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Any fans of the Great British Bake Off here? I think this season has been a case study in the mechanisms by which wokeness latches on and does its best to ruin things. I'm so sick of people talking about how offensive Mexican week was. If you ask me, I really have no idea what was so offensive about it. Acknowledging that Mexican culture and food exists is not the same as being racist towards Mexicans. Also, since when are Mexicans even considered to be oppressed, and worthy of people getting outraged over? Have Mexicans historically been oppressed, especially by the British?
Following Mexican week, now, I guess the outlets all saw that claiming offense at GBBO was a great way to get more views, because every week I see at least one article about how viewers were "shocked and outaged" at the latest episode of Bake Off. Often, these are related to the fact that several contestants this season aren't native to Great Britain and are not being handled sensitively enough with regards to the recipes they do and their ability to follow the instructions in the technical challenges.
As a Slovak this whole cuisine "weeks" are very strange to me. First, cuisines did not fully develop until probably mid 19th century, before than the local cuisine probably consisted from oatmeal or other grain type of stuff for subsistence of peasants. Even classic foods like Italian tomato pasta rely on "appropriation" of tomatoes from the New World, similar with chili for Asian cuisine with chili based foods.
For instance here in our region around Bratislava we have eclectic cuisine from all over Austria-Hungary. One of my favorite foods is from cabbage region of Cluj-Napoca (Kolozsvár ina Hungarian) called Szekelykaposta, but with so many variations between meat and side dishes that it often does not even resemble the original recipe. The same for "Hungarian" kettle goulash which is basically potato, chili, onion and meat. And parenthesis are there for the reason that "inventing" to boil onion, potatos and meat inside kettle is probably not that hard to do. But that is how it is called now so I respect it. How this can be called as Hungarian recipe is a question - given that two thirds of the ingredients are from the New World, there had to be some cultural appropriation taking place there. Plus of course there are dozens of local variations of the food that have deep roots in some original culture like Wallachian but which were popularized in restaurants with some changes, e.g. Slovak national food of bryndzové halušky.
The point being that if you want to have Hungarian, Czech, Slovak or Romanian or Balkan cuisine contest you would have surprising results of cooking the same foods. For instance aforementioned Szekelykaposta is a recipe from original Hungarians now living in Romania, thanks to the best "cabbage in the world they have" (this is a fact mind you). So is it Hungarian or Romanian recipe? I do not care, as long as I have cabbage from that region I am okay. Similarly with other geographical "brands" like Champagne or Parmigiano-Reggiano. And at home I can culturally appropriate as much as I wish.
And I also have to say that this is in the context of being in the middle of "ethnonations" with two world wars. Nobody bats an eye if a Pole cooks Wienerschnitzel or Czech cooks Hungarian goulash. This whole debate is alien to me.
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