Tbh I find Italian culinary traditions underwhelming. Like they just gave up 10 minutes in, no work at all because it's too hot.
To be fair, the further from coastline, the better the Italian cuisine - more herbs, more variety, more complex recipes.
this post was submitted on 08 Mar 2025
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I'm Dutch and I think this map is completely unfair. It overrates our food significantly
I'm a little disappointed that the center is a knife and fork instead of a hand pinching fingers together to make a point
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.
I second this map.
okay but north africa food?
Well, the map is titled, "Culinary Map of Europe" :D
I feel like France and Spain are gonna have some pretty strong objections
Not from someone from the South-East of France.
Food in Portugal is delicious
I'm just under the line of "toxic" in Finland and you could drawn the line a bit further south.
Finnish national dish? Traditional version? Here you go, the entire recipe;
Pound of beef, cubed
Pounds of pork, cubed
Water
A spoonful of salt.
Put meat in pan with water.
Take pan off heat after enough time.
Done.
That's literally the Finnish national dish "Karelian stew". Obviously nowadays it definitely includes black pepper as well and bunch of other things, because the traditional version is literally just a bunch of boiled meat without any spices.
edit haha enjoyed that but yes, the formatting was off, although you could obviously used water cubes in a pan as long as you still put it on hot. Actually, it might be an interesting experiment to put a pot on a hot stove / flame with beef & pork & ice. Insofar that maybe a tiny bit of the meat would brown before the ice melts and becomes water idk. At least then there'd be browning resulting in some taste. The classical one has none.
I made lohikeitto for the first time recently and that was pretty damn good. Almost like an American chowder, but thinner and with nice, tasty dill (I'm sure I don't have to tell you that, but other readers might like to know).
Oh no, you don't have to tell me.
Some people make an excellent lohikeitto, and it's damn fine.
There's a restaurant I go in my city for a good one.
But I've been on a gluten and dairy free diet. I'm sure I could replace rye bread with decent alternatives and cream with a vegetable one, but lohikeitto has been hard for me to get right.
Any fish foods actually. Fish is such delicate meat I find it hard to get a proper grasp on because it varies so much from fish to fish, especially when its different species of fish.
Meat from large mammals is rather easy, usually uniform. Fish, just... I need to learn it better.
Thank for reminding me though, I think I'll learn to make lohikeitto next. I've been learning to cook a bit more, had porkchops today which I marinated myself with rum and garlic and lime and chili and rosemary etc, have made horse meatballs. Deer stew. Elk fry up. Reindeer ragu.
Mmm.
It was at least a decade, definitely a bit more since I made meatballs. But I think they turned out nice.
Gluten fre spaghetti. I hate to have to have it, but Rummo brand has actually been pretty nice. I tried like a half dozen others before. So sad I can't have real spaghetti anymore but this is a decent enough alternative, and I make up for the poor spaghetti by improving what goes with it.
Denser fishes like salmon and cod are the easiest to cook. You can overcook them, especially salmon, but they're both really delicious and generally easy to work with. I would recommend going with salmon for the extra flavor, but if you're concerned about over cooking, maybe cod instead.
Edit: I used this recipe, but with less dill because that's a crazy amount.
https://skinnyspatula.com/salmon-soup-lohikeitto/#mv-creation-223-jtr
Yeah salmon isnt' too hard and cod goes pretty easy in fishsticks basically, but I don't know how to optimise it. I don't get the feel for the meat like I do with when I cook, for example, steaks and want them rare. I mean yeah I do use a digital thermometer with steaks to get them optimal, but my point is I wouldn't even know with fish what the optimal is.
Like salmon and cod, yeah, easy enough and you find things at the store. But once I tried making soup out of this pike we caught and it was just... way overcooked. I messed it up, totally.
So I'd like to get that sort of intuitive feel and understanding I have for mammalian meat to fish meat as well. Like I understand with mammalian meat if it's fattier it'll cook differently, if it's this or that it'll affect it this way or that, but I don't know shit about fish, you know? Like if I was a millionaire, I'd hire a high-grade sushi chef to teach me about fish or something.
A sushi chef would be a poor choice to teach you about cooking fish!
But I understand. It really just takes practice.
Try a handful of different recipes with the same fish and you will start to get a feel for it. Then try a handful of recipes with a different fish. Etc. After getting the hang of a few of them, you'll be more comfortable with judging how and how long to cook the fish based on the filet or steak that you're working with--how thick or delicate the meat is.
For me, I was wary about chicken for the longest time when I first started cooking, afraid that I would undercook it. Same thing. It all just takes experience.
A sushi chef would be poor in teaching me about cooking fish, yes, but I believe I know cooking more than fish, and a sushi chef would be very good to teach me about fish.
You see? I can't communicate how amusing it is for me to stay "you see? " to you but I will try; you are Drusas, who one commented about my chosen nickname, as it was similar to yours.
The reason this amused me, or is ironic, is that my name is "Jussi", which sounds sort of like "you see". And the thing I like to do is mansplain. So... you see?
Nominative determinism.
I do always have a bit of a double-take when I see your username. It makes me think you have good taste, even though I don't know its origin.
But you're right that a sushi chef should be well acquainted with a variety of fish.
It makes me think you have good taste, even though I don't know its origin.
Probably shouldn't.
I was thinking more about imparting information about the nature, spirit, of fish.
If O understand that, it'll help me cook.
I think I would need you to elaborate.
Sorry, I was offensively drunk 7 hours ago when I wrote that.
I don't know how to elaborate on that anymore. Apologies.
cubed Water
Ice blocks??
I, too, am really curious about the cubed water.
Maybe ice is simply more available than liquid potable water in Finland.
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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
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!
tourist traps are everywhere. nevertheless Italian cousin remains top notch. fact
Must be a freak in the sheets.
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.
Funny seeing this, especially from an iberian perpective, because local culinary is mostly the same as theirs. With the slight difference we actually have the balls to spice our food.
I have yet to sample an Italian arrabiata sauce that I would remotely call 'spicy'. Though, to be fair, I'm an American that over spices everything I cook, so my palate is probably blown out at this point.
I've read you guys have a too sweet baseline for flavours, due to the overwhelming presence of corn syrup in everything.
Iberian cuisine, as in Portuguese and Spanish (fuck those guys; they can't make proper bread even if you teach them!), can be spicy but adding heat to a dish serves to accentuate the underlying flavours.
Off the top of my head, I can think of a simple roasted chicken with lemon and mussels.
The chicken is just prepared by seasoning the chicken with coarse salt and stuffing it with a whole lemon, with the ends cut, and roasting in the oven. With the chicken ready, you just take the lemon from inside the bird and squeeze it over. Base flavours are lemon and salt, with the chicken fat binding everything together. You should complain the meat is a bit under salted; it means you are actually tasting it.
The mussels are prepared with white wine, salt and garlic. The garlic is chopped and slightly fried, just until fragrant, in olive oil. The mussels are thrown in, lightly salted, tossed in the base, over high heat, then the wine added and the pot covered to steam the mussels until all are open. Or can just sprinkle salt over the mussels on your plate. You want to taste the mussel.
These are basic dishes any child can eat. Not too extreme flavours. Adding a chopped chilli to the mussels base and a chilli inside the chicken will add a sligh note of heat to the dishes, embolden the overall flavours, but you will still be getting the base flavours after swallowing, lingering in your mouth.
Food should leave a memory. It's supposed to be flavourful, not painful.
Spanish and Greek food beats Italian. Heck Polish food is way underrated. Also American pizza is better.
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Well most of 'traditional' Italien food is actually from the US and had been invented by Italien immigrants.
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