Great celebrity chefs tell you what the original recipe is and how it came to be. If they publish a modification of a recipe, they tell you why they are changing it – to make it easier than the original without compromising on taste; or to modernise it if there are new ingredients that kick it up a notch; or to change the effect the dish has.
Then there are the other camp of celebrity chefs who will provide the minimum reference to a recipe, announce they’re going go show you “their version” (or not), and give you a recipe that will (hopefully) still taste good, but will ignore the political, cultural, historical, societal and personal significance that went into creating the original recipe – just so they can rubber stamp their name on it.
Maybe only the taste of food should matter.
But that’s like eating the icing on the cake and throwing the rest into the bin.
Cake deserves better.
And so do we.
