Project Title: Exploring the meaning of Authenticity in Food. 

Essential Question(s):

• How does cuisine evolve and change in America from its country of origin? 
  • Does authentic food mean authentic and traditional recipes or ingredients?

Statement of Purpose

For my Senior Project I will be exploring the meaning of authenticity through the lense of Chinese American and Indian American food. I will also be experimenting with creating my own versions of authentic dishes as well as sampling authentic dishes in order to compare the two.

Overview: Describe your topic and project to the committee.

My main questions right now are how does cuisine evolve and change in America from its country of origin, does authentic food mean authentic and traditional recipes or ingredients? I think I need a series of questions as well because I think if I condense it into one question the project would either become too specific or too broad. I think I can even narrow the questions down I’ve developed so far. I wanted to create questions that would allow people based research, learn about cross cultural menus, make my final project be about real food, and get the oppurtunity to do more own research and come up with an answer on my own. I plan to answer these questions through an extensive research process in which I hope to interview at least 5 total chefs, restauranteurs, food critics, diners, or food historians. Speaking with them will allow me to absorb information about authenticity from poeople who actually work with food. I will also need help getting in contact with these types of  people in the community since I only know a few on my own. 

These questions matter to me because I am very interested in learning more about cuisine. I am interested in finding some kind of answer to these questions throughout my project. Also in cuisine the “best” cuisine is often considered western cuisine and I feel like my project could focus on types of authentic food and cuisine from other parts of the world. These questions also matter to me because I am answering questions I have thought about since I was younger when I would eat authentic Dim Sum in ChinaTown and then fried rice at a Chinese restaurant that was definitely not authentic. I always wondered why both were considered Chinese food when the style and tastes were vastly different. I also watch a lot of shows on netflix about cuisine from different parts of the world and many of them touch on the idea about authenticity and its importance so asking these questions would allow me to explore that idea more.

To do the interview part, firstly, I would like to come up with a list of questions and speak to people who are in the restaurant business or know anything about cuisine or food. I think talking to them would give me real life “answers” to some of the questions I have. They would also be giving me information about cuisine from the point of view of someone who does it for a living which would be helpful in answering my questions. I think I should focus on 1 or 2 cuisines for me to try cooking perosnally and I think it should be Asian because Asian cuisine is so expansive and larger than most people think. I also already eat a lot of Asian food at home. But when speaking to the people in the “food buisness” I would want to keep the questions more general and not just about Asian cuisine in order to get better answers.  In addition to talking to adults in the larger LREI community I think I could conduct some of my own research by sampling food from authentic restaurants and then sampling from inauthentic restaurants. This part would be added to me cooking some of the foods. Cooking in my house would be interesting because I am Asian but we don’t alwaus have access to traditional Asian ingredients needed to make the food “authentically”. I am also very multicultral and so are my parents so I think that would also impact the “authenticity” of the food I cook no matter what I make. I think by learning information from the adults in the “cuisine world” and doing my own research I could reach a personal definition to what authentic food means to me. I think 60% of this project would be me researching and talking to adults who have information on the questions I’m asking about authenticity and than the other 40% would consist of me cooking Asian food in my own home aswell as sampling food from “authetic” and “inauthentic” places.

How will you measure your success?

I would like to measure my success through the success of the dishes that I make, and how much I learn about what “authentic” really means for the two cuisines I’m focusing onn. 

Learning goals:

-Learn about how/why the people in the food buisness value authenticity

-Learn how important is authenticity to consumers

-Study different aspects of authenticity
-Come up with my own definition of authenticity

-Cook authentic food

Resource List

List of Resources for my senior project:

Podcasts: “The Food Seen”, The Sporkful

Watch: Ugly Delicious (episodes), Salt Fat Acid and Heat (episodes), Raja Rasoi and anya Kahaniyan (episodes)

Other recoures:

https://www.eater.com/2019/12/3/20974732/authentic-food-definition-yelp

https://www.dailyemerald.com/arts-culture/order-up-what-makes-food-authentic/article_c5a7d2ba-e4bc-11e9-a434-cbeef64fdca8.html

https://www.lovefood.com/news/57074/what-makes-food-authentic

Possible books I’m going to read:

Chop Suey: a Cultural History of Chinese Food in the United States

Indian Food, a Historical Companion

The Fortune Cookie Chronicles

Daily Plan & Schedule

Describe, in as much detail as possible, what you will be doing day to day or through the course of a week. This schedule needs to make it clear how you will spend your 30 hours each week. LREI classes, clubs, and ensembles should be noted; cohort groups will likely meet first and second periods on Mondays and Thursdays. (You will also complete a log of hours worked and tasks accomplished for each week of the project). 

[Delete and add your work plan from your “Learning/Work/Documentation Plans” post]

Documentation Plan

General work plan:

Weekly plans:

-Interview with at least 3 people

-Cook a dish a day

-Go out and sample at least 2 times a day

Daily plans:

-Watch/Listen to a media recourse related to my project

-Find a recipe (do research on most authentic) (Also make sure recipe is doable for me)

-Do a video + written review of the dish I tried

-Food sampling (on certain days as well, will need research to be done before

-Compare in review video + writteb piece

-Interview (on certain days, might not be able to find enough people for 5 days a week)

-Going to spice shops/specialty grocers to ask their opinions on authenticity.

Documentation:

-I plan to display my work as a multi-media presentation meaning I would have videos (like the reviews videos I did) as well as text about what I’ve learned. I think it would look similar to the example one on the senior project planning guide. I think it would also be cool to put some of the recipe’s I used/turned out well into the presentation. I would also have daily documentation of my dishes (reviews) and reflections on the interviews.

Material Needs

-i mostly just need contacts for propective people to interview

-I also asked for possible stipend for buying ingreditant to cook but I was not given as answer on that.

Backup Plan

-Most of my project can be done at home, so assuming people are still available to meet on zoom I could still do the interview part. I could also still do the creating my own dishes part since all I need is groceries. The only part that I might be unable to do if circumstances change with Covid is sampling from restaurants. Though that is the least essential part of my project.