"You keep using that word, I don’t think it means what you think it means.” Popular is not necessarily traditional, and not all habits are worthy to be persevered.
I leave you this quatation from the catalan chef Maria Nicolau. I have translated it from catalan to Spanish. I think that it's more than clever: "La cocina tradicional si no es útil, no tiene ninguna razón de ser. No está para ser folclorizada, ni para ser idolatrada, ni defendida como si fuera una especie de ideología. La cocina tradicional es sabiduría acumulada generación tras generación, de ensayo y error, de aprender a medida que se va haciendo, porque así es como se aprende la cocina en casa. Así es como se ha aprendido generación tras generación, y así es como nos llega hoy. Parecía que quizás habíamos perdido esos goznes y ese hilo, que nos habíamos desenganchado, porque en casa ya no tenemos contacto con esas madres y esas abuelas que cocinan y tenemos que encontrar canales distintos. Si Twitter sirve para algo, que sea para esto, ¿no? Para compartir entre todos lo que sabemos y lo que hemos visto en casa: utensilios, trucos, formas de hacer...".
Maria Nicolau, what a woman and what a writer. She is so damn right. Gastronomy is not for a dusty shelf. But also, it’s not for an impoverishment of it. It’s for...wait for it... (and here is where a lot of “foodies go wrong”)...EATING! :)
Don't touch my francesinha! How can you not appreciate something that is so deadly and so delicious at the same time? 😄
Joking aside, I completely agree on the whole piece. As a Neapolitan I see this topic as problematic with the fact that a lot of our most popular foods make a deep-fry fest and they're so embedded in our culinary culture that is hard to give up on them. But they're also one of the causes of our high rate of child obesity. And that come from a people that in the past was known to be avid consumer of vegetable. Today we still do it, but most of the time not in a healthy way.
Let me say that deep frying is nothing to be afraid of: most fried food comes to us from the Arabs (and the thing for frying, through the Portuguese, reached Japan: tempura is after all a very Mediterranean thing). I do agree with you that there’s a substantial difference between ultra processed industrial food and grandma’s panzerotti, though!
On francesinha...dear lord, the first and last time I tried it I was appalled by the poor quality of its ingredients, especially the “Bimbo” bread that is such just in name, I’ve never tasted a worse “bread” ever. And don’t get me started on the horrible sausages and the abomination that is fiambre (a processed shit, far from even our Granbiscotto!). Ugh. With so many delicious recipes, flattening Portugal between a chicken churrasco and a Frankenstein sandwich is just plain sad :)
I agree, but it was just so decadent. Obviously, the kind of thing I tried once in my life and I don't think I'll ever do again... I was lucky enough to survive the first time 😆
I leave you this quatation from the catalan chef Maria Nicolau. I have translated it from catalan to Spanish. I think that it's more than clever: "La cocina tradicional si no es útil, no tiene ninguna razón de ser. No está para ser folclorizada, ni para ser idolatrada, ni defendida como si fuera una especie de ideología. La cocina tradicional es sabiduría acumulada generación tras generación, de ensayo y error, de aprender a medida que se va haciendo, porque así es como se aprende la cocina en casa. Así es como se ha aprendido generación tras generación, y así es como nos llega hoy. Parecía que quizás habíamos perdido esos goznes y ese hilo, que nos habíamos desenganchado, porque en casa ya no tenemos contacto con esas madres y esas abuelas que cocinan y tenemos que encontrar canales distintos. Si Twitter sirve para algo, que sea para esto, ¿no? Para compartir entre todos lo que sabemos y lo que hemos visto en casa: utensilios, trucos, formas de hacer...".
Maria Nicolau, what a woman and what a writer. She is so damn right. Gastronomy is not for a dusty shelf. But also, it’s not for an impoverishment of it. It’s for...wait for it... (and here is where a lot of “foodies go wrong”)...EATING! :)
Don't touch my francesinha! How can you not appreciate something that is so deadly and so delicious at the same time? 😄
Joking aside, I completely agree on the whole piece. As a Neapolitan I see this topic as problematic with the fact that a lot of our most popular foods make a deep-fry fest and they're so embedded in our culinary culture that is hard to give up on them. But they're also one of the causes of our high rate of child obesity. And that come from a people that in the past was known to be avid consumer of vegetable. Today we still do it, but most of the time not in a healthy way.
Let me say that deep frying is nothing to be afraid of: most fried food comes to us from the Arabs (and the thing for frying, through the Portuguese, reached Japan: tempura is after all a very Mediterranean thing). I do agree with you that there’s a substantial difference between ultra processed industrial food and grandma’s panzerotti, though!
On francesinha...dear lord, the first and last time I tried it I was appalled by the poor quality of its ingredients, especially the “Bimbo” bread that is such just in name, I’ve never tasted a worse “bread” ever. And don’t get me started on the horrible sausages and the abomination that is fiambre (a processed shit, far from even our Granbiscotto!). Ugh. With so many delicious recipes, flattening Portugal between a chicken churrasco and a Frankenstein sandwich is just plain sad :)
I agree, but it was just so decadent. Obviously, the kind of thing I tried once in my life and I don't think I'll ever do again... I was lucky enough to survive the first time 😆