Everything I cook is authentic Californian cuisine!

I once searched every supermarket within a 15 mile radius of my home for lady fingers to make Tiramisu. No luck. So, I made a white cake on a sheet pan, and cut it as needed to fit my dessert dish. It may not have been "authentic," but it sure was delicious!

I'm no stickler for authenticity: I love unexpected notes in staple dishes (jalapeno in my spatzle, for instance). That said, I do balk at the obviously artificial. (I'm stumped for specific examples right now, so I'll just reference Sandra Lee's canon and leave it at that.)

I think that's a really good point - most 'authentic' dishes arose out of neccesity and improvisation. What we think of as the backbone of a cuisine usually is because that was what has been available to that culture historically, and through those limitations they have found amazing ways to use very few ingredients.

One example would be bacalau (dried salted cod). In Portugal, this is abundent and there are literally at least 1000 recipes on how to prepare it. In fact, I found a cookbook in a Portuguese supermarket called '1000 recipes for Bacalau'. I would never cook bacalau. Too much work. But if I did something zany with it, I wouldn't be fussed about 'authenticity'.

What irks me is all these 'authentic' foods were the foods of the everyday people in their own contexts, but then we transpose them over to our context and charge a premium for them and make a huge deal about 'authenticity'. In Sydney right now it's things like tapas. Then people say stuff like 'Oh, well THAT'S not how they make that in SPAIN. I'd know because I've been there.'

Well, if I was making chicken soup (for instance) it should be made with homemade stock. Why? One, we are surrounded by pre-roasted chickens at the least that can be easily turned into stock with a few leftover veggies and water. You can also go with fresh chicken, but for ease of production, pre-roasted chicken is easier (mainly due to the lack of skimming of protein foam).
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Second, canned/boxed stock is usually loaded with salt and really doesn't taste that good. You can always add salt to the stock, but taking it away is problematic. After that, I think it is up to the cook.

My style of cooking is all about improvisation. I enjoy improvising every night. We buy what is on special and in season. I never shop based on recipes I want to cook. I look at my fridge, pantry, number of mouths to feed, appropriateness etc. and I start planning a meal based on those things.

Even when I write down a recipe of a dish I have cooked (after cooking it and deeming it a success), the next time I make the dish, there is always something different about it. Tweaks here and there make things better.

I struggle to follow recipes to the letter. Which is why I never had much success with baking. I'm too creative to be a baker.

Following recipes is ok, but it's when you can make something delicious from the heart that you really start to cook.

Authenticity doesn't matter to me one bit. I'd rather something be relevant and delicious than strictly authentic.

I'm with buda (above) improvisational, hopefully intuitive. The up side for me is that things never turn out the same. The downside for family and friends is that things never turn out the same.... When asked to "make that dish you made last holiday" I am usually clueless.

One aspect of authentic is that it closely resembles or duplicates the past. Good thing? Well, yes/no.

I usually make a new recipe "by the numbers" the first time, to get a sense of what it is supposed to be like; after that, I tend to improvise assuming I think it needs it. I do have a few family recipes (like my Hungarian grandmother's paprikash) that I make as she taught me (which was by doing, not by recipe) that I tend to make the same way because, for me, her dish IS paprikash. But I would never say someone who made it differently is not making an authentic dish--it just isn't my grandmother's dish. So when I have paprikash with tomatoes or sour cream (neither of which appear in my grandmother's version), I may still enjoy it, but it is not grandma's paprikash.

Authenticity per se is not a big deal to me, as long as the food tastes good!

For me, the antithesis of "authentic" is the contrived. Putting mango or basil or pomegranate in everything, for example (anyone see that episode of Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares where the one guy put pomegranate seeds in risotto?).

I'm constantly tweaking recipes based on what ingredients I have on hand. Some things, though, especially ethnic foods, should be left relatively alone. For instance, I don't think that Norwegian lefse should be filled with mango puree instead of the traditional butter and sugar. Some things could be cool - such as replacing the tomato sauce in a lasagna with roasted red pepper sauce - still Italian, just a little unconventional. Replacing it with, say, parsnip puree? Just weird.

So yeah, like kariwk said, the food just has to taste good! "Authenticity" is secondary.

For me what makes a dish authentic is if it can evoke a memory - or an image of the place where the dish is from. :)

This is like asking us "what is the meaning of life?"

:)

It's a topic for anthro classes (in fact I remember this discussion in anthro.) - a little pondering.

Here, we are just trying to get a good meal in us.

I will venture that restaurant-goers are more concerned about authenticity than cooks. As a cook, every meal is an improv.

The meal changes based on humidity, growing season, the terroir (taste of a place),....

My cassoulet may use imported ingredients and a recipe scrawled on a farmhouse, but it won't taste the same in 21st Century San Francisco as it would in Provence.

on a day to day basis it isn't something I think about when I am cooking but when I am making a special meal I like to look at traditional recipes.

I think that an distinction should be made between recipes that have a historicity and the ones that don't and that between key ingredients.

A soup made with chicken and with sometime added some form of noodle hast been made more or less all over the planet so there is no "authentic" recipe.

Lamb curry that is prepared in US I guess is an American interpretation of a Vindaloo that in turn is an Indian (Goa) interpretation of a Portuguese recipe.

Quite another matter is Paella. That is one the symbol of the Spanish cuisine with Valencian Paella the symbol of the city of Valencia. There is saffron a key ingredient.
So a "paella" without saffron is rice sauté with fish or whatever else. As it is a Tiramisù without Savoiardi.

What I never manage to understand is this need that many people seem to have, to call what they cook with well known names.
A Tiramisù without Mascarpone or without Savoiardi is a pudding, maybe very tasty, some people could find it even be better the original. But why the need to call it Tiramisù?
Rice sauté with whatever probably taste great. But why the need to call it Paella?
If I don't have the ingredients to prepare something I prepare something else. It's as easy as that.