I don't trust ethnic food recipes not made by their respective groups
Basically, I only trust ethnic food recipes that were created by the cultural group in question. For example, I don't trust Chinese food recipes made by anyone: It has to be either a Chinese person or at least someone who has either assimilated into or who has had 1st hand experience in Chinese culture. I'd probably trust a Chinese recipe from say someone like Francine Smith from American Dad (she's not Chinese but she was raised by Chinese parents), but not a Chinese American whose family completely assimilated into American culture and lost all ties to Chinese culture. Similarly, I wouldn't trust a recipe for Arabic food unless it was done by someone raised in or closely studied Arabic culture. The list goes on. The reason why is because if I want to have a certain cultural culinary experience, I feel that if it comes from people from other cultures, they often put their own cultural spin on it or modify it to suit their respective culture's palates, thus nullifying its authenticity. For example, I remember Gordon Ramsay trying to make pad thai and the Thai chef said it wasn't really pad thai.
So in the end, I usually only trust recipes written by people from the corresponding cultural group. I don't mean to say that the ones written by other cultural groups have no merit (I mean I love a lot of Western recipes from Chinese restaurants, and I often love to eat Chinese noodles from a Western pasta place), but I usually only leave the recipe writing to the pros when wanting a more authentic experience.
Is this normal?