Nyonya Cooking, a website that gives recipes for South East Asian dishes, found itself in a bit of a soup on Sunday after people started sharing one of its posts on how to make the ‘Asian flat croissant’. No, it wasn’t an Asian version of French croissant… it turned out to be the parotta.
The website itself appears to be of Asian origin, which made the odd nomenclature of the parotta even more strange. According to the person who pointed out the Nyonya Cooking’s post - @hellenus on Twitter – the website is Singaporean.You can see the original post of the recipe on the website here.
The photo, which went viral on Twitter, had the following description – “A flatbread with Indian origins and is extremely loved in countries like Malaysia and Singapore. Usually eaten with dhal, fish or chicken curry, roti canai is sometimes served sweet with condensed milk, banana or even chocolate cream.”
in other, non political but still enraging news: pic.twitter.com/bbEFM7jL7c
— Dee 方传嫣 (@hellenus) February 23, 2020
And social media users were quick to express their irk and amusement at the post. Many of them said in their comments that said that the website has misappropriated roti/parantha/parotta by naming it this way.
ഒലക്ക ... പ്ലാച്ചു ക്രോയ്ഷന്റ ഒന്നുമല്ല
— LuciferRage (@ModiAdolf) February 24, 2020
Its parotta.... lady...
Parotta and Beef fry..., pic.twitter.com/f7hHeuWtwv
Same energy pic.twitter.com/VACNbhSQR2
— Andrew Minghee Kim (@akimillustrates) February 23, 2020
So from now on croissant is a Puffed Up European Roti Canai I suppose
— teacolouredsky (@teacolouredsky) February 23, 2020
How to enrage two continents worth of people.
— Able Mcman (@AbleMcman) February 23, 2020
paratha. it’s not that difficult. *chai tea naan bread paani water what is this behaviour* https://t.co/mD7sgvq7P3
— Annapurna Nyshadham (@spillingmistake) February 24, 2020
French bloated roti canai https://t.co/yNnLzAApEJ pic.twitter.com/8u0laDcl22
— paih (@FzDanial) February 23, 2020
They really called a parratha an “Asian flat croissant” https://t.co/PErYK9NJ8W
— Rambo (@ramietwt) February 23, 2020
Two issues:
— Avid UK Nudist (@sidin) February 24, 2020
1. HAHAHAHAHAH ASIAN FLAT CROISSANT HAHAHAHAHAHA Your face is flat croissant rascal.
2. Anyone who eats Porotta with dhal must be immediately thrown into the sea. https://t.co/Xi6c8O132v
then croissant should be renamed as Fancily Rolled Canai https://t.co/jxhqpFwQBE
— VieN | commissions are open! (@ComicsByVieN) February 24, 2020
I don’t want my entire public engagement with identity politics to be “the worst thing is when white people say ‘chai tea’” but COME ON https://t.co/JPPOuTKqJN
— Jaya Saxena (@jayasax) February 23, 2020
Meanwhile, the website did respond to why it named the parotta say. The original poster shared a screenshot from the cooking website’s page where the Nyonya Cooking justified why they called it ‘Asian Flat Croissant’.
“Thank you for your constructive comment. We just want to make a fun title for our marketing content to make it more relatable for our audiences who are not familiar with words such as canai, paratha, paratha or paratha. If you take some time to visit our website, the name (since publication in 2016) has always been how it is known in our region. Have fun with the recipe,” read a screenshot of Nyonya Cooking’s response.
here's the rationale from their page. I................ pic.twitter.com/Z0ykv1HSMX
— Dee 方传嫣 (@hellenus) February 23, 2020