Man y’all have clearly never eaten in Lyon…
This is Funny if you think about it because Modern Pizza originates from the USA and Pasta from China
Naples. Modern pizza comes from Naples.
That dish was then taken to New York where shredded cheese was used in place of the slices used in Neapolitan pizza.
Pasta on the other hand, does descend from a Chinese dish. Sort of. The Proto-italians actually invented some types of pasta dish themselves, notably the precursor to lasagna and ravioli.
As someone who’s lived Italy, this does sound like something an Italian would say lmao
Tbh I find Italian culinary traditions underwhelming. Like they just gave up 10 minutes in, no work at all because it’s too hot.
To be fair, the further from coastline, the better the Italian cuisine - more herbs, more variety, more complex recipes (e.g Ligurian braised rabbit)
I saw a really good documentary recently, hell if I can remember the name. It covered actual Italian historical dishes. They were explaining that most of the really old stuff was region specific. Like one dish in one area had nothing to do with the same dish in another area. They actually went through kind of a food reimagining or Renaissance after one of the wars. Basically they were saying that pizza as it is now is not that old. Prior to the rush into America they had flatbreads that kind of but didn’t really approximate pizza, and it wasn’t until the Italian Americans repatriated that they started honing what they consider they current concept of pizza.
The concept of nations as well as their culture and cuisine are relatively young. Medieval cuisine was both highly local and also quite similar across a shared biome.
Italians have a couple of great hits and a lot of duds.
Agreed, Bosnian and Croatian food are the only proper food :3
According to this map I should probably be dead.
This tracks, every Italian I’ve ever met has been a complete snob about food.
I’m a little disappointed that the center is a knife and fork instead of a hand pinching fingers together to make a point
I knew an Italian exchange student that kept whining that nothing tasted good and nothing tasted as it should up here in Scandinavia. Then another exchange student (from Thailand I think) got tired of him and told him ~“the rest of the world isn’t your mother” and it was a literal moment of realisation for this dude.
Wow, a rare good tasteful Your Mom remark
the rest of the world isn’t your mother
Nah but it’s way closer than it should be
Zing!
I wholeheartedly support culinarily disrespecting Italians, honestly.
Dudes trying to convince us that they are presenting ancient traditions when their precious dishes are invented in like the 60s
Dudes trying to convince us that they are presenting ancient traditions
Ancient traditions
Look inside
Post Columbian exchange vegetables
Post-columbian fruit is underselling just how new at least posts of it are. Carbonara was invented by US soldiers in the 1940s, literally made using bacon and powdered egg from their rations.
Tiramisu is unclear, but 1939 seems to be the earliest of the possible candidate, the earliest actual document is from 1969.
Pizza as we know it today was reimported from the US.
I love Italian food, but it’s much less traditional than people pretend.
Also, many times they will say some isn’t an authentic way to do something, and then you will learn it is authentic for like, a few towns over.
You should see how Italians debate their own food when two of them are from two different towns. It’s bloody epic!
Cappelletti vs Anolini probably caused a few deaths
tourist traps are everywhere. nevertheless Italian cousin remains top notch. fact
Must be a freak in the sheets.
I feel like France, Greece, and Spain are gonna have some pretty strong objections.
RIP Portugal
Well, I’m from Northern France, and “fattening” is kinda accurate. Still tasty tho
You know what’s strange. I can buy French cuisine, Mexican cuisine, Canadian cuisine, I can even find elements of UK in Germany
I’m not even aware that Spain has a cuisine. I just looked up the entry on Wikipedia and I’ve never seen any of those dishes really.
Chorizo, tapas, and paella are all pretty popular and well known.
I should have included Greece on that list, it’s food is more well know in North America.
Tapas is genius way to charge people a lot for not enough food.
Bro youve just described appetizers in general 😭
I assumed chorizo was Mexican, I’ve actually made that before.
I’ve had paella but it was on a cruise ship in the Caribbean.
I’ve heard of tapas but I’ve never actually seen it.
I’m not really an expert.
Tapas are like dim sum, a category of sharable appetizers, rather than a specific dish
Not from someone from the South-East of France.
Cannes and Nice are apparently the only places in France with real food 🤣
Food in Portugal is delicious
I second this map.
Funny seeing this, especially from an iberian perpective, because local culinary is mostly the same as theirs. With the slight difference we actually have the balls to spice our food.
I have yet to sample an Italian arrabiata sauce that I would remotely call ‘spicy’. Though, to be fair, I’m an American that over spices everything I cook, so my palate is probably blown out at this point.
I’ve read you guys have a too sweet baseline for flavours, due to the overwhelming presence of corn syrup in everything.
Iberian cuisine, as in Portuguese and Spanish (fuck those guys; they can’t make proper bread even if you teach them!), can be spicy but adding heat to a dish serves to accentuate the underlying flavours.
Off the top of my head, I can think of a simple roasted chicken with lemon and mussels.
The chicken is just prepared by seasoning the chicken with coarse salt and stuffing it with a whole lemon, with the ends cut, and roasting in the oven. With the chicken ready, you just take the lemon from inside the bird and squeeze it over. Base flavours are lemon and salt, with the chicken fat binding everything together. You should complain the meat is a bit under salted; it means you are actually tasting it.
The mussels are prepared with white wine, salt and garlic. The garlic is chopped and slightly fried, just until fragrant, in olive oil. The mussels are thrown in, lightly salted, tossed in the base, over high heat, then the wine added and the pot covered to steam the mussels until all are open. Or can just sprinkle salt over the mussels on your plate. You want to taste the mussel.
These are basic dishes any child can eat. Not too extreme flavours. Adding a chopped chilli to the mussels base and a chilli inside the chicken will add a sligh note of heat to the dishes, embolden the overall flavours, but you will still be getting the base flavours after swallowing, lingering in your mouth.
Food should leave a memory. It’s supposed to be flavourful, not painful.
not painful.
Ok im gonna disagree with you here. I love spice/heat and make a game of how much iocaine powder I can stick on stuff. I have a bottle of capsaicin that I abuse to make morning omelettes. You can pry that from my cold dead hands, heat is life. The only memory I live for is curling up into the fetal position from inappropriate amounts of heat. Heat is my flavor, my second family is basically Mexico they bring the pain the best. They’re the blood of my covenant fam. My regular fam is water of the womb spice levels. They have no marbles, I have only spice shame for a fam.
As a side bonus my family has banned me from ever contributing to pot lucks and nobody dares eat off my plate.
Good for you, then.
Lovingly described! Thanks for the tips.
Spain and Portugal should be tier 1 or 2
Also no way Switzerland beats France here. Italians 100% prefer french food than Swiss food.
Madrid’s food scene is amazing
