Jumpshot wrote:
Italia
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Co-sign
Italy is the geographical and historical meeting ground of all sorts of people and cultures and that includes their cooking techniques and crops. Italiancuisine blends Greek, Roman, Arab, North African, Persian, Levantine, German, Spanish and French styles of cooking. Also, Italians were more willing thanFrench and Spanish to accept New World crops into their diets so the Italians tend to do a better job with potatoes, tomatoes (obviously) and chili peppersthan French or Spanish cooks. Italy also has some of the best beef and pork in the world, a huge variety of wines and cheeses, many types of breads and pastaand even rice, some of the best sea food and a massive variety of crops that came from all over Europe and Asia.
Anyone who likes good food must read Dianna Seed's 101 Best Pasta Sauces. Most Americans are aware of maybe a half dozen sauces (and some, such asBolognese and Carbonnara have been bastardized beyond recognition) but as the title of the book implies there are over a hundred varieties and they use a wholerange of ingredients and techniques. There are a good many meat and seafood sauces but most are vegetable based and they find ways to turn almost any edibleplant into at least one and usually a couple of great sauces.
Italian food is healthy, full of variety, good for any level of formality (you can whip up a sauce from tomatoes and basil in your garden in under 20 minutesor you can build multi course meals around lamb ragus or pasta molds stuffed with truffles and caviar) and are perfect if you live in California and want tobuy local and seasonal. A big reason why I cook so much Italian food is because there are always several great Italian recipes for what ever is in season herein California since we have such similar climates and soil types.
The variety of influences and ingredients are also why I like Mexican, Brazilian and Argentinian food. All three Latin American nations mix Iberian, German,Amerindian and in the case of Brazil, African cooking techniques and then blended it with local ingredients as well as Old World crops. Japanese and French aregreat because they are both from societies that traditionally were fairly poor and rural and are from climates where the choices of ingredients were highlyconstrained by seasonality (in continental climates most fruits and vegetables would be available for a short while and then something else would be in season)so they have very careful and delicate preparations of food in order to maximize a relatively narrow choice of ingredients. Finally, anyone who can make acurry is doing it in my book so I love Indian and Thai and other cultures that liberally use spices and tropical food stuffs and serve it all on rice.
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