Authenticity

It is possible to be a little obsessive about authenticity. Those obsessives who assert, for instance, that cappuccino should never be drunk after 11 in the morning. Or that cheese and fish do not go together.

I have no difficulty with people putting into a meal whatever ingredients give them pleasure ... but my hackles are raised if someone asserts that it is a particular dish when it is in fact something possibly delicious but completely different. Quiche Lorraine, for example, should have double cream, eggs and bacon. Not cheese. Not onions. And Elizabeth David says so.

I feel the same way about Tricolore. Tomato, mozzarella and basil. NOT avocado, which is perfectly pleasant but is not an ingredient of Tricolore and does not go particularly well with mozzarella. As I was writing this, I mentioned I was writing about Tricolore and, immediately, the enquirer said: “Mozzarella, tomato and avocado?”

But on the subject of avocado, there is, in my view, no one authentic way of making guacamole. And the same is true of gazpacho - which does not even have to have tomatoes in it. Indeed, given that it came into existence long before the Spaniards sailed for the New World and discovered tomatoes in the process, some might say that tomato in gazpacho is inauthentic.