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In Italy we say: "A lot of spices are to cover the taste of bad ingredients". It means that if you use a lot of spices ( we _usually_ use only black pepper and

In Italy we say: "A lot of spices are to cover the taste of bad ingredients". 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.

helmholtz 6y ago
I'm Indian, and some of the most amusing conversations I've had about food have been with Italians. 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.
- simongray 6y ago
  I have had similar conversations with Italians about food or coffee. They're very passionate about both and - at least when it comes to coffee - will also get into heated discussions over it with other Italians, not just foreigners. I think it's just the culture.
  - plafl 6y ago
    I'm Spanish, not Italian, but we also talk quite loud. Maybe all discussions look heated to foreigners.
    - Sharlin 6y ago
      Italian discussions literally look very heated to, say, Northern Europeans, due to the very animated body language.
    - andrepd 6y ago
      In Portugal there's a saying: "he/she shouts like a Spaniard". Then again who are we of all people to judge?
  - zwaps 6y ago
    I have a different story. I come from a Northern country where there was no "good" coffee for decades, just regular filter coffee, usually too strong. We accept our inferiority in this regard. 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.
- reader_mode 6y ago
  If you want to be snobbishly criticised about arbitrary food choices by strangers Italy is the place. 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.
- rich_sasha 6y ago
  > An Italian friend was aghast that I would suggest putting Onion and Garlic in the same meal. It was strictly either/or for him. 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..?
  - agurk 6y ago
    Not knowing where you are from, I'd take a guess at American as there is a sharp divide in garlic use between Italian and Italian-American cusine. 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. [0] https://youtube.com/user/italiasquisita https://youtube.com/user/italiasquisita
    - steinuil 6y ago
      In my region (Piemonte) we certainly do. One of the most distinctive dishes is bagna cauda, which is a dip sauce made mainly of anchovies and tons of garlic. It's usually recommended that you eat it before a day where you don't have to go out and interact with other people because you'll smell really badly of garlic :)
      - agurk 6y ago
- pjc50 6y ago
  This is food-as-fandom, isn't it? It's not enough to enjoy your own tastes, you have to get out there and tell people that your taste is superior to theirs. You can see it playing out even in this thread.
- daveslash 6y ago
  Re>> aghast that I would suggest putting Onion and Garlic in the same meal. It was strictly either/or for him. 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.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- castlecrasher2 6y ago
  Indian food is one of my favorites, saag being my top choice. I'm amazed at how many ingredients go into it.
  - divtiwari 6y ago
    FYI 'Saag' is just a generic name to refer to gravy dishes, that are eaten with chapatis. There are hundreds of varieties of saag.
    - DerDangDerDang 6y ago
      Thanks, I always thought saag was any sauce made primarily from leafy greens
      - krtkush 6y ago
        I'm Indian and for me saag is "leafy greens" too. Spinach to be more particular. 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. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bikaneri_bhujia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bikaneri_bhujia
        DerDangDerDang 6y ago
        Aha that makes sense, thanks 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. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombay_mix?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombay_mix?wprov=sfti1
  - d13 6y ago
- michaelscott 6y ago
  Indian food was the first cuisine I thought of when reading GP's comment. Indian food is, at least in my opinion, just as incredible and delicious as Italian food while utilising many spices and ingredients. You also get unique kinds of flavours that are impossible to achieve using European approaches to cooking, and to miss out on these because of culinary snobbery seems extremely sad.
arethuza 6y ago
Isn't Sicilian food fairly spicy?
- kome 6y ago
  not really, maybe you are thinking about some food from calabria.
  - arethuza 6y ago
    Certainly seemed fairly different to me when I visited - I was more used to northern Italian food. 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!
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
dsomers 6y ago
Are you from the North? I know in Southern Italy red peppers are popular on some dishes. E.G. Spaghetti Aglio e Olio
- maury91 6y ago
  I'm from center ( Sardinia ), we also do Aglio, olio e peperoncino. We do use spicy peppers, but I must say they are not so common, majority of recipes don't use them but some people add them to taste. 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
  - lonesword 6y ago
    I spent one day in Cagliari and had a lovely time. One afternoon is an injustice to the island, but the whole trip was spurred by Ryan air's 10 euros flight tickets from Rome :D
  - Melting_Harps 6y ago
    > I'm from center ( Sardinia ), we also do Aglio, olio e peperoncino. We do use spicy peppers, but I must say they are not so common, majority of recipes don't use them but some people add them to taste. 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-romagna-nord-o-centro https://martinmb.wixsite.com/ilmeteomartinmb/post/emilia-rom...
NullPrefix 6y ago
Oh, you burned your food? It's ok, there's ketchup.
Melting_Harps 6y ago
> In Italy we say: "A lot of spices are to cover the taste of bad ingredients". Paul Bocuse pretty much said the same thing about modern French gastronomy stating (paraphrasing) France's emphasis on sauces is primarily to 'mask mediocre cuts of meat.' It's a reason why I never found very compelling in comparison to Spanish or Italian cuisine. The former only recently being in vogue because of the work Ferran Adria. Whereas in Italian and Japanese cuisine (both being my repertoire) a greater emphasis is in exalting humble ingredients with skill, prep and elaboration and an emphasis and an eye for in-season quality and utilizing them in smaller portions than other countries--the highest of this maxim being found in Kaiseki menus. I cannot stomach Indian cuisine because of an almost refusal to follow this norm, it seems like they throw everything in their mise at any given dish and over cook and over season it with every spice and herb available to hide this fact, and the dishes look visually unappetizing and of I'm honest post-digested. I know HN has a lot of Indians so I will stop there as my aim is not to offend anyone, simply give my professional perspective, but it seems almost like an affinity for Indian food has now become more about 'political wokeness' in the professional scene then it does with acceptable norms and practices of most Western trained chefs/cooks, because it defies everything we know about cuisine--this alone is not a bad thing, but its hard to relate to and even harder to justify at times unless you work in one. One of my sous chefs dated an Indian women and despite being a blond, blue eyed German/Polish mixed male from the midwest he was the most vociferous about for Indian cuisine I have ever met, even amongst Indians. He was always trying to force us to eat Indian snacks on the line that were overwhelming seasoned in cumin and various curry powders, ruining our palettes for service. But maybe this is just a perspective held by most of the US: mistaking culinary acceptance as desirable inclusiveness. Because outside of SoCal where Korean food was always a mainstay since the massive wave of Korean migration to LA in the 60s most in the US, until recently, (myself included btw) viewed kimchi and the rest of Korean cuisine as a very stinky and off putting thing to eat. It made sense after or while drinking as it's strong and honestly one-dimensional flavour profile made the booze go down better. Is it snobbery, or just a refinement and adjustment in palette(s) from a Continent that sent people to their deaths for peppercorns to lord over their dinner guests as a signal of wealth and status? Having done my apprenticeship and having ran kitchens in Europe I'd say it was just an iteration from a previous myopic and haphazard art form--people still use paints with radioactive elements because the colours are somehow more vibrant then their non-radioactive counterparts. I've seen both examples, and to be honest I couldn't tell a difference. Edit: Seems like I'll still get down voted for trying to be diplomatic anyway, haha.
anandrm 6y ago
"A lot of spices are to cover the taste of bad ingredients" - Thats a very pretentious statement , i hear this from lot of stake guys. The use of spice is totally cultural, few do have medicinal value - the best example would be (Curcuma,Cinnamon etc) ..Some spices that are native to Asia/Africa make big difference in food flavors.You appreciate it when you grow up with it. I also understand why people appreciate meat without spices , it also involves which region the meat is from . From what i have experienced , the meat ( lamb) in Asia and Europe is totally different in texture. Its like fish , there is big difference between a lake fish, river fish and sea fish .
- collyw 6y ago
  Interesting take. Steak is one of the things that I do prefer without extra sauces or spices. Tuna steak I add a bit of salt pepper and chilli powder. Chicken by itself is fairly bland, I find it like a blank canvas for adding other flavours to.
collyw 6y ago
Pizza and patsa, your food is so overrated. It was my student diet as it required so little effort or ability. Give me some spicy Indian over that any day. (My Chile con carne recipe is very similar to spaghetti bolognese, with some chillies added and rice for spaghetti).

helmholtz 6y ago

I'm Indian, and some of the most amusing conversations I've had about food have been with Italians. 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.

simongray 6y ago
I have had similar conversations with Italians about food or coffee. They're very passionate about both and - at least when it comes to coffee - will also get into heated discussions over it with other Italians, not just foreigners. I think it's just the culture.
- plafl 6y ago
  I'm Spanish, not Italian, but we also talk quite loud. Maybe all discussions look heated to foreigners.
  - Sharlin 6y ago
    Italian discussions literally look very heated to, say, Northern Europeans, due to the very animated body language.
  - andrepd 6y ago
    In Portugal there's a saying: "he/she shouts like a Spaniard". Then again who are we of all people to judge?
- zwaps 6y ago
  I have a different story. I come from a Northern country where there was no "good" coffee for decades, just regular filter coffee, usually too strong. We accept our inferiority in this regard. 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.
reader_mode 6y ago
If you want to be snobbishly criticised about arbitrary food choices by strangers Italy is the place. 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.
rich_sasha 6y ago
> An Italian friend was aghast that I would suggest putting Onion and Garlic in the same meal. It was strictly either/or for him. 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..?
- agurk 6y ago
  Not knowing where you are from, I'd take a guess at American as there is a sharp divide in garlic use between Italian and Italian-American cusine. 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. [0] https://youtube.com/user/italiasquisita https://youtube.com/user/italiasquisita
  - steinuil 6y ago
    In my region (Piemonte) we certainly do. One of the most distinctive dishes is bagna cauda, which is a dip sauce made mainly of anchovies and tons of garlic. It's usually recommended that you eat it before a day where you don't have to go out and interact with other people because you'll smell really badly of garlic :)
    - agurk 6y ago
pjc50 6y ago
This is food-as-fandom, isn't it? It's not enough to enjoy your own tastes, you have to get out there and tell people that your taste is superior to theirs. You can see it playing out even in this thread.
daveslash 6y ago
Re>> aghast that I would suggest putting Onion and Garlic in the same meal. It was strictly either/or for him. 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.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
castlecrasher2 6y ago
Indian food is one of my favorites, saag being my top choice. I'm amazed at how many ingredients go into it.
- divtiwari 6y ago
  FYI 'Saag' is just a generic name to refer to gravy dishes, that are eaten with chapatis. There are hundreds of varieties of saag.
  - DerDangDerDang 6y ago
    Thanks, I always thought saag was any sauce made primarily from leafy greens
    - krtkush 6y ago
      I'm Indian and for me saag is "leafy greens" too. Spinach to be more particular. 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. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bikaneri_bhujia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bikaneri_bhujia
      - DerDangDerDang 6y ago
        Aha that makes sense, thanks 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. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombay_mix?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombay_mix?wprov=sfti1
- d13 6y ago
michaelscott 6y ago
Indian food was the first cuisine I thought of when reading GP's comment. Indian food is, at least in my opinion, just as incredible and delicious as Italian food while utilising many spices and ingredients. You also get unique kinds of flavours that are impossible to achieve using European approaches to cooking, and to miss out on these because of culinary snobbery seems extremely sad.

arethuza 6y ago

Isn't Sicilian food fairly spicy?

kome 6y ago
not really, maybe you are thinking about some food from calabria.
- arethuza 6y ago
  Certainly seemed fairly different to me when I visited - I was more used to northern Italian food. 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!
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

dsomers 6y ago

Are you from the North? I know in Southern Italy red peppers are popular on some dishes. E.G. Spaghetti Aglio e Olio

maury91 6y ago
I'm from center ( Sardinia ), we also do Aglio, olio e peperoncino. We do use spicy peppers, but I must say they are not so common, majority of recipes don't use them but some people add them to taste. 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
- lonesword 6y ago
  I spent one day in Cagliari and had a lovely time. One afternoon is an injustice to the island, but the whole trip was spurred by Ryan air's 10 euros flight tickets from Rome :D
- Melting_Harps 6y ago
  > I'm from center ( Sardinia ), we also do Aglio, olio e peperoncino. We do use spicy peppers, but I must say they are not so common, majority of recipes don't use them but some people add them to taste. 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-romagna-nord-o-centro https://martinmb.wixsite.com/ilmeteomartinmb/post/emilia-rom...

NullPrefix 6y ago

Oh, you burned your food? It's ok, there's ketchup.

Melting_Harps 6y ago

> In Italy we say: "A lot of spices are to cover the taste of bad ingredients". Paul Bocuse pretty much said the same thing about modern French gastronomy stating (paraphrasing) France's emphasis on sauces is primarily to 'mask mediocre cuts of meat.' It's a reason why I never found very compelling in comparison to Spanish or Italian cuisine. The former only recently being in vogue because of the work Ferran Adria. Whereas in Italian and Japanese cuisine (both being my repertoire) a greater emphasis is in exalting humble ingredients with skill, prep and elaboration and an emphasis and an eye for in-season quality and utilizing them in smaller portions than other countries--the highest of this maxim being found in Kaiseki menus. I cannot stomach Indian cuisine because of an almost refusal to follow this norm, it seems like they throw everything in their mise at any given dish and over cook and over season it with every spice and herb available to hide this fact, and the dishes look visually unappetizing and of I'm honest post-digested. I know HN has a lot of Indians so I will stop there as my aim is not to offend anyone, simply give my professional perspective, but it seems almost like an affinity for Indian food has now become more about 'political wokeness' in the professional scene then it does with acceptable norms and practices of most Western trained chefs/cooks, because it defies everything we know about cuisine--this alone is not a bad thing, but its hard to relate to and even harder to justify at times unless you work in one. One of my sous chefs dated an Indian women and despite being a blond, blue eyed German/Polish mixed male from the midwest he was the most vociferous about for Indian cuisine I have ever met, even amongst Indians. He was always trying to force us to eat Indian snacks on the line that were overwhelming seasoned in cumin and various curry powders, ruining our palettes for service. But maybe this is just a perspective held by most of the US: mistaking culinary acceptance as desirable inclusiveness. Because outside of SoCal where Korean food was always a mainstay since the massive wave of Korean migration to LA in the 60s most in the US, until recently, (myself included btw) viewed kimchi and the rest of Korean cuisine as a very stinky and off putting thing to eat. It made sense after or while drinking as it's strong and honestly one-dimensional flavour profile made the booze go down better. Is it snobbery, or just a refinement and adjustment in palette(s) from a Continent that sent people to their deaths for peppercorns to lord over their dinner guests as a signal of wealth and status? Having done my apprenticeship and having ran kitchens in Europe I'd say it was just an iteration from a previous myopic and haphazard art form--people still use paints with radioactive elements because the colours are somehow more vibrant then their non-radioactive counterparts. I've seen both examples, and to be honest I couldn't tell a difference. Edit: Seems like I'll still get down voted for trying to be diplomatic anyway, haha.

anandrm 6y ago

"A lot of spices are to cover the taste of bad ingredients" - Thats a very pretentious statement , i hear this from lot of stake guys. The use of spice is totally cultural, few do have medicinal value - the best example would be (Curcuma,Cinnamon etc) ..Some spices that are native to Asia/Africa make big difference in food flavors.You appreciate it when you grow up with it. I also understand why people appreciate meat without spices , it also involves which region the meat is from . From what i have experienced , the meat ( lamb) in Asia and Europe is totally different in texture. Its like fish , there is big difference between a lake fish, river fish and sea fish .

collyw 6y ago
Interesting take. Steak is one of the things that I do prefer without extra sauces or spices. Tuna steak I add a bit of salt pepper and chilli powder. Chicken by itself is fairly bland, I find it like a blank canvas for adding other flavours to.

collyw 6y ago

Pizza and patsa, your food is so overrated. It was my student diet as it required so little effort or ability. Give me some spicy Indian over that any day. (My Chile con carne recipe is very similar to spaghetti bolognese, with some chillies added and rice for spaghetti).