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Snobbery Helped Take the Spice Out of European Cooking (2015)
61–70 of 144 posts
Re: Snobbery Helped Take the Spice Out of European Cooking (2015)
#62In Italy we say: "A lot of spices are to cover the taste of bad ingredients". It means that if you use a lot of spices ( we _usually_ use only black pepper and salt ), you are going to cover the taste of the ingredients you are using, we believe that you need to use good ingredients to have flavourful recipes, if an ingredient tastes bad you shouldn't use it. Also we always search for the balance, there shouldn't be…
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Indian food is amazing, specially if you're vegetarian.
If someone would ask me to choose a menu for 5 days out of a week, for breakfast, lunch and dinner between a 5* Michelin chef or yellow lentil curry with 2 rotis and a coconut sembal, I would go with the curry. Any day.
When you look at vegetarian cuisine outside of india, with very few exceptions in terms of restaurants and few exceptions in terms of dishes, it looks like unimaginative dimwits took to the pans.
Re: Snobbery Helped Take the Spice Out of European Cooking (2015)
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
> An Italian friend was aghast that I would suggest putting Onion and Garlic in the same meal. It was strictly either/or for him. That's a new one for me. No mixing of the two? Surely the very basis of a good tomato sauce is sweated onions and garlic? Ditto for risotto..?
Not knowing where you are from, I'd take a guess at American as there is a sharp divide in garlic use between Italian and Italian-American cusine. Italian food typically has a lot less garlic in it and if you had it in any of the classic dishes like ragù alla bolognese or risotto alla milanese it would be surprising. Dishes like spaghetti alla puttanesca or aglio e olio are classic examples where it is used. Marinara…
I work at a foreign language instruction company. Two of the funniest moments happened at the same lunch. The Italians declaring, "Americans use too much garlic." And the Turkish declaring, "Americans have too many kinds of cheese. Cheese is just cheese."
I've been known to put garlic, onions, and shallots into a dish.
Re: Snobbery Helped Take the Spice Out of European Cooking (2015)
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
> One of my sous chefs dated an Indian women and despite being a blond, blue eyed German/Polish mixed male from the midwest he was the most vociferous about for Indian cuisine I have ever met, even Indians Why would somebody's hair/eye color matter when it comes to their culinary preferences?
> Why would somebody's hair/eye color matter when it comes to their culinary preferences? It's often cultural guilt, in my experience. The most non-Indian person often feels compelled to be the loudest voice in some sort of over-compensation for acceptance amongst those he seeks validation from. Food is seriously the most political thing in existence,. Also, I don't think St. Louis, where he was from, was exactly a b…
You need to do some introspection and ask yourself why you assume these things about people and food. This is not healthy.
It is not normal to make these assumptions about what people like because of assumptions about them due to where they are from.
It is bizarre, judgemental, and completely unsubstantiated. Let people like food (and things in general), stop over-complicating things and injecting your own political biases into it. Everything in life is political, what of it? Humans need to eat.
Also, good food and good food prep is not limited to any country or nationality.
Re: Snobbery Helped Take the Spice Out of European Cooking (2015)
#65Well if you look at Chinese cuisine or even better, Cantonese one and dim sum, you realize that it was really to extract the most from scarce ingredients, not much meats or vegetables with a lot of carbs, and lots of seasoning to cover low quality ingredients. (I don't say the cuisine is bad nor not tasty, I am only talking about the cooking part).
Chinese cuisine is very regional. It is certainly not about "lots of seasoning" or "low quality ingredients". Like all cuisines it requires good ingredients to get good results.
Dim Sum do not use lots of seasoning, they try to work with the flavours and textures of the ingredients. This is a common theme in Chinese cuisine.
Re: Snobbery Helped Take the Spice Out of European Cooking (2015)
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
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If you were trying to be diplomatic you wouldn't have included the word "woke". Different people like different things for different reasons . > refusal to follow this norm That's why it's called a norm, not a universal law. (Random personal anecdote: I last visited San Francisco a long time ago, in the early 2000s, but as a Brit it seemed to me that there were hardly any Indian restaurants compared to what I was use…
Go down into the Valley and you'll find many great ones. Got to go to where the Indian people are.
Re: Snobbery Helped Take the Spice Out of European Cooking (2015)
#67In Italy we say: "A lot of spices are to cover the taste of bad ingredients". It means that if you use a lot of spices ( we _usually_ use only black pepper and salt ), you are going to cover the taste of the ingredients you are using, we believe that you need to use good ingredients to have flavourful recipes, if an ingredient tastes bad you shouldn't use it. Also we always search for the balance, there shouldn't be…
I'm Indian, and some of the most amusing conversations I've had about food have been with Italians. An Italian professor was insistent that I stand up and defend the need for Indian food to use a million spices. He was proud of the fact that delicious Italian food could be whipped up using just three ingredients. I was in full agreement with him, that Italian food was wonderful, and that it was commendable how far th…
Re>> aghast that I would suggest putting Onion and Garlic in the same meal. It was strictly either/or for him.
American here. This is quite surprising to me - that wouldn't have occurred to me. Pan searing garlic and onion (before adding additional ingredients) is the "omg, what are you cooking?!, it smells _great_!!" starter kit in my home - when it's literally just those two things.
Re: Snobbery Helped Take the Spice Out of European Cooking (2015)
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm from center ( Sardinia ), we also do Aglio, olio e peperoncino. We do use spicy peppers, but I must say they are not so common, majority of recipes don't use them but some people add them to taste. I do also like to add some spiciness, but the problem is that if you add just a little bit too much you taste only the spiciness and nothing else
It works in reverse too. For people who habitually eat spicy food, when eating something non-spicy you can end up only tasting the "blandness" and not appreciating the flavours. Exactly like how cold food just doesn't taste as good as warm food (if it's meant to be warm), even though it's the exact same food.
> Exactly like how cold food just doesn't taste as good as warm food (if it's meant to be warm), even though it's the exact same food.
sometimes the temperature really does change the food though. for example, a cheese sauce is a delicate emulsion of fat and proteins that is only stable in a certain temperature range. outside that range, the fat separates and you no longer have a sauce. of course if you reheat it, you can get back to the same consistency. on the other hand, coffee chemically changes as it cools. even if you could ignore the temperature, the cold cup wouldn't be the same as the warm cup. and if you reheat it, it changes even more.
Re: Snobbery Helped Take the Spice Out of European Cooking (2015)
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have had similar conversations with Italians about food or coffee. They're very passionate about both and - at least when it comes to coffee - will also get into heated discussions over it with other Italians, not just foreigners. I think it's just the culture.
I'm Spanish, not Italian, but we also talk quite loud. Maybe all discussions look heated to foreigners.
In Portugal there's a saying: "he/she shouts like a Spaniard".
Then again who are we of all people to judge?
Re: Snobbery Helped Take the Spice Out of European Cooking (2015)
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
> One of my sous chefs dated an Indian women and despite being a blond, blue eyed German/Polish mixed male from the midwest he was the most vociferous about for Indian cuisine I have ever met, even Indians Why would somebody's hair/eye color matter when it comes to their culinary preferences?
> Why would somebody's hair/eye color matter when it comes to their culinary preferences? It's often cultural guilt, in my experience. The most non-Indian person often feels compelled to be the loudest voice in some sort of over-compensation for acceptance amongst those he seeks validation from. Food is seriously the most political thing in existence,. Also, I don't think St. Louis, where he was from, was exactly a b…
I don't think you actually addressed my question to be honest. In your previous comment you introduced racial undertones that it seems to me you're now trying to gloss over by making it about culture instead.
> It's often cultural guilt
Cultural guilt over what precisely?
> The most non-Indian person
What precisely makes a person more or less Indian?