Summary
According to “Can Belgium claim ownership of the French fry?” by Emily Monaco (2018), while Belgium claims that the fry is their iconic heritage dish referring to a Belgium legend and written references, French culinary historian disagree with two reasons. Not only doesn’t the timeline of potatoes emerging in Belgium match with the Belguim legend and the fact that peasants in the 18th Century used fat wastefully for cooking is also doubtful. Moreover, Pont-Neuf, French 18th century street food, is similar to French fries. In terms of making this dish emblematic and unique, England has done well. Fish and chips with modern adaptations have become a classless British national dish. In France, the fry is served with grilled meat, and the potatoes are cut into perfect rectangles. Belgium is the only country where the fries are presented as a meal.
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Response
To be honest, despite the word ‘French’ in French fries, this dish had never given me any picture of France or Belgium. I wondered why I had no idea about Belgium fries before. The first image in my mind is some American teenagers eating French fries with friends in a diner or fast-food restaurant. It might be a consequence of watching TV shows and growing fast-food companies. I ate fries for the first time at KFC and I think that almost Thai people have a similar experience as me. Most people in Thailand buy French fries from American fast-food franchises such as McDonald, Burger King and KFC. After reading, I found that I rarely see characters in French movies or TV shows with French fries. However, I haven’t watched lots of French entertainments or any Belgium ones. I think that I should explore more about other cultures or more diverse kinds of movies because there are lots of interesting points to learn.
I agree with the article that fish and chips become a British iconic dish without a name label. Some of my friends went to England and this style of fries dish is the one that they sought for.
This article also reminds me of the case of the Crying tiger trademark. Crying Tiger is a beef-grilled dish which is a well-known northern Thai dish. However, this Thai dish shares some similarities and the English name as “crying tiger” with a Malaysian beef dish. After a Malaysian formerly registering the trademark for the name of the dish, his action led to a discussion about the origin of the Crying tiger and whether its name should be possessed by a nation.
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Question
What is a Thai iconic dish in your opinion?
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Reference
- Monaco, E. (2018, July 31). Can Belgium claim ownership of the French fry? BBC. http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20180730-can-belgium-claim-ownership-of-the-french-fry
Thank you for your interesting news article, Phing. It reminded of my visit to Singapore five years ago. Before visiting the country, I thought that the life style of the people in the country is similar to Thai people. However, I found it quite different in several aspects. First, during my visit, it seemed like the times there were flying. The people were in a hurried. It seemed like they were competing with times. Second, I found that the society was more multicultural than Thai society. During the visit, I would meet many of the people who came from different parts of the world. I would meet someone from Japanese, India, the UK, the US, Vietnam, China, and so on. Finally, I found that the food was different from Thailand. During my visit, I went to a Thai street restaurant as it sold traditional Thai street dishes such as fried rice and stir fried basil, but I found that these typical Thai dished were quite different from its origin, Thailand, especially the taste. I ordered a dish of fried rice with pork at the Thai street restaurant. Even though it made of the same ingredients, the taste was different from what I have in Thailand. Maybe, this happened because of fish sauce.
ReplyDeleteTo answer your question, I think Thai iconic dish is Tom Yum Kung. Although I’ve visited a few foreign countries, I found that the Thai restaurants there usually offer Tom Yum Kung as a signature Thai dishes.
To quickly answer Phing's question, I think that kai yang with somtam is an iconic Thai dish, among others. I don't think a nation need have only one iconic dish, or iconic anything. Australia, as I note in my blog post below, "Peter: A jump to the Dreamtime", has several iconic animals, two or which we enjoy eating, although I'm not sure that either kangaroo or emu are iconic Australian dishes. I suppose the humble meat pie might be an iconic Australian dish, although I don't much like the usual sort of meat pie that used to be so popular in my childhood. Kangaroo steak is much better. Is damper, bush bread, an iconic Australian dish? Maybe I've been away too long.
ReplyDeleteBut although Emma reasonably opted for Tom yum kung as a signature Thai dish, I'm sticking with kai yang and somtam.
That was going to be a quick answer before I moved on to the response I really wanted to write about, but I might leave that one for a later comment - maybe with my afternoon coffee after today's class. As Zemach says, short periods of practice spaced out over time are usually more productive for learning and consolidating skills than long, intense sessions.
If you would like to add basic formatting, italics, bold or links, to your comments, see my notes at "Comments - italics, bold, links" on the menu bar above.
DeleteIt such a good summary about debating of history of French fry. I have already heard about this argument for a while. Someone claimed that it originates from England even its name involved with 'French'. I totally have no idea on history but I strongly agree with Phing that we are familiar with the picture of American teenagers eating French fry. Consequently, that tradition also occur in Thai teenagers too. This summary remind me of Padthai, which is one of my favourite dishes, interestingly originate from Singapore not Thailand. Why did people try to confuse us like this.
ReplyDeleteTo answer Phing's question, however, the iconic Thai food that first come to my mind is TomYumKung, I also got distraction with papaya salad. By the way, in my opinion, the characteristic of Thai food is spicy and flavourful which is so well known to foreigners.
Reading Mean's comment, I was reminded that although the meat pie I mentioned in my own comment above is today considered a classic Australian dish, it certainly did not originate in Australia, but in England, where I guess (I don't know and I'm not going to do the research now) that people were eating pies long before the British even discovered Australia 250 years ago. In fact, I much older writers like the poet Chaucer writing about meat pies in his rude tales of travelling Christian pilgrims in England in the Middle Ages of the 14th century - long before anyone in the West had ever heard of the Americas, and certainly long before Australia was known to the European world.
DeleteWhat is a Thai iconic dish in your opinion?
ReplyDeleteTo answer Phing's question, A Thai iconic dish, which came to mind is Tom Yum Kung, but after considering again, there are many outstanding Thai dish, such as Pat Thai, Son Tum and Thai Green Curry with chicken.
I think the reason why Tom Yum Kung is a popular Thai cuisine because there are a lot of advertisements of how to make Tom Yum Kung in Thai cooking TV programs and also movies that mentioned about how delicious it could be. The teste of the dish is very scrumptious and flavorful. Therefore, it is undoubtful that Tom Yum Kung become the first memorable Thai dish.
To sum up, although there are several iconic Thai cuisines, an outstanding Thai dish for me is Tom Yum Kung as I mentioned above. However, other Thai dishes are also Thai iconic dishes too as the reason depends on how delectable it gives and how it differs from other cuisines.
The news makes me reexamine the name of the food menu I’ve ever eaten. The name of food is usually telling its origin like the French onion soup, the Italian pasta, the Japanese tempura and so on. But for French fries, I used to wonder why it did not originate in France. When the article said that there is a claim that French fries is the iconic heritage dish of Belgium, I firstly thought it was possible because if we visited Belgium, people there spoke French. However, the news reported later that French culinary historian disagreed with that claim with his supportive reasons. I started to think that I might need to read more on the concerning of this topic if the time permits.
ReplyDeleteI would have done it anyway because to grade the summary, I need to have read the source article, but just reading Phing's summary got me so interested that I really wanted to read the details in her source. it's a bit long, but well worth reading if you would like to know more, although Phing has done an excellent job in her summary. In fact, it was the information about wasting fat that most interested me - in Phing's chosen article, that is a reason against a Belgium origin, but it got me making a connection with something very different, which I'll follow up with another comment later.
DeleteLike Phing, I had my first fries at KFC, too. For me, French fries is a typical dish which you can find at almost every fast food diner, especially the one with American origin. Therefore, if you ask me where do I think fries originate from, my first guess would be definitely America.
ReplyDeleteHowever, as I was reading Phing’s summary, I was surprised that it is actually Belgium who claims to be the origin of fries. In my opinion, the argument that France may be the actual origin of fries sounds more likely. However, no matter where it originates, I still love fries.