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Porthos

Your culture's cuisine

What are some foods which your country or culture is famous for, or you find particularly good? What are some of the most common foods, ingredients, dishes, and drinks which you partake of in your country's traditional cuisine? So if you're English, don't include Curry as a dish, as an example. Do you get it?
Benjamin [inactive]

Chicken tikka masala:




Yes, I chose to ignore your instruction not to include curry, because chicken tikka masala is arguably the most popular dish in England and was actually invented in London anyway.

(Josh, could you please reduce the size of your avatar? It slows the forum down and many people do not like having to scroll across. Thanks!)
Porthos

I don't know how to reduce the size. And besides, don't you have high speed internet anyway? It doesn't slow down my computer's downloading speed.
Benjamin [inactive]

Porthos wrote:
And besides, don't you have high speed internet anyway?

No, I don't. Like many Europeans, I have 56k dial-up.
Porthos

Why don't Europeans have high speed?
Benjamin [inactive]

Porthos wrote:
Why don't Europeans have high speed?

Possibly a slight majority of Western Europeans have high speed internet now. But a lot of us still don't, because it isn't available everywhere. We're a few years behind the US as far as internet technology is concerned, I think.
Porthos

You guys are a few years behind on a lot of things, lol.
fab

Quote:
Possibly a slight majority of Western Europeans have high speed internet now. But a lot of us still don't, because it isn't available everywhere. We're a few years behind the US as far as internet technology is concerned, I think


I'm surprised, most people I know use wi-fi connexions and ADSL.
Uriel

I'm usually lucky to get 28.8 kbs, Porth. Once, I got 33. I dream of 56!

My culture's known for fish dishes. I'm not a big fan of seafood, so I don't eat a lot of Portuguese food. The bread's really good though -- even the lighter Hawaiian version.
Benjamin [inactive]

Aha... so you didn't realise that some of your posts take about 15 minutes for me to load because of the large pictures you put on them then, Fab?

I should say that 56k is the maximum I can get. In reality, I often only get about 28k as well.
Porthos

I feel sorry for you guys who don't have high speed connections. I sincerely pity you.l In America, nearly everybody has high speed because it is now so affordable.

Benjamin,

Those two pictures you posted look yum-yummmm-good! It's making me hungry.

There are very few Indian places here. The closest we usually get to Indian is Thai or Persian.
Pauline

fab wrote:
I'm surprised, most people I know use wi-fi connexions and ADSL.


we have 4,6 Mb wi-fi from the ADSL line.But it's slower because several people (6) share this wi-fi, also the TV channels are via the same modem.
Porthos

I've never had Portuguese food. Is it a lot like Italian food? I've heard that is has a lot of seafood, with Portugal being a traditionally sea-faring nation.

Speaking of fishing, I'm going deep sea fishing in two weeks! Yeah!
Uriel

Quote:
In America, nearly everybody has high speed because it is now so affordable.


Silly Californian -- there are plenty of places where money ain't the issue, it's that it simply isn't available! Come out west sometime..... the REAL west, that is (which would be east of you).

I don't even bother to open the picture-heavy threads anymore -- I don't have the patience.

I've never eaten much Portuguese food, either, but it isn't much like Italian. I've had the kale soup, which is very strange -- heavily flavored with mint, and you pass around bowls of chopped meat and sausage to add as you wish. Rice pudding is big, though -- not unlike Mexican sweet rice.
Porthos

I will change my avatar in light of the fact that it is becoming a hassle for the members of the langcafe community. Lol, I sounded like a politician just now.
fab

Portuguese food is not very similar to Italian (anyway, Italian food has so much variety, that I don't know to which kind of Italian food you compare.

Actually Portugal is more little than Italy, but it has also some variety.
Fish is very central.
Porthos

When I say similar to Italian I mean in the sense that it is of mediterranean nature, which would include wine, salads, pasta, olive oil, crumbly bread, lots of spices, garlic, etc.
fab

Quote:
When I say similar to Italian I mean in the sense that it is of mediterranean nature, which would include wine, salads, pasta, olive oil, crumbly bread, lots of spices, garlic, etc.



Portugal food has of course common points with other southern European foods, lot of red wine, olive oil, bread, etc.. But Portugal is not a mediterranean country in the real meaning. Excecpted in the south, its climate is more Atlantic than really mediterranean... And the water is cool.
Uriel

Well, it IS facing the wrong way to be a Mediterranean country!

Brazilian food is really good -- if you've never been to a Brazilian restaurant, I highly recommend it. Lots more beef, marinated and grilled. Fried plaintains, too -- vaguely Caribbean. Argentinian may be similar -- never tried it, but I've seen some recipes.
Porthos

I like to cook. How can you not if you want to be a true "Casanova"? I like to cook Italian food and Mexican food of course. But, I have Mexican food basically everyday, so in a way, it gets kind of old. In my house, we rarely cook what you might call "American food".
Benjamin [inactive]

Porthos wrote:
In my house, we rarely cook what you might call "American food".

Lol, same for me, but replace that with 'English food'. I can make curry, but that's about it.
Porthos

lol. You Indian bugger! Just kidding.
Porthos

Any picture I put on is showing up huge!
André in Zuid-Afrika

Porthos wrote:
Any picture I put on is showing up huge!



Porthos, make sure that your pic is 240X240 or less. This one is 600X450.
Porthos

Well the only pictures I can fit on here are those from another site. Everytime I try to use the browse feature, the pics are always bigger, often just slightly bigger than 16 kbs, and my only option is to use the offsite url option, and now, they are appearing huge, although my first two were not huge.
André in Zuid-Afrika

Do you have a photo editing programme on your computer?
André in Zuid-Afrika

Right, there you go, all fixed!
Porthos

How did you fix it Andre?
Deborah

Back to food...I like a lot of the regional dishes in the US.
From New England: Boston clam chowder, Boston baked beans, Boston brown bread
From Louisiana: Cajun cooking
From North Carolina: Carolina Brunswick stew (this was years before I became a vegetarian), Carolina barbecue with cole slaw and hush puppies

I like Southern cooking in general (or at least I did when I ate meat). My college in North Carlolina had generally awful institutional food in the cafeteria, but they really did a good job with with traditional Southern stuff such as fried chicken, black-eyed peas, greens, excellent biscuits at breakfast (and grits, of course), and pecan pie.
Uriel

We have a version of Mexican food that I think is sort of northern Mexican in origin (lots of regional variation in Mexican cuisine). Ours is heavy on red and green chile, which we grow extensively. We eat our enchiladas flat, not rolled, and often put a fried egg on top of them. Pinto beans and Spanish rice accompany every single meal. There's no seafood involved, ever. We're big on flour tortillas, less so on corn tortillas. And if you weren't already aware, lots of popular "Mexican" foods are actually American inventions, such as chili (the bean/ground meat dish, spelled differently) and fajitas -- we also have those.
Porthos

Uriel,
You are correct in saying that the Mexican food we eat in the American west or southwest is of northern Mexican origin. It's called "norteno" food, only with a tilde over the "n".

This is what my grandparents eat usually, and keep in mind that they're the wetbacks, lol.

Breakfast - Pandulce con cafe

Later in the morning - Chorizo con papas, fried eggs, tortillas

Lunch - Quesadilla and beans, or a sandwhich

Dinner - Something like red, chicken enchiladas, beans and rice, calabasas, etc.

I'm a third generation American, so this is how my weekday usually looks.

Morning - Pandulce con cafe
Later in the morning (if I have time) - cereal with berries, bananna, milk

Lunch - Sandwhich and chips, and an apple

Dinner - Some kind of heavy Mexican dish, or a delicious full course Italian meal if I have time, and a salad
André in Zuid-Afrika

Bobotie - a traditional Afrikaans dish



The bobotie is in front, at the back is yellow rice with raisins, and at the left steamed dried fruit (both usually eaten with bobotie)

And of course biltong...



Raw meat strips, spiced and dried
fab

Snails de bourgogne :

greg in noord-frankrijk

André in Zuid-Afrika wrote:

And of course biltong...



Raw meat strips, spiced and dried


Looks good !


Here the cuisine is quite diverse : classical and transformational, Franco-French and international, familial and sophisticated.

couscous


coq au vin


pizza


tagliatelles au foie gras


salade niçoise


nems


daube provençale


huitres
Uriel

fab wrote:
Snails de bourgogne :



Which just proves that enough garlic can make anything taste good!
Sander

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_cuisine

Quote:
Dutch cuisine is characterized by its somewhat limited diversity in relation to diner dishes, however it varies greatly from region to region. The southern regions of the Netherlands for example share dishes with Flanders and vice versa. Dutch food is traditionally characterised by the high consumption of vegetables when compared to the consumption of meat. Dairy products are also eaten to great extent, Dutch cheeses are world renowned with famous cheeses such as Gouda, Edam and Leyden. Dutch pastry is extremely rich and is eaten in great quantities. Wine has traditionally been absent in Dutch cuisine, instead there are many brands of beer and strong alcoholic liquor such as Jenever and Brandewijn.
Fredrik

Norway's national dish #1 - the omnipresent Pizza Grandiosa:
fab

Greg, ça m'a donné faim !!!


Pauline

Fredrik wrote:
Norway's national dish #1 - the omnipresent Pizza Grandiosa:



LOL !!!

fredrik, you're very funny today
Deborah

Sander wrote:
Dutch cheeses are world renowned with famous cheeses such as Gouda, Edam and Leyden.[/i]

I love Leyden! I wish I weren't allergic to milk.
Fredrik

But it's true, Pauline. Pizza Grandiosa is the most sold food product in Norway. A rather tasteless pizza. Extremely popular among students. A German girl I know is currently an exchange student in Tromsø, Norway's biggest town north of the Polar Circle, nicknamed the Paris of the North, wrote how amazed she was by how much Pizza Grandiosa the Norwegians ate!
Porthos

Uriel wrote:
fab wrote:
Snails de bourgogne :



Which just proves that enough garlic can make anything taste good!


Amen sister! I'm a garlic lover. Too bad you don't live in LA. There's a really good place to eat by the Beverly Center in West L.A. called "The Stinking Rose". Everything on their menu is a garlic dish, and they even have garlic ice cream!
Elaine

a small sample of authentic comidas mexicanas:


nopales


menudo


birria


carnitas


chiles en nogada


fideo


chicken pozole


picadillo chimis


chapulines (fried grasshoppers)

fab

Elaine,


Your mexican food seem very good. Last week end I eat in a real Mexican restaurant (quite rare here), with homemade traditional food... HMMMM....




One of your meals looked like "tripes à la provençale" :

http://www.latableprovencale.com/...isin%C3%A9s/tabid/57/Default.aspx
Elaine

fab wrote:
One of your meals looked like "tripes à la provençale" :

http://www.latableprovencale.com/...isin%C3%A9s/tabid/57/Default.aspx


Yes, that does look a lot like menudo, as I'd imagine it would since their both made of tripe. As I mentioned on another thread, menudo is supposed to be a good cure for hangovers, but I'm not so sure. I prefer good beu whenever I'm hung over.
Porthos

Elaine, you could have picked some better dishes to show the non-Mexicans! Sopas Albondigas? Enchiladas? Vergoladas? Chile Rellenos? Chorizo con papas? Mole?
Deborah

Mole...mmmm!
greg in noord-frankrijk

fab wrote:
Greg, ça m'a donné faim !!!




Et moi donc !



Uriel wrote:
fab wrote:
Snails de bourgogne :



Which just proves that enough garlic can make anything taste good!


Very true !

Uriel

Well, after you've brushed your teeth, darlin'.

Tripe is nasty. Menudo, doubly so.

Carnitas, though.... oooooooh!

And did I mention that I had the best fish tacos in Puerto Penasco? With real asadero cheese, which looks and tastes a lot like Muenster -- soooo good!
Porthos

I agree. I hate menudo.
Elaine

Porthos wrote:
Elaine, you could have picked some better dishes to show the non-Mexicans! Sopas Albondigas? Enchiladas? Vergoladas? Chile Rellenos? Chorizo con papas? Mole?


How terribly common! I was saving those for you to talk about.
Porthos

Well I don't think it would be that common for them. From what I hear, they don't exactly have a Mexican joint on every corner.
fab

Quote:
From what I hear, they don't exactly have a Mexican joint on every corner


No, actually, in Paris, at each corner we have a Japanese or Chinese restaurant.
Porthos

Right, but they don't have very many Mexican places do they?

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