fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #5765 ]

[ SECRET POST #5765 ]

⌈ Secret Post #5765 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 40 secrets from Secret Submission Post #825.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
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08. https://i.imgur.com/sYWdP4K.png

I stopped watching Bake-Off several seasons ago because I hate Paul Hollywood, so hearing about this was just a big heaping pile of schadenfreude. There are a very small number of authentic Mexican places in the UK, mostly in London, but the cuisine itself is very much unknown. I can't say I'd do any better, but I don't PUT IT ON NATIONAL TV.

Paul Hollywood is super annoying, yeah. I'm not crazy about Prue, but she's at least toned down her comments a little from her earlier seasons. I've resigned myself to the fact that Bake Off just isn't going to be as good as it used to be. It can still be enjoyable, of course... but not that episode, ffs.

I could deal with Paul when Mary was there, but Prue is...not as bad as Paul, but not great, and not enough to balance out his smarminess and self-congratulation.

Agreed. It's not the same without Mary. :(

It's crazy how bad that show has gotten

It's embarrassing. I feel embarrassed on their behalf.

Yeah, I blame it on the production staff and ultimately the higher-ups who have presumably cut the budgets, but it's really obvious just looking at it how much its slipped. Reality TV is a form that is ultimately built on editing and production, and when the editing and production aren't there, it's really easy to tell.

I don't hate Paul or Prue but that ep was really embarrassing, and I live in California which is very influenced by Mexican culture. I still want Noel to shut the fuck up.

I don't really care about authenticity of food anymore in general. I'm in a region where we have quite famous regional dishes and I used to be quite snobby going "um, actually" anytime I thought someone was Doing It Wrong (including on GBBO once, fittingly enough).

But honestly, what's the point of that? As an example, yeah, avocado isn't a traditioal ingredient in this dish and food purists will cry about authenticity if you ever dare add them to anything. But that's because two hundred years ago people didn't have access to avocados in this part of the world. Now we do and it fits well, so why shouldn't we adapt the old recipes and use it?
You don't see anyone complaining about how potatoes aren't authentic despite them being in none of our traditional dishes 500 years ago because back then, potatoes hadn't made their way over here yet.

I do find the idea of Paul and Pru acting like experts on how to prepare Mexican food in general pretty cringey. They can certainly judge how the end results taste and talk about how they would approach the challenges but I find it hard to believe that either has any in-depth knowledge of any cuisine outside of Britain and maybe France.

I think when it comes down to authenticity, what really grinds my gears is when places don't actually define those adaptations as fusion food.

Fusion and adaptations of traditional cuisines are all great! But the problems come when those variants of food becomes the assumed norm/emblematic of the culture being represented.

Then again, I think that's only really an issue when it's food being represented in an area where that's the only representation of that particular culture.

I don't think anyone is really expecting fidelity to authenticity or tradition from GBBO here, it's more about making a good-faith attempt, and/or acknowledging that what you're doing is inspired by ideas about Mexico and not actually an adaptation of Mexican cooking. also another problem is that having steak tacos as a challenge on a baking show is stupid. and when you add all of those problems together it just really feels like they were completely incurious about anything to do with Mexican cuisine or baking and just threw some random shit together for a theme week.

It was pretty bad, yeah.
Nothing tops the badness of American Pie week, but...this got super-duper close.

Probably about asbad as any attempt by Americans to do anything British/Irish/European/Indian/Pakistani/rest of the world then. It's almost as if it's hard to capture authenticity of an entire country's cuisine and culture when you have practically no exposure that isn't crap restaurants (or in America's case, their rancid imaginations). Mexicans move to Canada and the US, not the UK.

if you want to find an American cooking show doing an extremely bad job at making British food and laugh about that.... go ahead? no one's stopping you? i don't get what the point is here. GBBO tried to do something and they fucked it up, sorry about it i guess

And all of that is a fair excuse for why it didn't turn out well. But. You know. Nobody forced GBBO to do a Mexican week, so people have a right to be critical that they chose to "celebrate" Mexican cuisine and then inflicted that on us.

Probably? But I don't watch any US cooking shows so I can't compare.

To be fair, there are plenty of ethnic enclaves in the USA where you can find legit cooking from many regions of the world -- being cooked by people from those countries or people who are descendants (1st or 2nd gen) of those places.

People from all over the world move to the US/Canada. Canada has a big Caribbean enclave, as do certain states in the US, like NY, same goes for India, Pakistan, China, the Philippines, etc.

Are you going to find the best Indian food in Colby, KS? Probably not. But if you go to a place where there's enough people/a community, you'll find it.

If what you're implying is that a person with no origins, connections, or exposure to the food or culture wants to cook it and make it authentic, then that's different, but I think they can learn and should (if they have the opportunity) try the cuisine.

+infinity

I agree that exposure is needed to help people cook better. I've seen Americans try to do British food and cringed. It's not all beige. A Brit would be able to cook a mean Indian dish because having a large Indian population means more exposure to that style of cooking. There are hardly any Mexican restaurants that aren't either in London only, or a Taco Bell. It's no wonder the contestants were terrible because the only Mexican food a Brit will see is in a Taco meal kit.

“or in America's case, their rancid imaginations”

What a stupid thing to add.

It’s “Leave Britain-y Alone” anon. They have issues.

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2022-10-19 17:26 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2022-10-19 18:39 (UTC) - Expand

Uhhhhh...if they "slapped a mustache on a cake" and called it Mexican, that is racist as fuck!

Yawn

I did not expect authenticity from GBBO regarding Mexican nor any other cultures than British really (it's right there on the show's name after all: British bake-off). It just doesn't seem they tried too hard at a challenge they placed upon themselves, if you are going to do it so poorly why bother, you know? And even if they wanted to go POC for once they could have still approached other closer cultures that people actually living in Britain might also know better about, like the Chinese, Muslim and Indian people who very much are part of Britain's cultural diversity too (as much as people like the tories might not like it).

Asides all of that, I'm annoyed cause Mexican cuisine is incredibly rich and so unique from even the rest of Latin America (though I'm not too familiarized with Central American and Caribbean cultures, so they might have more overlap there), so it's a big disservice to reduce it the way they did.

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