What is a National Dish? with Anya von Bremzen

Photo: Derya Tergut

Welcome back to the Lecker Book Club. Every month I’ll pick a newly released food related book and talk to the author about the process of writing it. I’ll also be cooking from the book and writing about that on Substack and Patreon. Join me there as well!

Conversations around food often - rightly - touch on attribution, ownership and identity, especially when it comes to certain dishes. But the subject is so, so complicated and many dishes we consider to be deeply entrenched within a country’s culinary history and culture are no more than PR exercises dreamed up a few decades ago. 

In National Dish :Around the World in Search of Food, History and the Meaning of Home, Anya von Bremzen explores whether we can find nationhood on a plate - and what it says about us that we’re so obsessed with looking for it there.

I loved this book. It’s fascinating and surprising but also Anya is such a great, dynamic writer that you feel like you’re on the road with her: party hopping at the Semana Santa in Seville, in the boardroom of an instant ramen company in Tokyo, learning to roll out the perfect pizza dough in Naples, drinking midday mezcal in Oaxaca. 

Anya and I spoke via video call a couple of weeks back, coincidentally on the day the book came out in the UK.

National Dish is out now, published by ONE, an imprint of Pushkin Press. Find all of the Lecker Book Club reads on my Bookshop.org list.

Support Lecker by becoming a paid subscriber on Patreon, Apple Podcasts and now on Substack.

Music is by Blue Dot Sessions.

[00:00:05] Before we start, I just wanted to let you know that you can become a paid subscriber of Lecker on Substack, patreon, or Apple Podcasts, and you'll get access to exclusive content to hear and read. Subscriptions really help support Lecker so if you're in a position to do that and you'd like to, head to leckerpodcast.com/support to find out more.

[00:00:32] This is Lecker. I'm Lucy Dearlove. This month on The Lecker Book Club: National Dish by Anya von Bremzen. Conversations around food often, rightly, touch on attribution, ownership, and identity, especially when it comes to certain dishes. But this subject is so, so complicated, and many dishes and foods that we consider to be deeply entrenched within a country's culinary history and culture are no more than PR exercises.

[00:01:07] Dreamed up a few decades ago in national dish around the world in search of food, history, and the meaning of home and Yvonne Bremsen explores whether we can find nationhood on a plate and what it says about us that we're so obsessed with looking for it there. This book very much was about listening.

[00:01:26] It was searching for home, which subtitle. Yes, to some extent for myself, but I wanted to see how other people perceived it. I loved this book. It's fascinating and surprising, but also Anya is just such a great, dynamic writer that you feel like you're on the road with her. Party hopping at the Semina Santa in Seville in the ramen company in Tokyo, learning to roll out.

[00:01:51] The perfect pizza dough in Naples, drinking midday mezcal in Oaxaca. Anya and I spoke via video call a couple of weeks back, coincidentally on the day the book came out in the UK, and we talked about all of the above and much more when it comes to the thorny issue of the national dish.

[00:02:15] Anya, thank you so much for doing this. I really appreciate it and I just want to say first of all how much I loved National Dish. It's such a great book. It's so interesting and I learned so much from it but it's also just incredibly fun. Like it's a really enjoyable book to read and I feel like I came out of it...

[00:02:34] Wanting to go on holiday with you, because I just feel like you must be a really enjoyable person to go and eat new things and travel to new places with. So first of all, thank you very much for writing it. And can I ask you, as a kind of starter question, what drew you to the idea of the national dish in the first place?

[00:02:53] Anya von Bremzen: It's actually something that I've been thinking about for quite a while because, um, my career in food is quite accidental. I was a concert pianist and then I had a hand injury. I had a hand injury. I was looking for something to do. I translated a cookbook from Italian and I thought, Oh, I should write my own.

[00:03:13] And my ever first cookbook was called Please to the Table, the subtitled, unfortunately, the Russian cookbook. But in fact, it was about the cuisines of the former. Soviet empire, all the different republics, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Georgia, which are all now independent countries. But as the book came out in 1919, the Soviet Union went bust.

[00:03:36] And this republic, former republics of an empire became independent countries. And, uh, over the years, I literally watched in real time as they established their national canons, their national histories and their national cuisines. So it just made me realize how recent. This some of this nation building is and often how constructed and I've been thinking about this ever since and now in the age of this intense globalization, what is a national cuisine?

[00:04:08] What is a national dish? On the one hand, the world is becoming more and more same. You can eat ramen, instant ramen in remote Andean or Mexican indigenous villages, or you can have sushi at any swishy place from Istanbul to Dubai to wherever. At the same time, as kind of the other side of the coin, our compulsion to tie food to place, to search out the local, the so called authentic, is stronger than ever in response to this globalization.

[00:04:41] So I thought it would be a really good time to explore this through food, because food is a subject that tells us so much about so many things.

[00:04:50] Lucy Dearlove: Yeah, absolutely. And I think, yeah, that point about it being a particularly sort of pertinent thing at this particular moment is something that really struck me when reading it because I think it really kind of sits so fascinatingly alongside And I think we Conversations which are, you know, particularly, like, really ongoing in the kind of British food media.

[00:05:12] But I think, like, elsewhere in the English speaking food media world, I couldn't speak to, like, any, any other medias. But, um, the idea of, kind of, ownership, attribution, appropriation, and it's just all, everything is so blurred. So you think that it's because of this globalization that this kind of desire and need to attribute things, do you think that's the main reason for it or do you have any other theories about why it might be the case at this particular moment in time?

[00:05:39] Anya von Bremzen: I think nationalism has been around for a long time as long as nations have been with us and this kind of proprietary, uh, patriotic feelings. Uh, stalked whenever a nation is in trouble, for instance, such as what's happening with the war in Ukraine, for example. So there are many reasons for that. And it's been around.

[00:06:00] It's just telling stories through food. It's actually quite recent. I mean, food has always been an important part of the narrative, but in the so called food writing space, in the intellectual space, food used to be something, you know, for ladies who write cookbooks, right? And now we have serious scholars and serious writers examining it to look at other phenomena.

[00:06:22] So, um, because of the media. Because of social media, because food is always with us on TikTok, on Instagram, we finally realized how many stories we can tell through food.

[00:06:35] Lucy Dearlove: Yeah, totally. It's actually, I saw a TikTok the other day that really reminded me of this book and it was somebody breaking down the idea of Pad Thai as a national dish and how it was, that was invented as a marketing tool by the Thai government as well, which I had no idea about.

[00:06:48] So I feel like, yeah, you're right. There's just this kind of, for sure. culture of storytelling in all these different forms and that's, yeah, really exciting and it's a really good sort of moment to bring this to light.

[00:06:58] Anya von Bremzen: To go back to your question about cultural appropriation, the reason is we're hearing about it so much is because we're finally paying attention to racial injustice, to power struggles, uh, and again food is such an interesting way.

[00:07:15] through an interesting lens through which to talk about it. But at this point, I feel that these phrases have been so overused that I feel that it will be maybe useful to talk about racial injustice directly, as opposed to saying, well, he appropriated my mofongo or my sushi or whatever. It's, it's, it's kind of almost becoming meaningless, uh, at this point.

[00:07:38] And I think the only thing that's going to really change the world effect change is political action. Yeah. Uh, it's political engagement and I always joke for if there was a donate button every time we use the word cultural appropriation, the phrase, it might've been more helpful. We, we really need to stay engaged and we can't just kind of, uh, disassociate ourselves just because we use these trendy terms.

[00:08:05] Lucy Dearlove: Yeah. Yeah, totally. I think that's, yeah, that's such a good point because the, yeah, when you put it in kind of more blunt terms, we are talking about racial injustice and I think people can pussyfoot around that issue a bit. So yeah, I think that's such a good point. How did you go about narrowing down which dishes to include in the book?

[00:08:24] Anya von Bremzen: Well, that was quite difficult because as you can imagine, every country has its own national dish. There is the aforementioned Pad Thai, uh, there's Feijoada Brazil and all these dishes tell important stories. I didn't want to be total neophyte. I wanted to go back to places that I've researched before that I visited where I had contacts and I also wanted to look at foods that are truly iconic and everyone can relate to.

[00:08:51] So pizza in Naples. Natural choice. In Japan, ramen, you know, something that everyone knows, everyone cooks from this packet, rehydrates, as well as rice, boiled rice, another cornerstone of Japanese diet. I wanted to look at tapas in Spain. Cause it's such an important way of not just eating, but socializing small bites, little plates to share.

[00:09:17] They brought down the tyranny of the white tablecloth of the French. Yeah. I started in France because that's where. An explicitly nationalistic discourse about food started. It's the culture that gave us terms like chef and gastronomy. It's where the restaurant was invented, believe it or not. It didn't exist in its current form in the 1760s.

[00:09:41] Sauces and the great self importance and pomposity. And the idea that food was something uniquely French, we had to examine this. And as my French dish, I chose pot a feu, which translates as pot on the fire and essentially is a boiled dinner. But it's really been consciously elevated to the status of a natural dish.

[00:10:02] Then I go to Mexico and I examine the corn maize tortilla and the female indigenous labor behind it, as well as mole. Which is this complicated multi ingredient stew that contains elements from Spain, from the old country, and as well as indigenous elements. And it kind of represents what the Mexicans call mestizaje, the fusion of these elements in national identity.

[00:10:28] And because I have a home in Istanbul, I look at meze, another important small plates tradition, and how that reflects the complicated multicultural Ottoman past. Because Ottoman Empire dominated so much of the world. But it's been replaced in Turkey and other countries with nation states and a different definition of identity.

[00:10:52] And then I finally end in Ukraine with Ukrainian Borsh.

[00:10:55] Lucy Dearlove: It's such a journey around, around the world, really. I mean, that's kind of the subtitle of the book. But yeah, so many fascinating stories. I think one of the things that really struck me in the opening chapter in France. And this is a theme that I feel like comes up again and again in the book.

[00:11:11] It's almost like the tension between the myth and the romantic nature of this national dish, but then the reality of what people are eating and cooking, um, and I think it's like the French plat preferé is, is couscous. And there's almost like a similar tension in Japan with this kind of, really elevated ritualized idea of Japanese meals and the kind of construct of rice and the dishes alongside it.

[00:11:34] And then the national reliance and obsession with convenience stores. And I just wondered if that was, that tension, was, were you aware of that kind of, I don't even know if tension is the right word, but were you aware of those two things coexisting? And was that something you wanted to kind of. Look at in the book,

[00:11:51] Anya von Bremzen: I was aware in part, but not to which extent it's actually the dominating the dominant reality in Japan, for instance, yes, I knew that people had globalized pallets and they had access to everything, but I wasn't aware of them when you talk to a Japanese person and you talk about McDonald's, which is McDonald's, they tell you, Oh, it's actually a Japanese.

[00:12:13] I wasn't aware, for instance, how drastically declining the rice consumption is. So on the one hand, it's a cornerstone of washoku, this traditional Japanese meal that got UNESCO status and that Japanese are very proud of. On the other hand, no one wants to eat rice anymore. Uh, so yeah, when you look, I hadn't looked at the hard statistics before I started researching this book and the statistics are incredible.

[00:12:39] I mean, people are turning away from their traditional diets because frankly, there's so much choice. In Japan, they're obsessed with bread, shokupan, right, as well as rice, as well as so many other things. We just have so much choice, and it's not always the old grandma dish that we turn to, even though we might be proud of it, and even though we might serve it for a holiday, and we have a sentimental, uh, nostalgic attachment to it.

[00:13:05] Lucy Dearlove: Yeah, I think nostalgia just is the thing that sort of always creeps into it, and... Yeah, I kind of, I, I don't know how I feel about it in lots of ways because I think, I mean, I'm English, so we have a complicated relationship with the idea of the national dish because our food culture is so like, I guess fractured is maybe the word and we have national dishes, but they are, um, in the example of maybe fish and chips and chicken tikka masala, they're the products of migration in themselves, which is, you know, really interesting in and of itself and maybe reflective of like what England and, it's other nations within the United Kingdom did in the past.

[00:13:41] But in terms of the food that I eat and cook at home, like, I don't think they have any relation to any idea of nationalism. Because, yeah, it is very globalized. In terms of what happened within the domestic sphere, and then what within, I guess outside of that, whether that's within restaurants or within kind of policy, do you think there's always a bit of a disconnect with those two environments in terms of how a nation views its cooking or its eating?

[00:14:10] Anya von Bremzen: It's hard to tell. I think you have to go nation by nation and moment by moment. Um, what, the other thing that struck me as I was researching the book is how transactional, how shifting and how fluid these things can be. So there's, there are no yes or no answers to these complicated conceptual questions.

[00:14:30] Sometimes these patriotisms are heightened by situation as we see in Ukraine with a war, for example, maybe the Ukrainians were craving sushi and ramen and pizza, but now they're all united. Behind borscht, because it's a symbol of resistance for them. Identities as well are extremely transactional. I have this, uh, very funny scene in the Paris chapter about Pot à feu, where I go to a Moroccan butcher, a Maghrebi Boucherie, in a multicultural neighborhood in Paris, and I ask for meats for Pot à feu.

[00:15:05] The guy, you know, proudly just puts, you know, the entire classic selection. And I'm saying, well, I actually want something different, because it's from a 19th century... And these people who just before were talking in Berber and in Arabic and in broken French and when they were bashing Paris and saying like what a horrible place it was, they're all suddenly looking at me, all this, you know, women in headscarves, you know, Berber men, and they say, but Madame, this is not a port a feu.

[00:15:30] Do you know what French national patrimony is? And I'm like, Oh my God, these people just like two minutes ago hated everything here, but now I offended them. I am the intruder and they're defending French culinary patrimony. So there you go. I mean, who and who am I again? That Borscht episode really brought home my own sort of existential homelessness.

[00:15:52] Because I was someone from Moscow who speaks Russian, who thinks in Russian, but I am so opposed to what Putin has done, and I just saw loath everything about Russia. I, I don't want to have anything to do with that place anymore. I don't want to ever go back to Moscow.

[00:16:07] Lucy Dearlove: Yeah, of course. At what point did you realize that the Bosch, the epilogue where you consider the Ukrainian dish, at what point did you realize that was how the book had to end?

[00:16:19] Anya von Bremzen: Unfortunately, at the point where the war started, uh, because as I was finishing a book, I had something else in mind. I wanted to make Thanksgiving, which is a classic American meal in my very multicultural neighborhood where 160 languages are spoken. So I thought, wow, it'd be cool to go on and just interview all these people from different countries, what Thanksgiving means to them as an invented tradition.

[00:16:43] But unfortunately, then the war broke out. And a huge pot of borscht sat in my fridge, it was made by my mom, and it kind of seemed very tragically where I had to end the book. I mean, it's like one chapter of the book I wish I didn't have to write.

[00:16:58] Lucy Dearlove: Yeah, absolutely. But it is at the same time so important, like obviously it's tragic that it has to be written, but, and I think that is another example of the constant shifting of the importance of, yeah, I guess finding that solidarity and finding that nationhood in whatever form that might exist for you through food. Um, yeah, I thought it was really moving, um, to see in a situation that is still ongoing. Yeah. This idea of kind of constant evolution and shifting was. So, yeah, so interesting, because that could look like something really huge, like, you know, huge global event like the, the Russia Ukraine war, or it could look like the Spanish government changing the legislation about how their Iberico pigs can be fed.

[00:17:48] Did you ever get a sense? In the research and writing of this book, like where we might be going with this idea? Is there any sense of like what the national dish of the future might look like? Do you think we will have a completely different conception of what that means in, I don't know, 20, 50 years? I realize this is a very different, difficult question, but I think the idea has changed so much in very recent times. I'd love to know if you ever got a sense of what it might look like.

[00:18:13] Anya von Bremzen: I can only tell you what happened in the last. Five, 10 years, which is on the one hand, the intensification of globalization and the erasure of borders and, uh, of national identities because everything is so digitalized. And on the other hand, the intensification of nationalism, because I think it's a natural, almost a natural reaction to protect what we think is our identity, to protect our roots.

[00:18:40] I mean, the populist dictators. That unfortunately are on the rise, you know, the Putins, the Bolsonaros, the Trumps are stalking these feelings. But I think whatever the dish of the future is, is going to be virtual. If we have a future at all, unfortunately, as this planet, we've just had the hottest summer on record.

[00:19:00] I mean, as, as I talked to you, we are almost 40 degrees, over 40 degrees. here in New York in September.

[00:19:07] Lucy Dearlove: Yeah, that, that was something that did strike me. I mean, I guess strikes me generally when it comes to food writing and thinking about it that does it all seem a little bit futile in the idea of whether we'll even be able to eat a lot of the things that we currently eat in even five years.

[00:19:26] Does this book feel like an act of preservation in that sense? Was that something that was on your mind when you were writing it?

[00:19:32] Anya von Bremzen: Not exactly. I think it's a chronicle of what people are saying. It's a snapshot of a moment now. Am I... For or against nationalism. I mean, like I came into this project as an extreme cosmopolitan who was very anti nationalist because precisely I was seeing all these populist dictators, all the ugly sides of nationalism.

[00:19:55] But they came out of it with respect, having listened to so many people with respect for people's idea of who they are, right? Whether I agree with them or not, you know, this book very much was about listening. It was searching for home, which is in the subtitle, yes, to some extent for myself, but I wanted to see how other people perceived it.

[00:20:16] Politics were changing. In Spain, for instance, this horrible, toxic populist party, Vox, was gaining more and more popularity. And they were literally about, you know, bringing back the Catholic Reconquista and Isabella and Ferdinand and Inquisition. But now, recently, they lost seats. So these, these, these things are very fast.

[00:20:38] They move too fast for anyone to be able to predict anything. And, uh, yeah, the world is so unexpected. Who could have envisaged that will be locked down in a pandemic and the pandemic also. Brought forth interesting things about nationalism. On one hand, you had this closed borders. You had vaccine nationalism.

[00:20:59] You had this is mine and this is yours. On the other hand, you had unprecedented international cooperation in creating vaccines. You had this stunning rise of digital commerce across, you know, across the globe because you couldn't travel. So again, it goes both ways. And also you had this huge global trend of sourdough baking, right?

[00:21:18] So like the entire world was posting their mason jars of starters, you know, bubbling away. It was like, suddenly it was like, everyone was eating the same thing. Or at least, you know, the hipster, the hipster contingent, right?

[00:21:32] Lucy Dearlove: Yeah, a certain type of person who exists, I guess, all over the world was eating a certain type of thing.

[00:21:37] Yeah, that's really interesting, actually, because, um, on a separate project, I've been... Looking at, yeah, sourdough bread essentially, but the homogenization of certain types of sourdough bread, which I guess is sort of also relevant to this conversation because it's kind of a, like an almost like conflict between people have this very specific idea about what a sourdough loaf looks like.

[00:21:57] And that is essentially, you know, the kind of tartine like San Francisco white loaf. But then you have the idea about, well, what flowers, what What grains do you actually grow in your country? And And moving forward, how can farmers grow what's good for them, what's good for the soil, what's good for us. So you kind of have this, yeah, it's a good example I think, because there's this tension between what people want and what they see other people eating because of globalization and, you know, being able to access anywhere in the world instantly.

[00:22:27] And then actually, um, Yeah, the idea of place and geography, and I like the, um, the kind of mention of the, the European concept of terroir in the context of the Japanese sake producers, and I thought that was super interesting, and I didn't actually know that That idea of terroir was, was European because I guess I've seen it in so many other contexts.

[00:22:50] Anya von Bremzen: No, it was the French, French articulated, they had the word, they first articulated this, you know, since the 17th and 18th century. It's a very, not just European, it's a very French concept that's been adopted and borrowed everywhere. But it is interesting what you say that, that kind of, uh, extreme local war culture globally in the end is used to produce Something that is instantly recognizable, whether it's a tartine loaf or a certain beer, right, craft brew.

[00:23:20] But yeah, it's, uh, it's on the one hand very homogenous and in another way, very specific. to place. It's a good point. Yeah. In some ways without even realizing it, it's very specific to place because you have your own cultural understanding of something that yeah, someone else might not have. So yeah, it's so interesting because of Instagram.

[00:23:41] Yeah, no, yeah, it really because of social media, right?

[00:23:44] Lucy Dearlove: Yeah. Something else that occurred to me when I was, I think it was particularly in the Maybe it was actually in the Spain chapter and I thought of it because I'm, I went to San Sebastian earlier in the year and San Sebastian is, I think I've had more, I had more recommendations from friends than anywhere else I'd ever been just, um, as soon as I said I was going there I just had people sending me like endless lists of pintxo bars and Michelin starred restaurants and it just become this real kind of touchstone for people who are interested in food, like going on holiday and eating there.

[00:24:19] And when I was there, I met a friend who has a restaurant there and has lived there for quite a long time now. And I just asked her, I was like, did the locals go to these places? Because when I was in there, it seemed to be almost entirely tourists. And she was like, yeah, not really. Um, because they just, they can't go there and have a relaxing drink anymore.

[00:24:37] And it's, that sort of really struck me, this idea of almost the cult, the food culture is like a theme park. And I guess that sort of taps into the nostalgia element. But it's almost like at that point, are you preserving the culture or are you stagnating it? I was reminded of it when you talked about cooking the museum piece of a French meal.

[00:24:56] And just that idea of like, where does the line begin between preservation and then Stagnation, I guess that's my point. Preservation And does it preserve anything?

[00:25:06] Anya von Bremzen: Yeah, no, culinary tourism is a very interesting subject and, um, again, I don't have an answer. I think it's a little bit of both because without the interest from abroad, a lot of these places maybe would have shut down.

[00:25:25] Yeah. But now that they are catering almost exclusively to foreigners. Are they preserving something or are they changing it? Um, again, there's no, there's no good or bad. I mean, I'm not someone who essentializes culture and who says, well, it has to be this way. And I want to be in a place where, you know, all the grandmas and grandpas are playing cards and having their, you know, fish soup, whatever.

[00:25:47] Because I think that, that, that idea is, uh, also it's a touristic idea, right? It's, it's us imposing. Our own vision on, on the world, but, uh, I'm not sure what the, what the correct answer is. I mean, just try to choose places that are less, uh, less crowded now, but I'm seeing it everywhere. Europe is just because of cheap flights because of Airbnb, you know, because of this like huge global conglomerates, it's completely changing the face of, uh, of cities.

[00:26:22] Lucy Dearlove: Yeah, and you're obviously, you know, you with living both in New York and Istanbul, I guess you see not both sides of the coin, but you kind of, like, Istanbul is a place that is, I mean, as New York is, but I think maybe in a slightly different way, Istanbul is a place that is, there is so much tourism there and it must be such a presence.

[00:26:41] Do you feel like you have, not a unique perspective, but did that give you an insight that was useful in writing the book?

[00:26:47] Anya von Bremzen: Yes, absolutely. I mean, it, it, it helps to be from different places and to have different relations. to places and have people to interview. But Istanbul, yeah, they've just finished a huge cruise port right near my house.

[00:26:58] And you know, sometimes you have three behemoth ships parked there a day, you know, just gorging. People looking for a quote unquote authentic Turkish experience and uh, all the local entrepreneurs, you know, happily obliging them and saying, yes, lady, lady, lady, lady, come to my kebab place.

[00:27:17] Lucy Dearlove: And who can blame them, you know?

[00:27:19] Anya von Bremzen: Obviously, no. You have to look at it this way, I mean, for San Sebastian is a wealthy city, for... Places in Mexico and in so many other parts of the world, Africa, tourism is their only source of income. And can you blame them? And can you say it's a bad thing that they're actually earning a living feeding semi fake food to hungry travelers?

[00:27:42] There's just so many ethical equations here. But we should be thinking about it. I think my book is an invitation to consider these issues, to, I don't have easy answers. Nobody does. But I think again, food represents so many different things. It's a portal into culture, history, economics, race, race relations, and so many other things.

[00:28:07] Lucy Dearlove: Speaking of kind of the ethical, I guess, the ethical consideration when it comes to this idea of the national dish, that was something that was particularly present in, as you just mentioned, in the Mexican, in the Oaxacan chapter. Yeah, I was really struck by the idea of the labor ethics of indigenous female labor around the tortilla making, particularly in the context of kind of, there was an example you used where it was a chef from a restaurant in Mexico City coming and buying the tortillas and then selling them in the restaurant at a price that the person that had made the tortilla could never have afforded.

[00:28:43] Yeah, it just, that just felt, there's something that felt so wrong about that, which is obviously a really obvious thing to say, but I guess there's an inevitability to it?

[00:28:52] Anya von Bremzen: I don't know. It's on one hand wrong, I mean, it's not, he wasn't buying the tortillas, he was buying the corn itself, uh, because you make tortillas in place and there's this lady who made tamales and she was paid 20 a day to come and demonstrate in Mexico City, so on the one hand there's injustice, on the other hand there's association.

[00:29:10] With the celebrity chefs and with other celebrity chefs and the attention of like whiter Mexico, uh, the whiter mestizo society to indigenous labor and to indigenous products. It's a good thing, right? Because without it, where would they be? And um, yeah. So again, it's, it's, it's a two pronged, uh, issue. Yeah.

[00:29:31] Lucy Dearlove: But then, yeah, it just, it was, I think so illuminating to me to realize the kind of almost invisible labor that goes into these dishes, you know, whether that's factory made ramen, instant ramen, or the production of nixtamalized Maize for tortillas. Is that something you wanted to draw attention to as well?

[00:29:55] Anya von Bremzen: Obviously, and the whole issue of gender, because when we talk about national canons, a lot of them originate from the 19th century, and a lot of them is from men. I mean, think about French cuisine, like all these famous chefs, you know, the Escoffiers, the Karems, um, they kind of set out the canon. There was this famous gastronome called...

[00:30:15] Lucy Dearlove: Kornonsky, who traveled around France cataloging all the French dishes. And he traveled, I think, in a Bugatti or, you know, a Rolls Royce with a driver. Wow. And so, yeah, naturally he included a lot of dishes with foie gras in them into the national canon. And only later... Comes the cuisine bourgeois, which is from women in Italy.

[00:30:36] It's, uh, Pelegrino Artusi, who writes the definitive national Italian book. Again, a rich white guy from the north, from the wealthy north. And his book basically almost ignores the south, the mezzogiorno. So you have this kind of situation, but you know, then later. You have more attention being paid to women, but still, I mean, who are especially in the global South, who are the people, you know, really going through the labor of making this food and do acknowledge that labor besides just, you know, romanticizing, Oh, here's this beautiful lady, you know, let's take a snapshot of her making whatever backbreaking dishes making, yeah, all this ethical considerations, So race consideration, the indigenous labor that I wanted to highlight just so the next time we eat something, not for us to feel guilty necessarily, although in many cases we should, but something to be aware of because it makes food so much richer when it comes garnished with a narrative that tells us something important about the world.

[00:31:46] Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. In the kind of, I guess, the conversations you've had so far about the book, have you been surprised by any, any of the reactions to it? Have there been any reactions to it that, yeah, I guess you didn't anticipate when you were writing it?

[00:32:01] Anya von Bremzen: No, I think, I think, uh, some of the subjects are difficult, some of the subjects are... Not to say explosive, but you know, who owns a culture and what I, a white woman with all the privileges, do in writing about it. So I addressed it as much as I could, but, uh, I am who I am. I mean, I came to the United States as a refugee from a very difficult place and this difficult place has become uglier since, um, so there's always a political story there.

[00:32:32] It's about cultural sensitivity ultimately. And I think I was extremely aware. Of all these issues, because as I was finishing the book and working on it, the whole racial thing exploded in the United States, all over the world. The pandemic happened, which exposed so many ugly things about us. So yeah, one, one can't disassociate it from, from, ha

[00:32:57] Lucy Dearlove: Lecker is hosted and produced by me, Lucy Dearlove. Thanks to my guest on this episode, Anya von Bremzen. National Dish is out now, published by ONE an imprint of Pushkin Press. As part of the monthly Lecker Book Club, I'll be writing about the book over on the Lecker substack on Patreon. And another reminder that you can sign up as a paid subscriber to support Lekker on Apple Podcasts, Patreon and also now on substack.

[00:33:24] Links are in the show notes. And to any paid subscribers who are listening here, thank you so much for your continued support. Music on this episode is by Blue Dot Sessions. Thanks for listening.