Yes, I was amazed during the Obama administration to learn that there were boutique Southern chefs and restaurants. I was just comparing notes with my wife about who had the worse cooking to eat growing up. Ordinary day-by-day Southern cooking wasn't great when I was young either. It was 'country fried' steak or chicken -- the so-called 'steak' being mechanically tenderized garbage -- plus green beans flavored with nothing, mashed potatoes flavored with maybe salt and if you were lucky a slab of margarine, white gravy (milk, white flour, salt, black pepper, fat of some kind), and so forth.
My grandmother was a great cook who could make exceptionally delicious food out of the same very basic ingredients everyone else cooked with. She made bacon, biscuits with yesterday's bacon grease, and the same white gravy ("sawmill gravy," it is sometimes called), and somehow it was wonderful. You'd get the same stuff at a meat-and-three roadside restaurant and it was tasteless; and what the school served us kids, I hate to relate.
Diversity has its challenges, and I wish we could all stop and have the 'melting pot' effect take place for a while before we rush on to add a bunch more folks. That said, I can definitely appreciate the enrichment of the cuisine that I've observed in my lifetime. I'm not against such things at all, I just want to do it at a pace that avoids the dangers.
We figured out years ago that most of the food that appeals to us comes from cultures residing, like us, south of the 30th parallel. Climates north of that are unnatural, and we don't have no truck with them.
I had read that equatorial climates tend toward spicier food, as they provoke sweating that helps cool the body. Perhaps; but whatever, the best food does tend to come from near the equator.
In the far north, fish is big. Even at moderate latitude it tends to be a bigger part of the diet. Shorter growing seasons push plants off into side dishes, I suppose.
Spices were used not only for flavoring but to disguise meat going bad. When things can be frozen, or at least stored in a cool cave for a while, that's less important. Scandinavians use dill, vinegar, and herbs that can be grown in the north, such as chives, scallions. Not so spicy.
When fire is present for heat for all hours of the day, cooking is different. Meats can be cooked in big slabs, rather than having to chop it up into tiny pieces, as Mexican, Mediterranean, and Oriental cuisines do.
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I don't see the all-white, high fat, high salt meals of my childhood here. This looks like boutique Swedishness.
Of course, current Sweden has a lot of boutique Swedishness, so maybe it is authentic.
Yes, I was amazed during the Obama administration to learn that there were boutique Southern chefs and restaurants. I was just comparing notes with my wife about who had the worse cooking to eat growing up. Ordinary day-by-day Southern cooking wasn't great when I was young either. It was 'country fried' steak or chicken -- the so-called 'steak' being mechanically tenderized garbage -- plus green beans flavored with nothing, mashed potatoes flavored with maybe salt and if you were lucky a slab of margarine, white gravy (milk, white flour, salt, black pepper, fat of some kind), and so forth.
My grandmother was a great cook who could make exceptionally delicious food out of the same very basic ingredients everyone else cooked with. She made bacon, biscuits with yesterday's bacon grease, and the same white gravy ("sawmill gravy," it is sometimes called), and somehow it was wonderful. You'd get the same stuff at a meat-and-three roadside restaurant and it was tasteless; and what the school served us kids, I hate to relate.
Diversity has its challenges, and I wish we could all stop and have the 'melting pot' effect take place for a while before we rush on to add a bunch more folks. That said, I can definitely appreciate the enrichment of the cuisine that I've observed in my lifetime. I'm not against such things at all, I just want to do it at a pace that avoids the dangers.
We figured out years ago that most of the food that appeals to us comes from cultures residing, like us, south of the 30th parallel. Climates north of that are unnatural, and we don't have no truck with them.
I had read that equatorial climates tend toward spicier food, as they provoke sweating that helps cool the body. Perhaps; but whatever, the best food does tend to come from near the equator.
In the far north, fish is big. Even at moderate latitude it tends to be a bigger part of the diet. Shorter growing seasons push plants off into side dishes, I suppose.
Spices were used not only for flavoring but to disguise meat going bad. When things can be frozen, or at least stored in a cool cave for a while, that's less important. Scandinavians use dill, vinegar, and herbs that can be grown in the north, such as chives, scallions. Not so spicy.
When fire is present for heat for all hours of the day, cooking is different. Meats can be cooked in big slabs, rather than having to chop it up into tiny pieces, as Mexican, Mediterranean, and Oriental cuisines do.
Well, now, I do like meat cooked in big slabs. Great mighty Ribeyes around 2.5 inches are good, dry aged and rare. Don’t need much spice on those.
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