Authenticity in Cuisine?

"The famous Somali poet Warsan Shire once wrote: 'no one leaves home unless / home is the mouth of a shark / you only run for the border / when you see the whole city running as well.'”

Somali chef Ifrah F. Ahmed quotes this poem in a fascinating article: "On Fusion, Forced Migration, and Somali Food:How Somali food in the diaspora holds the history of forced migration." She describes her thoughts about authenticity in cuisine as she expresses it in her cooking for her popular food truck and pop-up restaurants in Los Angeles, Seattle, and Brooklyn. Because I am very fascinated by the concept of authenticity in cuisine and how this concept is often, in my opinion, misused and historically muddled, I found her thoughts about how migration affects cuisine -- and authenticity -- very insightful. I particularly like her conclusion: "there are millions of ways to belong to a diaspora and to live authentically within a culture."

Somali chef and writer Ifrah F. Ahmed from Hiiraan Online

Ahmed writes about her family's forced migration from Somalia when she was a child, and how they eventually settled in Seattle, where she grew up, learning an immigrant version of the traditional cooking that they brought with them. Her fascination with cooking led her to become a chef, entrepreneur, and food writer for the New York Times and other publications. She developed recipes that interpreted her family traditions and built on them, continuing with the tradition and flavors of her heritage. 

Many people, especially her fellow Somalis, challenged the authenticity of the very popular foods she served at her food truck, particularly reacting to her specialty, "a Somali-style wrap — spongy and sour anjero-wrapped breakfast burritos filled with soft scrambled eggs, fuul (fava bean stew), and spicy vibrant green basbaas (Somali hot sauce)." She explains the inspiration for the dish: "I grew up eating fuul, eggs, and anjero. For me, serving the burrito was an opportunity to share a favorite family breakfast that was reimagined in its design; the only difference was rolling the ingredients into the soft sourdough bubble-lined pockets of the anjero. The burrito was a new thing and yet the original contents were the same."

Being alienated from the land they fled resulted in efforts for her family and her fellow immigrants to cling to the memories and traditions of their native cuisine, and to object to any changes, which they suspect of being "fusion food," and of deviating from authenticity. "Forced migration made it so we clung to what was most familiar, while trauma made it so we felt that we needed to protect and maintain what we once knew, just as we knew it."

This experience of cultural change combined with efforts at continuity very much parallels my understanding of the evolution of many immigrant cuisines in the 19th century when America became the home of many ethnic groups and nationalities. Though their departures from their original homes may not have shared the extreme desperation of modern forced emigration in the face of wars and famines, the wish of the earlier groups to continue family traditions seems to me to have been parallel to the experiences that Ahmed's family shared. 

Ahmed's thoughtful definitions of authenticity in the face of the critiques of her fellow immigrants are very enlightening. She writes: 

"Our dishes and traditions remained unchanged by time as we became dedicated to preserving the classical and 'purest' forms of culture and cuisine, because that was the last thing we had known. Forced migration made it so we clung to what was most familiar, while trauma made it so we felt that we needed to protect and maintain what we once knew, just as we knew it. ...

"No wonder, then, that it’s mostly in the diaspora where cuisine could be considered 'classic.' This adherence to 'classic' forms of culture and cuisine is a bridge connecting those in the diaspora to their homelands, a thread sewing the lost to what they left behind."

The New York Times has published some of Ahmed's recipes, such as Fuul, the fava bean stew that figures in her breakfast burrito. I haven't tried it, but it sounds quite delicious, and looks good in the image from the NYT article. (Note that NYT recipes require a subscription, so you may not be able to see this recipe.)

Recently, I've been thinking a lot about the meanings and misuses of food history, and how the idea of authenticity is misused, so I found this excellent article very interesting. I've also been thinking about the current global refugee crisis, and Ahmed's family story is very relevant to this as well.

The Ongoing Global Tragedy of Forced Immigration

The tragedy of forced immigration, where families have to struggle to create a new life in a new place (or often live in desperate and impossible circumstances) is horrifyingly common and increasing. Most tragic is that millions of people have lost their homes and have nowhere to go at all. The wars in Ukraine and Syria, the dictatorship in Afghanistan, and the famines in Africa have created millions of desperate people displaced from their homes and in need of all necessities of life.

Somalia has been one of the most desperately affected areas for a long time, and according to the charitable organization Concern:

"At the end of 2017, there were over 986,000 [Somali] refugees. While the numbers went up a bit in 2022, at just over 799,000 it’s still a significant decrease compared to five years ago. However, the situation is nevertheless dire for many. For the last several decades, a cycle of crisis in Somalia has been fuelled by drought, conflict, and hunger. The country is at the epicenter of the current Horn of Africa crisis, which could lead to a new famine being declared in the region. Even if it doesn’t, the UN still estimates that the effects could be similar to the country’s 2011 famine." (source)