Parma is quiet at night. The man sitting opposite me is paranoid someone will overhear our conversation. “They hate me here,” he explains in a hushed voice. He checks behind him, but the only other person in the osteria is a waitress who has had nothing to do since serving us our osso buco bottoncini. The aroma of roasted bone marrow wafts up from the table. Amy Winehouse’s cover of “Valerie” plays on a faraway radio.
“Can I badmouth them?” he asks. I tell him he can. After all, he hasn’t been invited here to expose corporate fraud. He has come to tell me the truth about parmesan cheese.
There’s a dark side to Italy’s often ludicrous attitude towards culinary purity. In 2019, the archbishop of Bologna, Matteo Zuppi, suggested adding some pork-free “welcome tortellini” to the menu at the city’s San Petronio feast. It was intended as a gesture of inclusion, inviting Muslim citizens to participate in the celebrations of the city’s patron saint. Far-right League party leader Matteo Salvini wasn’t on board. “They’re trying to erase our history, our culture,” he said.
https://www.tumblr.com/anneemay/712987153080205312/dude-literally-received-death-threats-from-italian
(sorry if this is the wrong com for this)
European cuisine in general is overrated and overhyped, because
- The average person knows virtually nothing about non-European cultures/cuisines/anything really
- Whites insist on calling every single European thing by its language of origin while never doing the same for anything outside of Europe (see: Wikipedia mods)
IE: Polish sausage is always termed "Kielbasa" while Cantonese sausage is always called "Chinese sausage" but never "Lap Cheung". Despite Kielbasa literally being the Polish word for "sausage", it's not as if it's some super specific type of sausage like liverwurst or something
guy in the OP is a perfect example
I always see mayos overhyping food in general, but especially their own food, and taking stuff about it way too seriously, saying things like "so and so INVENTED beef stroganoff" (which is literally just pasta with ground beef mixed together lmao, calm down) But this mindset forces others to adopt the same, because you can't afford not to care if one entire racial group is circlejerking itself off and making false and spurious claims of invention and uniqueness
There are certain foods that really were truly invented (like Soan Papdi, or Mousse) but for the most part, most things have always been invented in multiple places independently, even things like Mozzerella which isn't unique to Europe but is just a stretch cheese that everyone from the Caucasus to Rajasthan has their own version of
this particular
is upset because he's imagining some (probably fake) tradition where the feast for this particular saint is ONLY celebrated with pork pasta but never beef pasta? Yea that's fake mayo shit, and I like porkI still think it's really funny to say that Italians didn't invent pasta but stole it from the Chinese through Marco Polo even though that's probably not true.
it do be kinda sus tho how all these european inventions start popping up after contact with other cultures
saying things like "so and so INVENTED beef stroganoff" (which is literally just pasta with ground beef mixed together lmao, calm down)
It’s even less specific than that. Neither ground beef nor pasta are required for the dish to be stroganoff. I’d say the sour cream based sauce does it, but I’ve also had versions where it’s a creamy mushroom sauce without the sour cream. Definitely a creamy sauce on beef over a starch. I wanna see someone serve it over potatoes and see who it gives an aneurism to.
In Brazil it's commonly served over white rice. Made with strips of beef or chicken, button mushrooms, cream, white wine or cognac.
"European cuisine" is such a wide concept that it is almost meaningless. French cuisine or variations thereof is eaten as "fancy food" in many European countries due to its historic association with the elite but outside of that it makes little sense to lump Italian pasta, central European sauerkraut and North Atlantic dried seafood into the same category.
"European cuisine" is such a wide concept that it is almost meaningless
so is "Indian cuisine" or "Chinese cuisine", people still use it all the time
also the diversity is irrelevant to my point
Phonetic translations like "kielbasa" aren't preferred in Chinese. We actually eat something similar in China but we just call them Harbin Sausages since that's the city where it's from. Case in point "Lap Cheung" uses one specific nonsensical transliteration scheme for one specific dialect's pronunciation. It's unrecognizeable to most people and how anglos end up pronouncing this string of letters is completely divorced from the original word. I'd rather people just say Chinese Sausage.
When you retvrn to tradizioni but it's just an ad campaign from the 1950s
100 years from now, whatevers left of the USA'ians will be having these same heated conversations about "Hamburger Helper".
Capitalism gave us hamburger helper. If you hate hamburger helper you must hate capitalism... Fucking commie.
I know a guy who's adopted the "traditional" Italian behaviour while not being Italian. It's the most obnoxious thing in the universe and I want to chop off his limbs
Can you post the whole thing? Apparently this tumblr requires an account to view.
Reject modernity (tomatoes in Italian food)
Embrace tradition (lemons in Italian food)
Unironically here. I just spouted off about food reactionaries but at the same time when these tradition people talk Italian food at my work, they're talking Italian American food and as far as personal taste goes, I like that lemon shit and try to push more in that direction.
Pasta al limone absolutely whips and I am also doing my part to undo the reactionary tomato and meat lovers
You know I hadn't seen specific evidence of connections between Italian culinary purity and freak fascism, but I always sort of felt it must be there.
I work at an Italian restaurant and hate people being ethnic food purists cause traditional food is a myth and limits your toolkit as a cook. There is a progressive/reactionary element to cooking. Culinary history when looked at through a Marxist lense is incredibly enlightening. If you wanna do historical materialism what better material to begin with than food? It's the base and superstructure all in one, it describes availability of material, means of production, the organization and stratification of societies. If you want to have a solid fundamental grasp on history food is a fantastic baseline.
I went off hard here already in reply but wanna do it again in the comments. Food and history are both super interesting and food history is a great material basis to examine history by, cause it'd fucking food. Pretentious food guys being all trad as an excuse for their half passed underdeveloped meals has fucked you all over too long. This Simple And Traditional crap is a marketing gimmick to sell you on cost cutting measures as a form of refinement. Fusion cooking is fun, tastes great and it's the 21st fucking century, we can ship any food anywhere
If pineapple tastes good in it, do it. I'm speaking more from a professional background than a home cooking on. Shit gets really annoying when you're using being traditional to make worse meals and cut costs.
this is anti-pigtalian discrimination