3 ms·

I'm skeptical whenever someone talks about traditional national food as opposed to traditional regional food. Seems like the further back you go, the less likel

I'm skeptical whenever someone talks about traditional national food as opposed to traditional regional food. Seems like the further back you go, the less likely you are to find a unified food culture (or any culture really) across a nation of significant size. Even in the U.S., it's much more meaningful to talk about traditional midwest cuisine, or traditional southern cuisine, or traditional northeast cuisine than it is to talk about "traditional American food", because people in those places had access to different ingredients and had much more distinct cultures, until recently. This is a crude oversimplification, but in general I think cuisine can be either traditional, or national, but rarely both.

qorrect 4y ago
I'm picturing midwest cuisine as hot dogs with canned cheese.
- bombcar 4y ago
  You're forgetting the dishtopass and the hotdish.
  - earthling8118 4y ago
    That sounds a little too Minnesotan to be called Midwest
- memalign 4y ago
  Apple butter with fritters, biscuits and gravy, fried bologna, sugar cream pie. At state fairs: battered and fried everything: oreos, snickers, pickles, Twinkies… Not healthy but it is delicious!
robofanatic 4y ago
Completely agree. I am Indian and grew up in a rural area of a western state and I had never heard of chicken tikka masala or saag paneer or any of the typical Punjabi dishes you get in an Indian restaurant outside of India, until I was in my 20s when we moved to a large city.
akiselev 4y ago
Even "traditional" vastly over simplifies things. Every traditional dish I've learned to cook from a variety of cuisines around the world have huge variation within the same village let alone a metro area or province. Take borsch, for example: not only are there half a dozen or more national variations (Ukrainian, Russian, Polish, etc.) but each family has their own little trick for choosing the best meat and aromatics for the broth or ratios for and ways to caramelize the vegetables before throwing them in the pot. Most of these variations impart dramatic flavor differences when you compare them side by side. Availability of different varieties of vegetables and meat further creates a layer of regional differences There's also an interesting phenomenon happening with the industrialization of international foods: the flavor of Thai food in the United States, for example, is dominated by the quality control of a few suppliers like Maesri and Aroy-d. Since ingredients like curry paste and coconut milk are so time consuming to make, everyone except the poorest of families fall back to the industrially produced ingredients from those suppliers, even in the home country. As the ingredients are globalized through popularity, the entire world market tends to settle on a small number of vendors, homogenizing the flavor of the dishes. There is still plenty of variation between families like the amount of fresh makrut leaves, galangal, or lemongrass and the different techniques to toast the curry paste and coconut milk and so on, but the base flavors are all very much the same.
- EntrePrescott 4y ago
  > the flavor of Thai food While we're at that subject: The national administration of Thailand has for the last, well, more than twenty years, been very actively pushing a big gastrodiplomacy and economy program (with certifications/labels, loans/subsidies and lots of other measures) to expand the number of Thai restaurants all over the world… and to standardize the recipes that are considered traditional "Thai cuisine". On the positive side, that does help to guarantee some quality standards… but on the negative side, it did also have a strong effect of homogenization and reduction of diversity within "Thai cuisine".

qorrect 4y ago

I'm picturing midwest cuisine as hot dogs with canned cheese.

bombcar 4y ago
You're forgetting the dishtopass and the hotdish.
- earthling8118 4y ago
  That sounds a little too Minnesotan to be called Midwest
memalign 4y ago
Apple butter with fritters, biscuits and gravy, fried bologna, sugar cream pie. At state fairs: battered and fried everything: oreos, snickers, pickles, Twinkies… Not healthy but it is delicious!

robofanatic 4y ago

Completely agree. I am Indian and grew up in a rural area of a western state and I had never heard of chicken tikka masala or saag paneer or any of the typical Punjabi dishes you get in an Indian restaurant outside of India, until I was in my 20s when we moved to a large city.

akiselev 4y ago

Even "traditional" vastly over simplifies things. Every traditional dish I've learned to cook from a variety of cuisines around the world have huge variation within the same village let alone a metro area or province. Take borsch, for example: not only are there half a dozen or more national variations (Ukrainian, Russian, Polish, etc.) but each family has their own little trick for choosing the best meat and aromatics for the broth or ratios for and ways to caramelize the vegetables before throwing them in the pot. Most of these variations impart dramatic flavor differences when you compare them side by side. Availability of different varieties of vegetables and meat further creates a layer of regional differences There's also an interesting phenomenon happening with the industrialization of international foods: the flavor of Thai food in the United States, for example, is dominated by the quality control of a few suppliers like Maesri and Aroy-d. Since ingredients like curry paste and coconut milk are so time consuming to make, everyone except the poorest of families fall back to the industrially produced ingredients from those suppliers, even in the home country. As the ingredients are globalized through popularity, the entire world market tends to settle on a small number of vendors, homogenizing the flavor of the dishes. There is still plenty of variation between families like the amount of fresh makrut leaves, galangal, or lemongrass and the different techniques to toast the curry paste and coconut milk and so on, but the base flavors are all very much the same.

EntrePrescott 4y ago
> the flavor of Thai food While we're at that subject: The national administration of Thailand has for the last, well, more than twenty years, been very actively pushing a big gastrodiplomacy and economy program (with certifications/labels, loans/subsidies and lots of other measures) to expand the number of Thai restaurants all over the world… and to standardize the recipes that are considered traditional "Thai cuisine". On the positive side, that does help to guarantee some quality standards… but on the negative side, it did also have a strong effect of homogenization and reduction of diversity within "Thai cuisine".