True. But this here looks like some people are mostly passionate about defending some imaginary “national cuisines” rather than the actual food.
In most of the countries I have been, I have eaten some good food and some pretty bad food. It largely depends on ingredients, recipes, cooking skill and of course acquired taste and preference. Most hilarious are the fights about where a dish is from when several countries claim it is theirs and it is basically indistinguishable between countries. The Balkans come to mind …
People don’t understand the history behind food. @gaburko remarked that you don’t get “British Restaurants” abroad so the food must be bad.
The reason why you get foreign restaurants abroad has got nothing to do with the quality of the food but merely where an immigrant population lives.
That’s why you get lots of Turkish restaurants in Germany or Lebanese and Italian restaurants in parts of Australia, and Pakistani (aka Indian restaurants) in the UK.
You don’t get many southern Indian restaurants in the UK as there are relatively few South Indians.
Where many ex-UK people live, the food is similar - the ubiquitous meat pies and fish and chips in Australia and New Zealand, for example.
My point, which I obviously didn’t make clearly - and wasn’t to have a go at the Balkans, is that many recipes pre-date those imaginary lines.
There will always be regional variations as recipes got passed along, ingredients substituted, and personal tastes addressed.
Believe me, there are the same arguments in the UK about particular dishes.
St1lemans used to infuriate me on EF as he seemed convinced that there was only one recipe for a Ragù but in reality, the recipe changed from village to village, house to house, and over time too.
The Balkans is indeed a good example. A common past for 4-5 centuries under the Ottoman Empire did indeed eliminate borders as such and allowed foods and recipes to travel easier with some local variations, but essentially the same base. Having said that, the Balkan cuisine, far from my favorite, even under Ottoman rule, depravation and abuse didn’t produce mushy peas
True that. I agree. Personally I don’t really mind if a recipe is claimed by other nations too (sometimes with good reasons?). I care about the recipe because that determines the taste.
I think my taste buds are quite capable of sensing differences. My point was that these differences will mostly come from individual craftmanship and “imagination” instead of nationality.
I argued against the stereotype. In reality everybody knows their cuisine has a lot in common with their neighbours and nobody really invented say stuffed cabbage rolls.
I like every good food and given the fact that I live in Switzerland I probably eat more Italian or French foods than anything else. If I want to eat something from “back home” I have to cook everything myself, in which case I’m rather specific. I don’t claim my recipes are the best.
And I think every country has a “national cuisine” but not in the sense of “we invented the wheel here!”.
Exactly, there is good and bad food everywhere and what I think is bad may be delicious to someone else.
I just find it hilarious that someone would choose use mushy peas as an example of classic British food. I doubt many people have even heard of them outside the uk. Of all the things to fixate on I find mushy peas to be a very bizarre choice.
I actually quite like mushy peas when prepared correctly but find sauerkraut to be an abomination, the mere smell of it makes me want to heave.
I judge countries by their crimes against culinary humanity. My childhood trauma, from which I am only slowly recovering, was caused by school meals in England. All that suffering induced by mushy peas, Walls sausages, semolina, custard and vegetables cooked to death. I am thinking of starting a class action to demand damages.
Now I’m really convinced to try this “traumatising” dish everyone loves to hate!!!
It’s peas for goodness sake. It can’t be THAT bad.
(I know you’re joking but the whole debate about this innocent legume made me curious)
Yes. It can, Don’t be fooled by the posts about adding cream and stuff - mushy peas are not blended up with or without extra flavours. they’re just horrible bitter dried marrowfat peas boiled up to within an inch of their lives and then boiled some more until they’ve turned to mush. They are foul.
I’m from vaguely Northern England, so they were pretty much ubiquitous in all chippies, I hated them from a very early age. Chip shop curry sauce, however, which came a bit later, is quite special, in a good way.
I love proper peas though, Used to be tinned garden peas was the norm when I was a kid, these days frozen, but they’re still my favourite vegetable to this day.
