Snobbery Helped Take the Spice Out of European Cooking (2015)
npr.org
npr.org
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 too much meat or too much vegetables, just the right balance where each flavour brings the best of the each other.
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 they could take simple ingredients. But he was almost demanding (diplomatically of course) that I take the other side and argue that one needed a million spices to make good food.
An Italian friend was aghast that I would suggest putting Onion and Garlic in the same meal. It was strictly either/or for him.
Then again who are we of all people to judge?
When I was in Italy or France, I took a liking to their coffee. Sure, seems complicated for home use, but nice in a cafe or bar. To me, living in Paris, this was (at the time) good coffee.
So then I met an American, and when I related the above, I was told that the coffee wasn't actually that good at all, and I should try some real artisanal coffee like they do in New York. Luckily, this was getting popular in Europe as well. So, I tagged along to a new and hip coffee place and found, to my surprise, that the mysterious espresso machines had been replaced by good old filters, but with a very arcane and complex production process.
The other difference was that the coffee was weak and tasted more like tea than coffee. I did not like it at all, as I wanted a coffee and not some weak watery tea. I like all sorts of coffees - from espresso to filter to Nescafe - for their own unique taste, except this one.
Anyway, my point is that I found American coffee snobs to be more snobby than French or Italian ones.
I've worked for a client in Italy, a short guy trying to aggressively assert superiority because of how he drinks coffee is a uniquely Italian experience. Oh and the hands and feet mime English is equally entertaining.
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..?
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 sauce of course has garlic as a key ingredient but this is normally thought of as a Italian-American dish and not something you'd typically find in Italy. Likewise if you had a ragu or risotto in the US you'd probably be surprised if there wasn't garlic in it. And let us not forget that other American invention of garlic bread.
One thing I learned recently was that the typical types of garlic available in the US and Italy are different - softneck and hardneck respectively. Hardneck is a _lot_ more flavourful than softneck which I believe goes a long way to explaining why it's used so much more frequently in the US (and in seemingly incredible quantities).
There's a very good YouTube channel [0] about Italian cooking (In Italian, usually with English subtitles available) where on one episode of chef's reacting to other videos of "Italian cooking" they had a laugh about this stereotype of Italians eating lots of garlic.
Does Piemonte cusine also include garlic in common sauces? Is it cooked into a soffrito or included as part of a battuto?
I've still not got around to visiting Piemonte, but this talk is pushing it up my list.
- "Don't worry, the anchovies will cover the garlic smell".
I've been known to put garlic, onions, and shallots into a dish.
And I guess that's the moment when the French "delegation" collectively gasped, and left the table in protest? :D
You have your cheese for sandwiches and melting, you have your cheese for stuffing pastries, you have your cheese for breakfast, you have a couple of ones with special shapes like the braided ones. And please, try not to mix these up. The white cheese for breakfast is not the one for the pastry, even though it looks similar. And why do Europeans crumble any sort on their dishes and call it Turkish? The nerve!
In some sense, Turks are some of the least "Cheese is cheese" people I met.
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.
The thing is that in India some meanings change with geography and location. For example, for me bhujia meant this [1] for the longest time. However, when I moved to a different part of the country, bhujia also meant potato fritters. Then, there is bhaji which means fried veggies. But some people also call potato fritters as bhaji.
In the U.K. (at least while I was growing up) we had ‘Bombay mix’[1] which included your version of bhujia.
Bhaji and Pakora seem to be interchangeable in British-Indian cuisine. If the bulk is onion it’s called a bhaji, otherwise pakora.
Halwa is another one that can be wildly different, it seems. Though most parts of the world have their own version I guess, all irresistible but very different.
NB I should have been clearer - I don't mean that the food seemed spicey in absolute terms, just that compared to other Italian food I had tried there was a noticeable use of some spices.
Edit: Also possible I was selecting the spicier items from menus!
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
The center [0] would be Emilia Romanga, no? I was led to believe that Sardinia, like Corisca, is its own thing culturally speaking, isn't? I mena its been inhabited and conquered by every major European/Arab power at some point and its food definitely reflects that.
Then again I'm also a walking contradiction: I lived and worked in Modena and Maranello and I'd cook southern recipes in an agrotourism kitchen with Northern and Central ingredients. I loved the look when as a Californian I nailed the right balance of spiciness and savoriness to satisfy a northerner (say Milan) for another order on something like pasta con le sarde.
The owner, from Sicily, was always taken back by how well accepting his clientele (mainly Ferrari factory workers or eco-tourists from the North visiting the countryside) were to Southern dishes, especially those that 'a Californian made' who has to date never stepped foot in the 'proper' South.
The furthest south I've ever gone was Bologna! I just really like southern cuisine and cooked and read a bunch of old hand me down cookbooks the owner brought with him and blogs and misc videos online while I did my apprenticeship in ER. I just find it more interesting as Northern food always felt too bloaty given it's emphasis on cheeses, butters and creams, which after having spent most of my time in Switzerland felt redundant.
0: https://martinmb.wixsite.com/ilmeteomartinmb/post/emilia-rom...
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.
One of the main points in the article.
I would be really surprised that spices were a big part of cuisine. Maybe in the middle-class indeed, but that was still a really small part of the population.
This seems to be a regional thing. In Australia I haven't actually seen anyone ever add sugar to coffee and these people aren't huge coffee enthusiasts. Other than premixed ice coffee.
Chinese people can be absolute snobs about tea, but the same people like bubble tea which isn't made with high quality tea because you wouldn't taste the difference through the milk and sugar. Both are delicious in their own way.
Just speaking for my own diet (mostly Chinese), it's common to steam a fresh fish with a bit of salt, ginger, and scallion, and let the fish speak for itself. But the very next meal might be a curry or some other dish that relies heavily on the sauce. But then none of that carries over to making steak (buy high quality, cook neurotically), or making gumbo (get a few specific parts right but otherwise it's a high-tolerance dish), or making coffee.
There are definitely different paradigms for food, and I think if someone is unable or unwilling to appreciate that, it's their loss.
(cf just about anything technology-wise, I suppose)
Edit: of course, some others really don't feel the need, being very secure in their eliteness, so they don't, as you say. And some others go to the opposite extreme of dressing down-market (so to speak), again as a signal that they can afford to do so.
I love them all, no need to poo-poo one with snobbery etc.
> "The real question, then, is why the wealthy, powerful West — with unprecedented access to spices from its colonies — became so fixated on this singular understanding of flavor," Srinivas says.
Much like American culture spreads so easily at the moment because of English.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie-Antoine_Car%C3%AAme https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auguste_Escoffier
Especially Escoffier did set the ground on how to run a big restaurant kitchen efficiently.
I'm sure part of it was France influence, but I wonder how much of it was also due to people who had a big influence in a specific field. They happened to be French, but they could have been from another country as well.
(I don't say the cuisine is bad nor not tasty, I am only talking about the cooking part).
I mean, it's the thick, bitter skin from one of the progenitors of a grapefruit, braised in a sauce until it's edible.
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.
If you look at Chinese cuisine, you'll probably find that trying to compare it to say "Italian cuisine" doesn't really work - probably better to compare it to "European cuisine" and try and capture the breadth and depth.
That sounds a lot like Japanese cuisine too, so we are not alone.
i still fondly remember the home-cooked meals of my japanese friend's mom. simple yet exquisite.
Even at fancier places which ground up better cuts of meat and bake their own bread, there are condiments added to the burger, both in the patty and after it is cooked.
My wife has the better tongue for many things, for example there are many vegetable dishes she likes which I find boring, I think the water-i-ness of certain vegetables bothers me more and she is able to look past it to see the other flavors. But I still find I am better able to appreciate that aspect of meatiness.
The dish is completely ruined. It does not work.
It seems to work for those who do it. Should recipes not ever evolve into something different?
Perhaps something that the cited studies overlooked: surely, one reason a lot of Indian dishes are tasty is their high calorie content. Hmmm, sweet calories.
For instance, check out Vah Reh Vah chef's recipe for Dal Makhani [1]: the amount of oil, butter and cream combined in a single pot might well clog your arteries just by watching the video. ;-). Yet, I'll be damned if I didn't want to try it right away!
However, most Indian dishes have a restaurant version and a home-made version. The former is enriched with all kind of ingredients that make it heavy and calorie rich but super tasty while the latter is simpler and more suitable as daily food.
Dal makhani is usually a "party dish" which is not consumed on a regular basis. However, it too has a simpler version that is not loaded with butter and cream.
It is one of many tools that can be used to attack or diminish those who are seen to have higher status than Us.
The counter pressure to this is lower social status communities calling it out as a negative, which has some of the flavor you are idiosyncratically aiming for, but can also be group affirming.
Few people use the word to describe themselves as snobs (except ironically), and it is also rarely used about someone in one's ingroup. Rather, it is a derogatory term we use against others (of higher status or in competing ingroups).
All social groups have signaling systems that allows members (or wannabe members) to display that they are members in good standing of the group. Due to their exclusive nature, these signals may cause distress in outsiders, and perhaps especially outsiders who would secretly like to belong to the group.
And this is my point, when someone uses the term "snobbery", it is often saying something unflattering about the person saying it.
Sometimes, of course, the term is used to refer to someone of equal or lower status. In such cases, the term tends to hold a somewhat different payload, ironically to assert dominance or superiority over that person, by indicating, as you do, that the "snob" behaves has he/she does to disguise his/her uncertainty about his/her status, maybe in a sophisticated way. For instance, someone from an "old money" familiy can use this kind of accusation against "new money" individuals that display their newfound wealth in a "distasteful" manner.
Personally, I hold the opinion that the labeling is probably worse than the snobbery itself, and at least as effective at reinforcing distance and distrust between groups. If I spend time with people 10x as wealthy and twice as educated, I'm not provoked by their social signals (unless they are offensive on purpose). Likewise, if I spend time with people in a third world country that live on a dollar a day, I appricate it when they treat me like a person, not just someone representing the West, even if I do sometimes (without thinking) behave in ways they may seen as snobbery from their perspective.