I suppose an Italian reading this might feel the same way I felt when I learnt that the British claim chicken tikka masala as their own.
According to Wikipedia [1] the dish chicken tikka masala is thought to have been invented by Bangladeshi chefs working in the UK in the 1960s. Doesn't that make it at least somewhat British? It was invented by chefs in a different country than their own, likely then adjusted by those chefs to what they perceived that the local market wanted. In contrast, I mean, to being cooked "The Way It Has Always Been Done" in their country's tradition?
The Wiki page even mentions more classical/historical dishes from the norhern Indian area, that are thought to have inspired tikka masala. That, to me, makes it even more clear that the dish is new.
If I, as a Swedish person, move to the US and compose an awesome recipe for pizzaballs [2] where I combine Swedish meatballs with the American love for all things pizza [3] and it becomes a huge hit which is exported to the rest of the world, would that make the dish Swedish?
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tikka_masala
[2]: I'm just making up an example here on the spot.
[3]: A love which is, of course, shared by large parts of the rest of the world in our own fashion, not trying to point the finger at (a nuclear superpower of 330 M people) y'all in any way.
Yes, I am obviously Mexican.
Although it this case, it is not even true that the Wikipedia actually says that. Did you even read the article or are you just here to troll? Did I accidentally wander into reddit by mistake?
[The Wikipedia recounts several different versions of the urban legend. Three different sources with three different versions one where the chef was Bangladeshi, one where the chef was Indian, and another where the chef was Pakistani.]
So now it can be from Bangladesh, India or Pakistan. It doesn't really help your case that it's an Indian dish, perhaps we should call it a Southeast Asian dish instead?
I can also just draw my own conclusions from the interaction I am having with you right now.
>So now it can be from Bangladesh, India or Pakistan.
No, the urban legends noted in the Wikipedia say that it could be from those places.
Butter Chicken was actually invented in Delhi in a restaurant called Moti Mahal in the early 1950s by Punjabi migrants. CTM is too similar a dish to Butter Chicken to be called a new dish, let alone an "invention".
It does explain your first emotion of being offended, you seem very easily offended.
> Butter Chicken was actually invented in Delhi in a restaurant called Moti Mahal in the early 1950s by Punjabi migrants. CTM is too similar a dish to Butter Chicken to be called a new dish, let alone an "invention".
Now Chicken Tikka Masala is the same dish as Butter Chicken. Alright then.
They are 99.9% similar. Can anybody of sound mind make the claim that they are completely different recipes?
>If I start making pizzas in India and because mozzarella is hard to find here, just use processed cheese instead and may be put more chilis on top to suit Indian tastes, does the dish stop being pizza?
>There has to be some reasonable limitation on how little you modify something before you get to call it a new "invention".
How have I moved the goal post?
In fact I never called CTM and Butter Chicken the same dish - I called them virtually identical and too similar etc, it was a strawman you created and you then proceeded to say that I was moving the goal post when I reiterated my original position.
Please try to keep the quality of discussion higher. If I wanted to have endless discussions with argumentative people who have no ability to read, I would go on reddit.
!=
> Can anybody of sound mind make the claim that they are different recipes?
You seem to have it backwards, those were your words. Not mine. A little ironic for someone claiming I can't read, but alright. It would be nice if you could keep your emotions in check though, both for your and my sake.
I of course agree that they are similar, that is pretty evident. But that doesn't matter to call it a different dish, e.g. an egg sunny side up is a different dish compared to a scrambled egg even though the ingredients are exactly the same and it's prepared in the same way too, with the only difference being that the egg is mixed/destroyed.
For the sake of argument we can pretend that the sunny side up was invented in India, now a Taiwanese dude comes along and decides to scramble it. Is the new dish an Indian dish? I would disagree with that.
First of all that is not a well-established origin story, but more like an urban legend. There are multiple conflicting versions of this same urban legend where multiple different restaurants claim to have invented the dish in the same way. And the restaurant chain (Moti Mahal) from one of these versions had been serving a virtually identical dish in their Delhi restaurant since the 1950s, ten years before any of these supposed origin stories. I will let you come to your own conclusions about what scope for authenticity that leaves for these stories.
>If I, as a Swedish person, move to the US and compose an awesome recipe for pizzaballs [2] where I combine Swedish meatballs with the American love for all things pizza [3] and it becomes a huge hit which is exported to the rest of the world, would that make the dish Swedish?
In your case at least you will be doing some "fusion" or "innovation" right? What exactly is the "fusion" or "innovation" in chicken tikka masala? Can anyone of sound mind actually claim that chicken tikka masala and butter chicken are two completely different dishes?
While we are making up examples on the spot, here is a more accurate one. If I start making pizzas in India and because mozzarella is hard to find here, just use processed cheese instead and may be put more chilis on top to suit Indian tastes, does the dish stop being pizza?
There has to be some reasonable limitation on how little you modify something before you get to call it a new "invention".
I guess food history is murky and complicated, even for semi-modern things like this. :)
I don't know remotely enough about Indian food to measure the degree of innovation in tikka masala, I'm afraid.
Recipe for chicken tikka masala: roasted pieces of tandoori chicken in a tomatoey cream based sauce.
As is often the case with cultural appropriation, the real innovation by the appropriator was the marketing. In my view, this is what probably happened: multiple restaurants found the fake origin story a profitable and interesting marketing tool and judging by how popular indian food is in the UK today, it obviously worked.
No, but if you call that pizza something like Pizza Kalari would it then be wrong to say that Pizza Kalari is an Indian invention?
I already answered your question in the next line in my comment -- There has to be some reasonable limitation on how little you modify something before you get to call it a new "invention".
Besides, no Indian would feel the need to do that because, unlike the British, we are quite comfortable in our culinary identity. And most Indians would not respond well to such marketing. In fact, things like Pizza and Burger fill pretty much the exact opposite niche in India where eating very crappy versions of these western foods seems to have an aspirational value to it.
Happens all the time. Ever heard of Hamburgers?
The movie industry in the united states is a culture exporter. Probably uncountable examples from just that alone. Surely some of that is both OP's definition of 'White' and appropriated outside its original countries.
Australian pizza descends directly from the Italian style. We do have the American style as well, but it's a minority preference. Our pizza usually looks like this [2]. It's also notable that Starbucks failed to make a dent here [3], because our coffee culture is truer to its Italian roots than yours.
Given the circumstances in which this happened here, it stretches credulity to imagine that the preferences for pizza across Western Europe, South America, and Africa have been filtered through American preferences when Italians have been there making pizza for just as long. Please check your exceptionalism, thanks.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_diaspora#Statistics
[2] https://www.idealista.it/en/news/lifestyle-italy/2019/06/10/...
[2] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/20/starbucks-australia-coffee-f...
Maybe two or three in Southeast Asia. Maybe Canada, but they're weird and mostly their own thing. Don't know anything about Africa, but I would guess they're more like the rest of the world.
Almost all countries have their own variations of pizza. It's a lovely dish.
Is it something you read, something you saw on youtube, your experience travelling to some countries? How do you base your assertions? I'm honestly lost and I'd like to understand.
How can you assert that "Pizza served all over the world is based on the American Pizza, not the Italian one"?
Tomatoes and peppers came from South America, so Italians (and Indians) have been using them for less time.
I think it's just best to accept the fact that almost all food was fusion at some point in time, and there's no reason to think it won't become part of a new fusion going forward.
What was the fusion in chicken tikka masala?
And come to think of it, what other new dish has the British Indian restaurant industry come up with in the 50-60 years after the chicken tikka masala. Such amazing creativity right at the very start (only a coincidence that it is 99.9% same thing as another dish being sold in Delhi for at least 10 years before) and nothing since? What an incredibly sad story.
It has tomatoes in it for one.
> And come to think of it, what other new dish has the British Indian restaurant industry come up with in the 50-60 years after the chicken tikka masala.
Chutney (the type consumed in UK), for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Indian_cuisine
But 50-60 years is not a long time. Things do move a lot quicker now that food import routes have made it possible to get most exotic components to most elsewhere places without growing them on-site. But take a step back on what you look at as quintessentially "local" food anywhere and there's always movement. Nations form, crumble and split, peoples migrate, etc.
As does Butter Chicken which was invented in a restaurant in Delhi at least 10 years before CTM's appearance in Britain. Butter Chicken and CTM are 99.9% the same dish. So again, I ask, where exactly is the "fusion" in CTM?
The Portuguese arrived in India in 1498 and brought tomatoes with them. It was used in Indian cooking for centuries before the invention of the CTM. Our recipes did not have to travel to Britain for them to have tomatoes.
SMH. You guys have absolutely no idea how infuriating this is. Trying to teach me about my culture as if you know anything about it.