian cuisine is in American culture, it feels very exotic to me as a Filipino-American. Plus, making pasta from scratch, despite being notoriously time-consuming, stereotypically reserved for fine dining restaurants and Italian grandmothers with plenty of time on their hands, sounds like a fun challenge. There’s plenty of room to explore and learn from Italian cuisine.

Italian cuisine also requires a delicate touch. It values simplicity over bold flavors and insists you follow the stringent nomenclature across regional dishes. I’m open to giving it that respect and to unlearn some ideas in order to develop new ones. But, I refuse to aim for the most loaded and confining goals in cooking: authenticity. More on this idea later.

Journeying to Italy in my Chicago apartment

Let me give you a rough idea of how little I know about Italian food. Like many Filipinos, my idea of spaghetti growing up was spaghetti from Jollibee, that infamous concoction of banana ketchup, hot dogs and presumably cheddar cheese. I grew up with pasta that had noodles and sauce separated, and it wasn’t until I started this journey that I learned the magical binding properties of pasta water and its crucial role in marrying sauce and pasta as one. Relatedly, I’ve been cooking my adult life rarely making pasta. My pantry is filled with numerous varieties of chilis, Asian sauces, and a 25 pound bag of rice, yet not one box of dried pasta. I had a lot of catching up to do.

You can learn a lot from making pasta by hand. It’s a laborious task, but along the way you forge a deep connection with your food, seeing it start from a messy slush of eggs and flour, then transforming it to those silky strands of gold that make the base of your meal. As you shape your dough, you are literally shaping your own destiny. Mistakes are mostly attributable to your technique and not through external variables, unlike baking bread. I can live with that – it fits my temperament, but it’s not for everyone. Laboring for hours shaping the dough then rolling it out to thin sheets with just my hands and a trusty rolling pin is hard work, yet strangely therapeutic.

I took away two key lessons from making pasta. One, I learned an appreciation for those Italian grandmothers who take the time to lovingly craft one of the simplest foods many of us take for granted. If I had one to impress, I can only hope my embarrassingly uneven (“rustic”) strands of pappardelle don’t leave me getting disowned. Two, the yield from making pasta scales terribly for the amount of work you have to put in. You have to enjoy the journey. The destination is rewarding, but it’s not enough on its own. Thank goodness for boxed pasta.

Back to Authenticity

Now, about that A-word that I loathe to use.

Italian cuisine comes with few frills. Rightfully so, because it’s already delicious without them. The classic pasta dishes have a base set of requirements, but modifications can be controversial. Pasta Al Oglio should have oil and garlic – add a squeeze of lemon (or God forbid, lime) and you’ve crossed a line. Cacio E Pepe is pasta, cheese and pepper – and some purists will give you the evil eye if you add butter to it.

But no matter how much time I spend trying to master the art of pasta, I won’t ever be Italian. My ancestral home is across the world from Italy. There are some nuances of the Italian culture that I will never get, even if I fly out to Sicily tomorrow and live there for 10 years. My pantry is heavily influenced by Southeast Asia and Mexico. Even if I wanted to faithfully follow classic recipes to the letter, I’d have to overcome endless barriers to authenticity because of my place in the world.

“Authentic” cooking often means following a strict set of rules. There exists no more intimidating barrier to culinary exploration than striving for this impossible ideal of being authentic, especially when you live a world away from the origin. Ignore the gatekeeping elitists who insist that Dish X can only have A, B and C but not D. They’re the Karens of the culinary world: overly fearful of cultural invaders defiling the purity of their precious tradition. I will leave it to the reader to take this thinking to its logical conclusion in other ways.

It was inevitable that some of my very non-Italian pantry staples would find their way into my attempts at recreating traditional Italian dishes. So what if my rendition of Pasta Al Oglio has an extra kick of serrano peppers and lime? Why yes, I did add more than a few splashes of fish sauce to my bolognese (an idea I stole from J. Kenji López-Alt). And sure, my Amatriciana has some pancetta and leftover ham from the freezer instead of guanciale, plus leftover tomato sauce from a previous batch of chili con carne. Be thankful I didn’t use spam. Point being, I used the pasta, pork, tomatoes, and peppers I had to make a dish that tastes what you would expect from those ingredients. And it tasted fantastic!

Regional cuisine is all about creating dishes using the ingredients available. Sure, the ingredients themselves lay an important baseline. That said, the available ingredients are largely arbitrary. Tomatoes aren’t even native to Italy! The most important thing to keep in mind when cooking these dishes is to carry forth the spirit and ingenuity that led to the creation of those dishes in the first place. It doesn’t matter whether that ingenuity is bred from stretching your pantry during a pandemic in 2020, or making use of the natural ingredients and limited rations in the Italian countryside in 1820.

Our expressions from cooking are a reflection of our respective environments. If we’re being pedantic, “authentic” is a synonym for “genuine”. Applying your personal flair is as genuine as it gets.

Takeaways from my fake trip to Italy

Hopefully, my feelings towards authenticity don’t come off as an excuse to bastardize Italian cuisine. I’d be remiss if I didn’t apply what I learned from cooking Italian food to my own culture.

Filipino cuisine can learn a lot from Italian cuisine. I sure as hell did. There may be room in between that abominable Jolly Spaghetti and Italian spaghetti to fuse something new**. Or, one could riff off of pancit, a stir fried egg noodle, by replacing it with a thicker egg pasta and adding an emulsified sauce with unmistakable Filipino flavors. The possibilities are endless.

Cross-pollination of food is a beautiful thing. Drawing from your personal experiences makes experimenting in the kitchen fun. Who cares if it’s authentic? When in Rome, do as the Romans do; but in your kitchen, anything goes. So, blaspheme away, heathens!

Take it from someone who started making pasta a month ago.

**Or just make the Italian version