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!
u wot m8?
We’ve got Greggs Sausage Rolls.
All you’ve got is pasta and tomato sauce for every meal, and think different shaped pasta makes it a different dish!
That’s like thinking beans on toast is different if you put it on different shaped bread.
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 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.
Fake pizza, sure, but doesn’t imply it’s bad. Plus ironically, you can find Italian style pizza in the US if you look for it.
That said, I’ll still apologize for Dominos, Pizza Hut, et. al. for fast-foodizing the concept of pizza.
Bruh, Giovanni isn’t getting his ass outta bed at 1am to whip me up the drunkenness abolishing disaster that is a late night Domino’s order, including all the extras of course I don’t just want a pizza I want lava cake and bread sticks and cheesy bread and maybe a pasta bread bowl. I’ll take a few bites of everything and pass out on the couch to wake up in the morning pleasantly surprised that drunk me was thoughtful enough to order us pizza for breakfast.
Domino’s looks like pizza but it’s terrible. I’d rather never eat pizza again if Domino’s were the only option.
Food in Portugal is delicious
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
Well most of ‘traditional’ Italien food is actually from the US and had been invented by Italien immigrants.
Yeah, Italian chef friend of mine once said that you use garlic, or onions, rarely both, in authentic italian food. Unless you are from one of the many places where they always use both.
A lot of people don’t realize that Italy is a relatively young country comprising multiple distinct regions and culinary histories.
correct, a lot of “traditional” methods people think are possibly ancient, are like 150 years old. Some areas are culturally diverse to the point where they are basically a completely different culture, in comparison.
The Netherlands is probably an “overcooked pasta” enclave than. When I was a kid, I was sure Al Dente was Italian for Deathly Toxin.
overcooked pasta
Al DenteAh, so Al Dante
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.
I’m a little disappointed that the center is a knife and fork instead of a hand pinching fingers together to make a point
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.
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.
Wait can you explain the difference between Americanized pasta and Italian pasta? Isn’t all pasta just… pasta?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Let’s not give extra airtime to that cunt.
Wow… I had no idea. Thanks!
Pre 1600s: Y’all a wanta some Rotting fish juice?
Don’t knock it 'til you’ve tried it.
Eh, half the authentic East Asian food you get has Fish Sauce as an ingredient, which is essentially Rotting Fish Juice. Hell, Worcester Sauce in the West is similar but different.
Source: Unmilitant vegan that is peeved that fermented fish product ends up being the secret ingredient in many authentic dishes.
Fair point. Although a lot of South Asia also had shitloads of herbs and spices.
Italian cooking before tomatoes came to Europe looks quite depressing. (Probably still pretty tasty tho)
As someone who’s lived Italy, this does sound like something an Italian would say lmao
