|
|
World
cuisines
Insights on
world cuisines
overall
My
decades of researching world cuisines (and writing books on world cuisines) have reinforced to me that
they are the result of evolution, an intermingling of forces over centuries
or millennia. A cuisine grows, develops and changes as part of a living culture.
Below are some significant factors:
 Historical
forces (possession of a particular territory or the aversion to the foods of an
enemy) influence cuisines.
So
does technology. I've observed too many times in my travels the obvious but
telling difference in the agricultural results between
a farmer using a animal pulled plow and a modern tractor.
Geography,
geology and climate also play a major role. Certain crops demand heavy rains, or
sandy soil, or hot summers, or whatever. All this helps determine which raw
materials will be available to the cook. Example: Southern Indians eat rice,
northern Indians eat wheat.
Also,
certain
foods or combinations of foods may be forbidden by religion or deplored by
custom.
Lands
with frigid winters need to preserve foods and incorporate them into their cold
season diets.
Fuel
availability affects cooking styles. Take wood. It is ideal for grilling and
slow, brick oven cooking. It is plentiful in forested lands like Eastern Europe
but is scarce in countries like India and China.
The
European discovery of the New World had an explosive impact on the European
diet. New foods were introduced in Europe including these now staples: potatoes,
sweet potatoes, tomatoes, corn, chilies, allspice, chocolate, turkey and
vanilla. Can you imagine southern Italian cooking without tomatoes, Hungarian
cuisine without paprika, Chinese Sichuan seasoning without hot chilies, and Irish and
German diets without potatoes?
The
migration of foods did not move in only one direction. Chicken, beef, lamb,
pork, wheat, and many fruits and vegetables (apples and oranges, for example)
were brought to the Western hemisphere. The importation of the horse also
revolutionized the New World agriculture.
The
international exchange was beneficial. But today, characteristic national
cuisines are being homogenized. This amalgamation is good if cooks can add the
best dishes of other cultures to their repertoire. A Japanese adage says that
tasting a new food adds 75 days to one's life. The trouble starts when new
dishes displace the old, disrupting rather than enriching a traditional pattern
of cooking and eating - and when the foods adopted represent the lowest common
denominator rather than the best in the borrowed cuisine.
I
believe that national
and regional ethnic cuisines are treasures worthy of saving.
Learn about these
exciting world cuisines
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
|
|
