Food thoughts

[oyceter]

My mouth is still recovering from the Korean food for dinner tonight. I think on the level of tolerating spiciness, I am somewhere in between -- not totally scared of it, but in no way able to eat Korean, Szechuan or Indian without having to run for bread or milk or rice or something.

I spent a great deal of time wondering why half the owners in the Korean restaurant spoke Japanese -- was it a Japanese-run place like all those Chinese-run Japanese restaurants? But then I heard someone speaking a language I didn't understand that sounded like Korean, so then I got more confused. Maybe they are Koreans from Japan.

We passed by an Afghan place but didn't end up eating there because it looked expensive. But I drooled over the menu. Maybe some other time...

Then the boy and I had a stupid argument over whether Greek food is European or not. The boy argues that it is because Greece is in Europe. I argue that it is not because from my very limited experience, it tastes more like Middle Eastern food (the lamb, the spices, the legumes). I was in full blown stupid argument mode and comparing it to language families.

I think I'll eat strawberries and Cool Whip now. Cool Whip is awesome. This is completely the boy's fault -- now that he has introduced me to Cool Whip, he has turned my healthy dessert/snack of fruit into calorie-ridden excess. But mmmmmm.

Comments

[oursin.livejournal.com]

Modern Greek food has been strongly influenced by Turkish cuisine, not surprisingly considering the extent of time Greece was under the Ottoman Empire. In the UK most Greek restaurants are Cypriot, which is very similar indeed to Middle Eastern. There are one or two however which are from a different tradition. But there are bound to be some similarities across the whole of the Mediterranean, because of the general sameness of ingredients. Also various geopolitical factors, e.g. a number of Greek islands were ruled by Venice for significant periods, as well as the Ottoman Empire being a major player at the eastern end of the Med for centuries.

On culinary cultural dissemination, I assume (but may be wrong) that pilau, pilaff and paella derive from the same root and that the concept was spread by the early medieval Islamic expansion.

[veejane.livejournal.com]

My favorite food-language note is about Greek tzatziki and Turkish jajic. The Greeks insist that tzatziki is the one true original, and the Turks claim that jajic is not only older but completely different from tzatziki.

I am unclear on how many options you really have, once you have mixed cucumber into yogurt. It's gonna taste like cucumber-yogurt no matter what you do.

[oursin.livejournal.com]

And raita is very similar too...

[oyceter]

Thanks! Do you know of any good food history books, by the way?

[oursin.livejournal.com]

I find that I have Reay Tannahill's Food in History (1988 revised edition) shelved with my cookery books, but very little recollection of reading it, although it's clearly been read at some stage. I've heard promising things about Food: a history by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto (2001) but haven't got round to reading it yet. I liked Margaret Visser's Much Depends on Dinner, because of its unusual approach - taking the ingredients of a very simple meal and tracing their evolution. And the great food writers like Elizabeth David, M F K Fisher and Claudia Roden have all sorts of interesting nuggets of information.

[oyceter]

Thanks!