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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
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
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!
Dudes trying to convince us that they are presenting ancient traditions
Ancient traditions
Look inside
Post Columbian exchange vegetables
I'm Dutch and I think this map is completely unfair. It overrates our food significantly
The Dutch chartered an enormous company to trade spices, but never used them.
That's just common knowledge, dealers never dip into their own product.
Spain and Portugal should be tier 1 or 2
Madrid’s food scene is amazing
I'm just under the line of "toxic" in Finland and you could drawn the line a bit further south.
Finnish national dish? Traditional version? Here you go, the entire recipe;
Pound of beef, cubed
Pounds of pork, cubed
Water
A spoonful of salt.
Put meat in pan with water.
Take pan off heat after enough time.
Done.
That's literally the Finnish national dish "Karelian stew". Obviously nowadays it definitely includes black pepper as well and bunch of other things, because the traditional version is literally just a bunch of boiled meat without any spices.
edit haha enjoyed that but yes, the formatting was off, although you could obviously used water cubes in a pan as long as you still put it on hot. Actually, it might be an interesting experiment to put a pot on a hot stove / flame with beef & pork & ice. Insofar that maybe a tiny bit of the meat would brown before the ice melts and becomes water idk. At least then there'd be browning resulting in some taste. The classical one has none.
cubed Water
Ice blocks??
I, too, am really curious about the cubed water.
Maybe ice is simply more available than liquid potable water in Finland.
I made lohikeitto for the first time recently and that was pretty damn good. Almost like an American chowder, but thinner and with nice, tasty dill (I'm sure I don't have to tell you that, but other readers might like to know).
Oh no, you don't have to tell me.
Some people make an excellent lohikeitto, and it's damn fine.
There's a restaurant I go in my city for a good one.
But I've been on a gluten and dairy free diet. I'm sure I could replace rye bread with decent alternatives and cream with a vegetable one, but lohikeitto has been hard for me to get right.
Any fish foods actually. Fish is such delicate meat I find it hard to get a proper grasp on because it varies so much from fish to fish, especially when its different species of fish.
Meat from large mammals is rather easy, usually uniform. Fish, just... I need to learn it better.
Thank for reminding me though, I think I'll learn to make lohikeitto next. I've been learning to cook a bit more, had porkchops today which I marinated myself with rum and garlic and lime and chili and rosemary etc, have made horse meatballs. Deer stew. Elk fry up. Reindeer ragu.
Mmm.
It was at least a decade, definitely a bit more since I made meatballs. But I think they turned out nice.
Gluten fre spaghetti. I hate to have to have it, but Rummo brand has actually been pretty nice. I tried like a half dozen others before. So sad I can't have real spaghetti anymore but this is a decent enough alternative, and I make up for the poor spaghetti by improving what goes with it.
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.
Spanish and Greek food beats Italian. Heck Polish food is way underrated. Also American pizza is better.
American pizza made by Italian immigrants. ftfy
I feel like France, Greece, and Spain are gonna have some pretty strong objections.
RIP Portugal
As an American who just had some glorious fake pizza last night, I thought I hated pasta until I had good Italian, and then I realized I just hate Americanized Italian food. Except pizza, we do it better.
Pasta still isn't my favorite, but I'll take it if it's authentic. My SO makes some great aglio e olio and carbonara, often with shrimp.
If you wanna be pedantic, Italian pasta is actually the knockoff of Chinese noodles.
Also, Greek food is fantastic!
Yes, it is, and, yes, it is!
Food in Portugal is delicious
Well most of 'traditional' Italien food is actually from the US and had been invented by Italien immigrants.
Yeah, Italian chef friend of mine once said that you use garlic, or onions, rarely both, in authentic italian food. Unless you are from one of the many places where they always use both.
A lot of people don't realize that Italy is a relatively young country comprising multiple distinct regions and culinary histories.
How can you put Spain on the same level as Great Britain? Damn Italians don't know how to make anything other than sauce with tomatoes and they think they know how to cook.
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)
Pre 1600s: Y'all a wanta some Rotting fish juice?
Eh, half the authentic East Asian food you get has Fish Sauce as an ingredient, which is essentially Rotting Fish Juice. Hell, Worcester Sauce in the West is similar but different.
Source: Unmilitant vegan that is peeved that fermented fish product ends up being the secret ingredient in many authentic dishes.
The Netherlands is probably an "overcooked pasta" enclave than. When I was a kid, I was sure Al Dente was Italian for Deathly Toxin.
Fake pizza, sure, but doesn't imply it's bad. Plus ironically, you can find Italian style pizza in the US if you look for it.
That said, I'll still apologize for Dominos, Pizza Hut, et. al. for fast-foodizing the concept of pizza.
Bruh, Giovanni isn't getting his ass outta bed at 1am to whip me up the drunkenness abolishing disaster that is a late night Domino's order, including all the extras of course I don't just want a pizza I want lava cake and bread sticks and cheesy bread and maybe a pasta bread bowl. I'll take a few bites of everything and pass out on the couch to wake up in the morning pleasantly surprised that drunk me was thoughtful enough to order us pizza for breakfast.
As someone who's lived Italy, this does sound like something an Italian would say lmao
u wot m8?
We've got Greggs Sausage Rolls.
All you've got is pasta and tomato sauce for every meal, and think different shaped pasta makes it a different dish!
That's like thinking beans on toast is different if you put it on different shaped bread.
poland in the fattening/caution zone is kind of on point actually
i fucking love polish food and feel that describes it pretty well X3
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 mean, Italian food really is brilliant, they really just over time took all the best things they found and just made great food with it and left out everything else.
It's sort of crazy to think about how delicious a recipe with four ingredients can be until you realize they're four of the most delicious things on the planet.
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.
Agreed, Bosnian and Croatian food are the only proper food :3
I confirm. Source: I'm Italian:):):)