You're absolutely right. I've always been afraid of treading on people's toes. It was Larry's post that got my back up a bit. However, this is Discusscooking, so let's continue.....where do you get your reliable sources from? Cookery books?
photographs? Other people? Does 'reliable' mean 'it depends on who published the recipe' or 'does the recipe work for me' or 'how can I tweak it' ? Everything changes according to taste, so for me the pretty pictures of appealing food don't really mean that much. For example, I couldn't make a curry in Italy without bringing the spices from England - here hot is just chilli.
There is a small community of Chinese residents who cultivate the nearest vegetables (some are the same, like bean sprouts), but a spring roll, while nicely done isn't quite the same. Non of all that means it's no good. In the UK you couldn't make a truffle risotto, it has to be a porcini risotto, unless you buy - at great expense - a tiny jar of preserved or dried truffles. My point is, that wherever you are in the world, you adapt to your surroundings.
Finally, when you live in another country, be it Europe, the USA, and all the other predominately white communities, do you really think that, as the article says, 'we need to break away from the idea that white and western is the base standard for media portrayals - whether in food, film, literature etc - and start trusting and hiring people of colour to represent themseves'.
Do you accommodate this view? Personally I think that this has already happened and has been around for many years now. Multicultural communities have been around for a long time now, so has their food. I remember when the first Italian restaurant opened in Liverpool in 1962, when I had just started at the University there. The food was anything but Italian, but the atmosphere was great. It was only when I went to Rome with my parents in 1963 that I found out what Italian food was really like.
di reston
Enough is never as good as a feast Oscar Wilde