LEYLA KAZIM
Presenter for BBC’s The Food Programme and writer of ‘The Cutlery Chronicles’
Photo credit: thecutlerychronicles.com
Set the scene, where are you answering this from & eating right now?
At my little corner desk my husband made in our dining room and I’ve just had breakfast – some organic oats with chia seeds and oat milk, with a squirt of organic raw cacao chocolate sauce and a cup of goji berry tea. I’m not actually that pretentious, honest. I think dinner tonight might be a Turkish red lentil and bulgar soup, but I haven’t decided yet.
Tell us a little bit about yourself
I grew up with my parents and younger brother in Welling in South East London suburbia, where they still live now. But I moved out at 18 when I started University College London and lived in student halls. Since then I’ve lived all over London. And I currently live in South West London in what I like to call ‘greater Wimbledon’. Also known as Mitcham.
What’s the vibe of what you write about?
What inspires me to create content is what inspires me in life — broadening my horizons with travel, appreciating the beauty of this planet and its people, experiencing things I haven’t before, and exploring cuisines from around the world.
I’m on one big journey myself, saying yes to as many opportunities as I can, and seeing where they take me. A big part of travel for me is quashing pre-conceptions, and fully immersing myself in new cultures. It’s sharing these experiences, and hoping they might ignite a sense of adventure in others, that inspires me to create content
How would you describe your own food?
I’m a really keen and (very) amateur gardener, I like to grow as many edibles as I can in my wee urban garden. The best gardening advice I was given was ‘grow what you actually like to eat’. In my garden you’ll mostly find Mediterranean classics such as tomatoes, aubergines, chillies and cucumbers. I think that in itself is a good indication of the kind of food I cook at home the most, which I’d say is Turkish / Mediterranean.
One of my favourite ever dishes is one of comfort and joy that reminds me of my childhood so much. At home we just called it ‘Turkish macaroni’. It’s a Turkish Cypriot pasta dish with just five ingredients: hellim (or halloumi), pasta, dried mint, chicken stock, lemon juice. It’s a plate of salty, lemon-y, chicken-y pasta and it is the stuff of dreams. Here’s the recipe on my blog – everyone needs to make this.
Who have been the biggest food influences in your life? How have your parents / family heritage influenced your own cooking today?
I was brought up surrounded by exceptional cooking from my Mauritian mother and Turkish-Cypriot father; appreciating the huge range of flavours available in the culinary world is something I actively seek out and happily partake in on a daily basis. And so, naturally, I spent the best part of 2015 on one big eight month long trip, eating my way around the world.
How does it make you feel when you’re asked the question ‘where are you from?’
This is great timing as I brought this question up on my Instagram stories recently, as I’ve been sharing with my audience examples of everyday racism people experience that my followers have kindly been sending through to me.
For me personally, the question ‘where are you from?’ doesn’t offend me as much as I know it offends others. I think that may be because my accent quite easily identifies me as a Londoner (the saaaaaaf London twang comes out more if I’ve had a drink or two). And so when I am asked that question, by say, another Londoner or someone I’ve met in London, I know they are most likely referring to my ethnicity i.e. the way I look.
I am half Mauritian and half Turkish Cypriot, but my mother’s grandparents were of Indian, Portuguese, Italian and French descent, so I have a look that people find really hard to pin down. Is she Spanish? Italian? From the Middle East? Mexican? South American? The Indian subcontinent? It really works in my favour when travelling because in most of the countries I visit, I look like I could potentially be a native. Until I open my mouth.
So when people look at me, with their head cocked and an eye half squinted, trying to work out my ethnicity, then ask me the question, ‘where are you from?’, I interpret it more as harmless curiosity. I pretty much always reply with ‘take a guess’. Mostly for my own entertainment, to see what they come up with and to see if a new country is added to the list.
If people ask me ‘where are you from?’ while I am travelling, I will answer with ‘I’m from London’. In my opinion, it’s a totally reasonable question to ask a fellow traveler in a country you are both visiting – I would ask exactly the same. And I too would expect the response of where they live, as opposed to their ethnicity.
In that situation, the ethnicity conversation might come at a later point, once you’ve got to know the person better. But it’s a question I always want to ask people myself, as I am very interested in the cultures and ethnicities that make people who they are.
It does get a bit annoying when I think the person has been lazy in trying to work out my ethnicity. So for example, they see I have brown skin and their guess is I must be ‘Indian’. The equivalent of looking at an East Asian person and assuming they are ‘Chinese’. Yes, India and China have two of the biggest populations in the world, but there are so many other countries that any physical characteristics I might have can be from. When people assume a brown person is ‘Indian’ or an Asian person is ‘Chinese’, it’s often a good indication of their lack of travel experiences.
So in summary, for me, it really depends on the location and the context in which the question is posed.
What are your thoughts on the word ‘authenticity’ in the context of food?
For me, an authentic dish is one that you would actually find in the country of origin. Spaghetti bolognese is not authentically Italian, because in Bologna (which is in the north) they would only ever eat the ragu with fresh egg tagliatelle or fettuccine. As spaghetti is a pasta that’s originally from the south.
Authenticity is important to me when I’m eating cuisines from other countries, as an experience as close to me actually being in that country as possible is what I’m after from the meal. And that may be because travel is such an integral part of my life.
This might also be why I prefer casual dining as opposed to high end, where the food tends to get a bit more fusion and a bit further away from the everyday food you might find in the country.
And what are your thoughts on the word ‘fusion’ in the context of food?
I’m just not a big fan of forced fusion. I appreciate some cuisines were borne out of fusion, such as Nikkei cuisine: a fusion Japanese and Peruvian food. I am all over these as they came to be organically.
But when restaurants combine cuisines that don’t traditionally have any connection, I’m less interested. I’m sure some of them are done well and I appreciate the innovation, it’s just unlikely I would visit somewhere like that unless I received a personal recommendation from someone’s opinion I trusted.
Thoughts on ‘cultural appropriation’ in the food world? Can anyone ‘own’ a cuisine?
It’s an interesting topic and I think again, it depends on the context.
There is of course nothing wrong with someone cooking a meal from a country they don’t necessarily identify with. We would hope this is happening all over the world; taking the time to recreate food from another culture is a fantastic way of breaking down cultural barriers.
I think the problem lies with when someone claims to have knowledge about a certain culture’s food, and / or profits from that ‘knowledge’ (restaurant, book, TV show etc.), when actually there is little evidence to support this.
If someone originally from Finland becomes obsessed with Sri Lanka, immerses themselves in Sri Lankan culture, has spent time living there, can speak the language, has learnt everything they know from the natives and then takes it upon themselves to share the country’s cuisine with the rest of the world through a cookbook, with respect and acknowledgement to the Sri Lankans who helped them do so, I think this is fine. As they are in a position of authority to be able to do so – they know their stuff.
If however this person then starts being offered opportunities over an equivalent author who has written a similar cookbook, with the same expertise and knowledge, but who is actually of Sri Lankan heritage, this is when problems can arise.
So yes, I think any person can absolutely be representative of a cuisine, but only if they have spent the time and effort to truly understand it and get beneath its skin. Some examples that come to mind where this is done well are Tomasina Miers with Mexican food and Fuchsia Dunlop with Chinese food.
How do you hope the narratives on race and food will develop in the post-Covid 19 world?
The reason I, and so many others, love travel so much is because it is surely the best way to smash through pre-conceptions and break down cultural barriers. When we are once again able to move freely post COVID-19, I hope people will see what a gift we’d been taking for granted travel really is. I hope we will approach travel with the ambition to immerse ourselves in new cultures so that we can acknowledge, celebrate, embrace and learn from our cultural differences, rather than persecute them.
Finally, the plug section…
Head to my blog thecutlerychronicles.com for my latest gastro travel articles, recipes and travel stories. Pop over to my Instagram @thecutlerychronicles for lots of visual food and travel inspiration, as well as my gardening and sourdough baking endeavours, on my stories. And also come say hi to me on Twitter or Facebook.
If you’re after some cool podcasts to listen to, some recent episodes of BBC Radio 4’s ‘The Food Programme’ I have presented include:
Island to Island: The journey of Mauritian cuisine
How food on film is the secret ingredient to storytelling
Sheffield: A story of a city through its food
Lights, Camera, Reaction: Life after Great British Bake Off with David Atherton
Follow Leyla on Instagram