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!
Spain and Portugal should be tier 1 or 2
Madrid’s food scene is amazing
Also no way Switzerland beats France here. Italians 100% prefer french food than Swiss food.
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.
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
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.
Wait can you explain the difference between Americanized pasta and Italian pasta? Isn’t all pasta just… pasta?
You’re obviously not Italian…
Starting with the pasta itself (not how it’s prepared), they use different ingredients. Italian pasta is usually made from high quality duram wheat, whereas American made pastas use a variety of flours, and usually includes eggs (rare with Italian pasta), which results in a softer cooked product. That leads to cooking differences, where Italians prefer firmer texture (al dente), whereas Americans tend to have it softer.
And then we have sauces. Italians usually keep it simple with a handful of ingredients, and Americans add milk/cream, sugar, cheese, or anything else that sounds good. Americans also go overboard on the sauce, so you get a lot less of the pasta flavor (yes, pasta has flavor, y’all need to add salt to the water).
And that’s restaurant quality pasta dishes. It gets wild when you look at what’s in those prepared meals in the freezer section.
I give pizza a pass because I don’t like bread much (yes, I’ve had good Italian pizza), so loading up on toppings works really well. But I just don’t like the mushy mess that is American-style pasta.
Starting with the pasta itself (not how it’s prepared), they use different ingredients. Italian pasta is usually made from high quality duram wheat, whereas American made pastas use a variety of flours, and usually includes eggs (rare with Italian pasta), which results in a softer cooked product. That leads to cooking differences, where Italians prefer firmer texture (al dente), whereas Americans tend to have it softer.
How many times have you had pasta in America?You have some good points with the rest of your comment but this paragraph makes sound like either someone over overcooked your pasta or incorrectly used egg noodles, which are totally different and for different dishes though they look the same at a glance. I would only use egg noodles in soups and stroganoff. I just looked through all the pasta I have now, purchased from Walmart, Costco, and all the normie places: none of it has eggs, a lot of it contains durum wheat/semolina flour, and a majority of it is 100% durum. Some of it uses the phrase “al Dente” on the box, and I can tell you with good confidence that that is one of the few Italian phrases that American non-italians will know.
How many times have you had pasta in America?
Since I’m American, hundreds if not thousands of times. I’ve had it at home, at friends’ houses, and restaurants. My parents aren’t italian, just bog standard Americans.
You’re right that store bought noodles don’t have eggs, and that’s likely due to the IPO definition of spaghetti (and other pastas) to only contain duram wheat semolina and water.
My point about eggs comes from recipes like this or this (first hits when searching “spaghetti pasta noodles recipe”) that use trash flour and eggs. So if you’re being “fancy” and making the pasta at home, you’re likely to use eggs.
“al Dente”
Your typical American understands that phrase to mean “undercooked” or “crunchy.” It really just means “firm,” as in chewy instead of squishy. The fact that the default doneness in the US is soft instead of firm, which is the opposite in Italy (if they even let you order it overcooked), highlights this.
I think this is so the sauce sticks better, because Americans like a lot of sauce. Both Americans and Italians will agree that the secret to a good pasta dish is the sauce, but in Italy that means a handful of quality ingredients to complement the pasta (e.g. simmering a ragu for hours), whereas in the US it means adding a ton of processed crap to thicken it (cream, cheese, etc) and drown the pasta flavor out.
🤷 I’m also American and grew up on pasta, and while you’re dead on about the sauce and unsalted pasta water, most people in my experience know that al Dente means “firm to the bite” and cook pasta properly enough, often enough that when it’s not I’d just assume it was an accident.
I’m being a bit hyperbolic here. My point, however, is that soft pasta is pretty common here, and people do complain about properly cooked pasta. Not often, but people tend to lean more toward the overcooked end of the spectrum.
For example, most boxes of spaghetti say 10-11 min cooking, whereas I usually test around 7-8 min and stop a bit short of 10min. This can vary a little by brand, thickness, and probably altitude (I live in the Rockies so I’m used to adjusting cooking times).
I’m not some angsty chef or something, I just don’t like overcooked noodles of any variety because the texture sucks. So I just generally avoid pasta for the most part. I don’t make lasagna because I’m not willing to spend the time to do it well, but I do occasionally make something like aglio e olio because it’s fast and easy to do well.
And then we have sauces. Italians usually keep it simple with a handful of ingredients, and Americans add milk/cream, sugar, cheese, or anything else that sounds good. Americans also go overboard on the sauce, so you get a lot less of the pasta flavor
What the fuck Americans?
(yes, pasta has flavor, y’all need to add salt to the water).
Wait do Americans not do that? In that case I have to thank Italian Reunification for giving the Middle East real pasta.
Yeah, a lot of people just toss the pasta in bong boiling water and pull it out when it’s soft. Sometimes they’ll add oil to stop it from sticking (due to overcooking already soft pasta), and they’re shocked when I tell them they need to add salt.
Most pasta in the US suggests to salt the water when you boil it, I don’t think many Americans do. My mother didn’t, at least.
This may be a result of the war on salt that came from heart disease concerns of the 80s/90s.
It’s very common in the US to just plop some pasta sauce on top of noodles for one thing… You gotta cook the pasta in the sauce real quick! If any American reads this and doesn’t do that I promise that tiny change will already improve your pasta experience.
Most likely the difference between handmade pasta and dried pasta but that’s not a geographical thing
But Italians eat dried pasta… lots of it.
As someone who makes pizza from scratch every week, I love all forms of pizza from fast food US pizza (like Dominos), to “drunk” US pizza dipped in ranch, to NY pizza, to Chicago deep dish, but what I make at home is always simple Italian pizza with just a few ingredients: dough, a sauce made from San Marzano tomatoes specifically canned for pizza with some salt, fresh oregano, mozzarella cheese, and olive oil. Sometimes I add a ton of arugula on top too. What’s nice is that pizza is also kinda healthy actually.
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.
Oi, we had a restaurant so good they had to stop it entering the world’s best restaurant competition because it kept winning.
Also Sunday roast is the food of kings.
What do you consider to be “roast dinner”?
I went to Spain for a few months and honestly wasn’t too impressed with the cuisine.
Yes, I guess that is part of the problem, in Spain hoteliers prefer to scam tourists with products of inferior quality compared to what we really eat than to gain fame and repercussion. I don’t know if that was your case, or where you were, it varies a lot from one region to another, but I wouldn’t be surprised.
I didn’t see any reason to assume that the person you were replying to ate at hotels or at places the hotels recommended. I’m pretty sure it’s more common for tourists to eat at local restaurants.
Yeah i was in rota for work and there were some good restaurants but on the whole there was really nothing, like, outstanding… nothing memorable, or that I’d say I’d want to eat again. Took a weekend trip to Barcelona and they had some better restaurants, but honestly I felt the same.
Food in Portugal is delicious
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 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.
As someone who’s lived Italy, this does sound like something an Italian would say lmao
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!
If you really wanna be pedantic, almost everything is a knocknockoff of something
I’m a little disappointed that the center is a knife and fork instead of a hand pinching fingers together to make a point
Let’s not give extra airtime to that cunt.
Wow… I had no idea. Thanks!
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.
As a Belgian, I agree!
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.
Lovingly described! Thanks for the tips.
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.
