Mooncakes are part of the Asian Autumn Festival, and when I read about them yesterday, I laughed at the thought of the work of putting together the ingredients and fulfilling the recipe. It includes lye water, white lotus seed paste, red bean, green tea, mixed nuts and salted egg yokes that have been brined for 30 to 60 days. These are Asian ingredients are mostly exotic to me.
And the salted egg? "Salted egg yolk is typically an egg cured in the shell to impart a delicious, rich umami flavour. As it is a popular flavour during Mid-Autumn festivals, more expensive and luxurious duck eggs are usually used. To create them from scratch takes anywhere from 30 to 60 days."
But the best part about the exploration of mooncakes is the surprise question, with its answer:
"Is it cultural appropriation to make mooncakes?
It's like a foreigner putting on traditional Chinese clothing and claiming to be a native Chinese or well versed in Chinese culture. I would even go as far as to say that this is a form of culinary cultural appropriation. There are even mooncakes for your furry friends."
I looked at that as a confused response. Good thing the great melding pot of Europe with its mixing of cultures is in the past. Otherwise, we'd be accusing each other of appropriation and starting wars.
We can find more absurd answers on Quora. These range from proposed examples to denials of cultural appropriation existing. On Quora, people spout out anything and everything. And other times, have factual answers.
The first answer comes from Ross Boardman - "Award winning restaurateur, author of 101 Restaurant secrets Author has 12.4K answers and 33.3M answer views.". No wonder he has the top answer to the question.
Here's an excerpt from his reply:
"Is this something like when white people get dreadlocks and go surfing?
Please folks, stop this crap. Wake up from woke.
I’m currently looking at a menu of a chain pub in the UK. Let’s start the list; cheesy ciabatta, haloumi sticks, Southern fried goujons, nachos, katsu chicken, cheeseburger, chicken tikka masala and dirty chips (fries) with piri piri sauce. Am sure just based on that a bunch of angry white students are going to come out and glue themselves to the car park because at least those 8, rocking on close to 20 dishes, have been appropriated from other cultures."
Is a montage an appropriation? This is the combination of two (actually more) images. The pattern part was the grungy floor in Erroll's Shoe Repair in St. Catharines. Its original colour was yellowish. I turned it to bright yellow and moved on to blue and red with one of the Topaz filters. Then the additional colours in an arc came from a Flexifly version of one of my digital paintings.
What If our food was art - and then we ate it? Would you eat something that looked like this? It doesn't look likely that it can be preserved, but who would break apart the globe for a watermelon snack?
These would be examples of the kinds of entries in the IKA Culinary Olympics. There are more HERE in the enroute magazine article. This is a popular Asian tradition. There are many fruits that can be used in this process; the most popular that artists use are watermelons, apples, strawberries, pineapples, and cantaloupes. In the vegetable realm, there are carrots, zucchini, and cucumbers. You can find a zucchini cactus rose, a carrot candle, a banana daschund, blueberry penguins, and so on.
So a scenario came to me - carving onions. Wouldn't this be for the sturdiest and fastest of carvers. The tears would get in the way of the result. Look at the results - red onions are carved to look like lotus flowers.
These onions start to take on a life of their own - so here's their joke of the day:
One day two onions, who were best friends, were walking together down the street. They stepped off the curb and a speeding car came around the corner and ran one of them over.
The uninjured onion called 911 and helped his injured friend as best he was able. The injured onion was taken to emergency at the hospital and rushed into surgery.
After a long and agonizing wait, the doctor finally appeared. He told the uninjured onion, "I have good news, and I have bad news. The good news is that your friend is going to pull through. The bad news is that he's going to be a vegetable for the rest of his life".
Here's an ornamental allium/onion for today's image.
