Some choice bits
they interviewed the chef who invented california roll. He put the rice on the outside because his customers found seaweed too scary.
In reply to
I was reading about this earlier today, sushi in the States is assembled rice-side-out because back in the day, Americans would peel off the nori before eating because seaweed was too scary for them. Absurd.
The lack of spices in Japanese food suggests Japanese are the white people of Asia
according to hexbear food is good and "ethnic" when spicy :galaxy-brain:
the only thing whiter than not putting any spice on your food is eating those 3 billion scoville hot sauces that may as well be pepper spray
making a big deal of that stuff is weird
but i'd definitely try it
but just because i like pain and not whatever bullshit encourages people to do that normally
You like eating super hot chili sauces to prove how macho you are
I like eating super hot chili sauces because I'm a masochist
We are not the same
This thread if it continues will be one of those we look back on as embarrassing.
It's a bunch of :lmayo: trying to show how not :lmayo: they are because they like spicy food lol.
Real weird behaviour
Side note you guys ITT are embarrassing yourselves by trying to performatively disown your whiteness and putting poc on a pedestal lmao
Who could have predicted lol
Many old school sushi chefs in Japan will say that the most important ingredient is the rice. In that sense, it doesn't really matter a lot if the topping is vegan, vegetarian, seafood, or meat. It's all just a sideshow for the rice.
that's all Japanese cooking to my knowledge. This is not a dig by the way, I make elaborate dishes just to show off potatoes frequently.
The only place on the internet where I would read "trying to performatively disown your whiteness and putting poc on a pedestal" and not assume the other person is closet :frothingfash:
That shit pisses me off so much. It ruins the whole flavor progression and you hardly get to taste the seaweed.
I also throw shitloads of wasabi on my sushi.
Holy shit lol.
At least other western cultures sometimes added something half-decent, like Norway added salmon to sushi for those of you who eat meat.
I stand with my take that there is value in european cooking with little spices. Ingredients do have inherent taste, separate from spices, the decision to focus on these sensations does not make a meal "bad". It's a different way of cooking, but to call it tasteless is not a good take. Also rosemary, thyme and lovage are spices, they just aren't "spicy".
Does anyone even consider what happened when white people decided they DID want spices? Please, just eat local, it's fine.
My argument is more that european cooking is fine the way it is. That it does not need to be indian cuisine to taste well. It's not about moralizing or something, but the inherent quality of the cuisine not being lesser.
I'm pretty sure we're on the same page. European cooking was developed to take advantage of what the climate/ecology of Europe offered, and that turns out to be plentiful, high quality produce but relatively few spices and herbs. My message was more shit than post, I feel like the "mayo no flavor" joke is funny the first few times, but only really has one note to play and goes stale quick.
Older European cooking traditions had plenty of spices, problem was, those spices (sometimes called hedge spices) were wild, and grew in the areas between farmland or in uncleared brush. As production intensified, farmers were displaced through enclosure and there was more a focus on monocultures and cash crops, those wild areas disappeared, and with them the native spices.
Medieval cooking in Europe had sharp peppers and horseradish, spicy ginger, wild garlic, and plenty of now-extinct leafy greens and herbs with flavors that would fit right into a curry or noodle dish. Through extensive trade networks established by the Romans, they had access to cumin, saffron, galangal, cinnamon and other exotic spices, they were just very expensive usually, more so the further you were from the Mediterranean trade hubs.
Another big factor was war-time deprivations when supply lines were cut, and people had to make do with canned, unseasoned food and salt, basically. Children growing up under these conditions would never have been exposed to strong flavors early on, and their food culture would be bland as a result.
Oh, my mistake. I agree with you completly. The joke got stale like a year ago.
Especially something that is cooked for long so the flavours intensify. Like a ragu or a stew.
Its tasty comfy food, even if its not exactly complicated to just make savoury stuff and then adding some pickled vegetables or jam for a sharp flavor to cut through it, its a nice combination.
Plus spiciness is literally just pain. Like it's not an actual flavor, it's the experience of pain the capsaicin causes when reacting with the inside of your mouth.
Like it's good and all, but idk about every meal involving literal pain.
Then again, I am a :lmayo:
Get into hot sauces and you can distinguish between delicious spicy and pepper spray spicy even when they’re the same score on the scoville scale
iirc there’s a scientific way to test it using some fancy equipment but I learned this from a Netflix mini-documentary about a chili eating contest so I could be wrong
. Also rosemary, thyme and lovage are spices, they just aren’t “spicy”.
Exactly! We use "spicy" to describe a very specific feeling that most spices do not provide
Indian languages use different terms for these sensations. English is horribly deficient when talking about taste.
Even german has different words for these concepts. It's just the english again.
Further down the thread, he specifies that he's referring to only americanized sushi rolls, "Boston, California, Philadelphia, etc".
Yeah, white people love the americanized versions of foods from other countries. The cuisine has been adapted for the american taste.
The cuisine has been adapted for the american taste.
Short cooking times + a shit ton of sugar and fat I'm guessing?
The reason Americans are so fat and crave sweet things is because back in the 70s the government decided fats were bad and took fat out of everything and replaced it with sugar. You can choose to believe they were either well meaning idiots or it was a giveaway to big ag corn producers.
Also, ethnic cuisines in other countries were often adapted to what was cheap and available to people where they were living. Chinese cuisine in Portugal is different from Chinese cuisine in Argentina or the states. The reason Chinese cuisine in the US has diverged so far from its origins, compared to Indian is because Chinese people have been in North America in large numbers for far longer than people from India have. Many Chinese families have been in the US since long before it was possible to ship perishable goods across the Pacific Ocean. You can even see the same process play out with traditional mayo cuisines. The American association of corned beef with Irish immigrants is a good example of this phenomenon. Irish immigrants in New York often lived in proximity to Jewish neighborhoods. They would purchase corned beef from their Jewish neighbors. You couldn't find corned beef and cabbage on a pub menu anywhere in Ireland 30 years ago, but because so many Americans who would visit were perplexed that it wasn't available pub owners put it on the menu for the tourists.
the 70s the government decided fats were bad and took fat out of everything and replaced it with sugar
My folks still believe this propaganda
My folks are dead set on the idea that salt is bad for you, and use the absolute minimum in everything, and I've since come to realize since cooking on my own I'm not really picky my mom just kinda sucks at cooking
if somebody is worried about too much salt consumption it tastes stronger with just a dash on the food before eating.
Many Chinese families have been in the US since long before it was possible to ship perishable goods across the Pacific Ocean
As an aside it's insane that we can just do that now
Did the American government even think the good kind of fat was bad?
Sushi is just a sandwich. You can put whatever you want in there it's chill.
I'm sorry have you been to Japanese street food people before? Japanese street food make western top chefs look like a joke and at extremely cheap prices. They're at a technical level that's just way higher than elsewhere because of some sort of cultural obsession with it and a loooooot of street chefs who hyper specialised in one extremely specific thing for 30 years and became literal gods at it.
late to the party because the temperature in this thread has clearly turned but changing food for local tastes is very common and even happens to like global brand names.
You can be a hardheaded purist and try to train the locals to eat the seaweed on the outside or be pragmatic and hide it on the inside and not have to train them. I wonder what pizza looks like in india by the way i bet its totally like how the italians invented it.
Yeah, this. "Chinese" pizza usually has toppings like pea pods, water chestnuts, shrimp, ginger, bamboo shoots, etc. It's just kind of what human beings do. Most of the people on this site who get so angry about american "culture", if there even is such a thing, sound to me like Americans who've never left the states. I think it's a phase or something. I remember when I first traveled outside the US I would have this visceral anger whenever I'd see a McDonalds or other American chain concept in another country. Once you actually go in one, though, you see that most of the menu has been assimilated to the tastes of the culture in which it exists, not the other way around. Pizza Hut restaurants in China are a really good example of this. Pizza Hut in China is actually more of a sit down fast-casual concept there, you can order steak and wine and more traditional Chinese dishes in addition to pizza. This is likely because Pizza Hut was one of the first Western brands to operate in China. When it first opened it was probably viewed as a luxury commodity and therefore had to provide an "elevated" experience.
In India we're putting paneer and corn on our pizza and dipping it in ketchup
I like to imagine an inverse world where like, idk, Thai people became the dominant colonial power and online left people would be joking “Lol fucking Thai colonizers love burning their mouths with excessive peppers cuz it’s the only way their privileged asses can feel anything. Excuse me I’m over here with my Celtic brothers enjoying some meat and potato pie like the humble people we are.”
Inventing a guy who makes "Ew you eat raw fish? thats fucking disgusting you're gonna get sick ew ew ew" jokes about sushi but its fine because he read the wikipedia article on unit 731.
Imagining a trendy hipster couple in Bangkok ordering a chili cheese dog to show off how sophisticated their flavor palate is
Also because of the food. Very simple.
Better than white people food but not much.
i like japanese food, i mean not everything needs to be full of spice
seems unfair to generalise
It's weird how people associate spicy with good and flavorful. Chillis were only introduced to Asia centuries ago but I'm sure the foods been good for thousands.
I mean the seaweed thing makes sense if you just never eat seaweed, it would seem like a kind of wrapper or whatever. But I guess people just get mad at being taught how to eat new food cause it might feel infantilizing so a lot just wouldnt find out. Most sushi places I eat at put fucking chili mayo and other extra stuff on cause I guess people got mad at not enough extra flavors anyways.
Sometimes this joke goes into bitch eating crackers territory tbh, just goes weird.
people prefer food in certain ways and cooks adapt to that, shocker. Food culture as a symbol of culture-wide moral purity is one of the weirder takes to come out of our current moment.
weebs keep telling me the wasabi i'm getting outside of japan is trash because it hasn't been folded over 10000 times, but idk
Tbf outside of like, actual high end restaurants its probable that wasabi outside of Japan is going to be dyed horseradish, cause actual wasabi is apparently really tricky to grow so its expensive, and also the flavor comes from a chemical reaction that is temporarily activated when grated, so you have to ship and buy actual chunks of wasabi root rather than transporting it in a more compact form.
Edit: actually googled it and apparently wasabi is grown outside of Japan even in the US and Europe, but since people have largely gotten used to horseradish wasabi it mostly goes to satisfying Japanese demand.
yeah, it naturally grows as a partially submerged plant in mountain streams afaik, i could see how that makes farming expensive if you need to replicate such conditions.
I used to use powdered Wasabi that you add water to to make a paste that I believe was the real deal.
Huh, googled it and that seems pretty cool, gonna try and see if its expensive or if I can get a hold of that over here to try out.
I saw this thread when my dog woke me up at like 3 am and I was excited to come back and pick through the debris of the inevitable train wreck lol. “______ people are the white people of ______” will always be a wild take to see play out
It’s funny how I can hop on and off this site 30 times a day and still miss shit like this lmao, I just saw this thread
Not true I'm white and I hate sushi. This makes it very hard for me to make friends because everyone's first port of call is "wanna go for sushi?"
everyone’s first port of call is “wanna go for sushi?”
Do you live in 2010?
Unfortunately I do not understand what point you're trying to make as I was a child in 2010
Nothing like living 1000 miles from the nearest ocean and there's sushi places. Like, sushi is cool and all but ... I know I'm just playing Russian roulette with my guts just looking at the menu.
