Joanna wrote:
> I share your sentiments. But more than "resolving difference" it tries to
make difference inoffensive and, in creating unintuitive combinations of
cuisines, it stresses the "arbitrary" nature of the differences. That is,
rather than realizing that each cuisine (like each language) holds a mystery
that can be experienced but not solved, it treats this mystery like a
variable that can be inserted into any culinary equation.
>
> Offensive to anyone who loves food.
Doug: Man, what an outburst of purity! I like the way butter & soy sauce taste together. Mike Davis has some wonderful stuff about the hybridized culture of the U.S.-Mexico border. What's wrong with miscegnation, culinary or otherwise? The purism has its source in the false conception of a "cuisine" as a unity, as an entity having a "character" or essence of its own, while in fact "cuisine" is just a general term naming a hodgepodge. No mystery.
What is offensive however is the moral arrogance of creating a special category of those who "love food."
Carrol