Off the top of my head:

India:
Sugar
Pepper
Basil
Mangoes
Bananas
Ginger
(Ceylon) Cinnamon

SEA:
(Cassia) Cinnamon
Mace
Nutmeg
Oranges
Lemons
Limes

Central Asia:
Apples
Carrots (Afghanistan, could be considered MENA or India but the MENA category is too OP)

East Asia:
Peaches
Soy Sauce
Ketchup
Soy sauce
Sesame oil

Africa:
Coffee
Coca-Cola
Palm oil

Americas:
Chocolate
Vanilla
Blueberries
Potatoes
Tomatoes
Corn
Pineapple
Strawberries

  • Egon [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    57·
    8 months ago

    Daily reminder that the idea of “national” cuisine is inherently nationalist, food doesn’t follow borders or skin color and pretending it does only plays into ethnonationalist ideals.
    All food everywhere is a result of immigrants influencing local cultures, local climate, local needs. Seeing others take something you grew up with and give their own twist on it should invite joy in your heart, it is a sign of appreciation and respect that others would love a part of your life so dearly, that they would wish to replicate it. The fact that they attempt to modify it to make it into something that they can consider a part of their everyday meals is only a grander sign of love. The fact that we can share and incorporate each others produce, practice and recipes is a wonderful and cool thing that should be celebrated, not something to be used as a cringy dunk that really only exposes your own ass for not having a coherent logical framework.
    Pretending like the meal you hold dearly isn’t also a product of that same process of immigration, appreciation, appropriation and procreation, is inherently reactionairy.

    I guess this is some dumbass American thing I am not capable of understanding. You guys seem to suck at cooking, it seems like food is just signifiers over there. Ive seen users here dunk on the concept of using “salt” to season your food, because “white people use salt.” Same goes for herbs.
    Whenever i talk to Americans and they talk about using spices, they can’t ever specify what fucking spices apart from “oh cajun mix from the local store” or the like. Maybe I’m lucky enough to see the words “paprika” or “cumin”, but I’ve yet to see anything but blank stares when I ask what they use for their other dishes. It’s all the same fucking spices on all dishes, because it is not actually about making good food. Like the kings of old, spices are used as a signifyer rather than something that should be understood and used in cooking.
    Your hot sauces suck ass too. I don’t want some garbage artificial chemical capsaicing booster pack, I want a fucking hot sauce.
    And your portion sizes are fucked and don’t even get me started on corn syrup.
    Americans need to shut the fuck up about food.
    All your dishes are German anyway.

    • EmmaGoldman [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      23·
      8 months ago

      It’s all the same fucking spices on all dishes

      Hear me out: garlic improves basically everything but sweet stuff. it should be in everything.

      Your hot sauces suck ass too.

      Okay, what are your recommendations, I’d love to compare with my spice cabinet full of only flavorful hot sauces that aren’t chemical bullshit and see if there’s anything new I should be adding to the collection.

      • Egon [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
        17·
        8 months ago

        Okay, what are your recommendation.

        I don’t have any. I live in a commune with an Ecuadorian chef who makes hot sauces for us, so I’m no longer subjected to all the weird supermarket shit. Move in with a Zapatista I guess.

        Garlic.

        Yes!

          • Egon [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
            10·
            8 months ago

            hot sauce availability in canada is mid.

            :yea: I guess maybe go ask your local Latin American restaurant (if there is one) wether you can buy their sauce? Long shot I guess

            • EmmaGoldman [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
              9·
              8 months ago

              I’m pretty sure it’s fucking all tapatio lmao. On the better side of store bought, but I live in the tiniest province so availability of basically anything interesting is low and there are like 3 Latin American restaurants I don’t have to take a ferry to another province to visit.

              • Lemmygradwontallowme [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
                3·
                8 months ago

                but I live in the tiniest province so availability of basically anything interesting is low

                Ok, may I play the World’s Smallest Violin for ye, on the isle you call the most wee of all provinces…

                What brocht ye there, exile, … cheap property rent? Why do you live there lmao…

                • EmmaGoldman [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
                  5·
                  8 months ago

                  Cyclable-ness and needing the ocean. Much like a 19th century sick person in a cosmic horror story, I was told the sea air would do me good, and it has. The only weird thing I’ve discovered in the Maritimes has been Newfies, unfortunately.

          • TraschcanOfIdeology [they/them, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
            5·
            8 months ago

            If you have the time/space and fresh chilies available to you, lacto fermenting chilies with some spices and garlic, then blending them makes for amazing hot sauces that you can tailor to your tastes. It’s remarkably easy and safe to do.

            • JuryNullification [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
              4·
              8 months ago

              I did this with habaneros, onion, and garlic and it turned out amazing. Only thing I would change would be stopping the fermentation at like 7-10 days instead of letting it go for two and a half weeks. Too fermented for me, but my friends love it.

    • Xx_Aru_xX [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      22·
      8 months ago

      As an Algerian, I see this bullshit way too much between us and Moroccans, Motherfuckers really believe that on the Oujda Tlemcen border people stop eating Harrira and Baghrir on the other side, sometimes it’s funny everytime it’s fucking annoying.

    • TraschcanOfIdeology [they/them, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      19·
      8 months ago

      I’m a food scholar by training (and I’m working to be a full-time food scholar, too) and you have largely summarized a bunch of conversations I’ve been in and books written on the whole “food is born out of migration, exchange, and local culture and biodiversity”

      • Egon [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
        11·
        8 months ago

        Very cool!
        I’ll take that as a huge compliment, thank you. Is there any cool facts you feel like sharing, or corrections you’d like to make? I’d love to learn more. Do you have any books that you’d recommend a layperson?

    • Egon [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      18·
      8 months ago

      I guess this is some dumbass American thing I am not capable of understanding. You guys seem to suck at cooking, it seems like food is just signifiers over there. Ive seen users here dunk on the concept of using “salt” to season your food, because “white people use salt.” Same goes for herbs.
      Whenever i talk to Americans and they talk about using spices, they can’t ever specify what fucking spices apart from “oh cajun mix from the local store” or the like. Maybe I’m lucky enough to see the words “paprika” or “cumin”, but I’ve yet to see anything but blank stares when I ask what they use for their other dishes. It’s all the same fucking spices on all dishes, because it is not actually about making good food. Like the kings of old, spices are used as a signifyer rather than something that should be understood and used in cooking.
      Your hot sauces suck ass too. I don’t want some garbage artificial chemical capsaicing booster pack, I want a fucking hot sauce.
      And your portion sizes are fucked and don’t even get me started on corn syrup.
      Americans need to shut the fuck up about food.
      All your dishes are German anyway.

      New tagline dropped please mods

      • Egon [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
        19·
        8 months ago

        Thank you. Ive taught a bunch of friends how to cook, (just the basics) and this mindset is one of many I have had to help alleviate them of.
        You should cook food you like, and the primary indicator of when you’ve cooked “good food” is wether you like your food or not. This idea that certain things are taboo or wrong or that you have to enjoy certain dishes in certain ways, certain combinations or on certain occasions, only makes cooking more inapproachable. On top of that it is just weird ethno-nationalism when people insist only certain ethnicities are allowed to cook certain dishes, or that certain ethnicities are inherently bad at doing something or enjoying something.
        Weirdly I only ever really see this from americans. They all like to point fingers at Italians, but all the Italians I’ve met have been chill as fuck about food - They understand that food is meant to bring people together, not tear them apart.
        Americans are weird about food

        • HonestMistake_@lemmy.mlEnglish
          8·
          8 months ago

          Still very much present in the EU as well, especially when it comes to French and Italian cooking (not necessarily from the French and Italians mind you)

        • ped_xing [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
          6·
          8 months ago

          You definitely need “there are no rules” at first, but when your protege starts belting out Wonderwall in his best Bob Dylan impression, you have to switch to “there are some rules.”

          Where I live, if you order a random taco off of a delivery service (I know, I know, I’ve pretty much stopped), you have a decent chance of your “taco” being on a fajita shell and containing iceberg lettuce, with a packet of mass-produced hot sauce on the side if you’re feeling adventurous. I think the weird absolutist positions well-meaning americans take is in response to this sort of disrespect for the history, the person making the food, the person delivering the food and the person eating the food.

          • Egon [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
            3·
            8 months ago

            Yeah I’m talking about people learning to cook for themselves. If I invite you over for pizza, you’re gonna be bewildered if I give you butter chicken with naan. If I order pad thai, I’m gonna be mad if I get served a burger. Give me tea and call it coffee? No.
            But say I was served tacos al pastor and I wanted to make some myself because they were soooo good? But the store only has hard shell tortillas? And Im not actually a big fan of cilantro, and I like my salsa mild? I’m still challenging myself, exploring other ways of cooking exploring other cultures, showing my appreciation for them and learning to respect them.

    • Mardoniush [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
      9·
      8 months ago

      Even the shitty spices are mostly a hard on for (much better) French 19th century food. Early US and European food is 80% horseradish and peppercorn and whatever local spices were available.

  • shitholeislander [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
    57·
    8 months ago

    This is stupid. Tomatoes aren’t native to India and chillies aren’t native to China, doesn’t mean those ingredients aren’t legitimate to use in those cuisines. If you want to critique elitist European gastronomy then you should talk about how the French can’t bear to eat anything that doesn’t come from a dead animal or how elitist and condescending towards food from non-European cultures many Whites are.

    • Palacegalleryratio [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      42·
      8 months ago

      Yeah I’m all for dunking on Europeans, but this is a dumb take, all food is from somewhere else. Apples may have come from Kazakhstan but that doesn’t mean people and cultures from outside Kazakhstan haven’t also grown apples and come up with unique ways to prepare and eat them. So what? Doesn’t mean a Japanese apple curry isn’t a part of Japanese cuisine, or cider isn’t a traditional beverage in south west England. Likewise with rice? Are we claiming that only food made near the Yangtze River basin can claim rice? Nigerian Jollof is rice apropriation?

      Get outa here.

      Dunk on Belgium for being allergic to flavour, or Germany for thinking chicken is a vegetable or Italians for being weird little freaks if you mess up a “traditional Italian recipe” when the only Italian food tradition for most of history was ‘not starving’.

    • TheCaconym [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
      7·
      8 months ago

      can’t bear to eat anything that doesn’t come from a dead animal

      Hear hear. Reason #4587 I hate this fucking country. When it doesn’t come from a dead creature it comes from a live one that is being actively tortured.

      Their “cuisine” they’re so proud of is built on mass slaughter and abuse, it’s disgusting

      • TheLepidopterists [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
        10·
        8 months ago

        I watched that Amazon Wheel of Time show when it first came out and one character is demonstrated to be a psychopath by having him eat an ortolan.

        When I later found out that it’s a French delicacy, that they’re driving the bird extinct and that they hide under a napkin while doing it because it’s so disgusting looking (the source I learned from colorfully called it “hiding their faces from God”), I was genuinely shocked. It became a fact that I’ve bothered all of my friends and family with, and many coworkers. Not one has reacted in a way other than disgust.

        • TheCaconym [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
          4·
          8 months ago

          Indeed. Though IMO eating an Ortolan is still slightly less morally bankrupt that eating a steak - the former was caught in the wild, the latter is the product of systematic large-scale exploitation, torture and slaughter.

          The main difference beyond that is the aesthetic and how normalized the latter is.

    • sooper_dooper_roofer [none/use name]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
      1·
      8 months ago

      This is stupid. Tomatoes aren’t native to India and chillies aren’t native to China, doesn’t mean those ingredients aren’t legitimate to use in those cuisines.

      The problem is this is the only side of the story that ever gets talked about, because mayobrain.
      The other side (all the ingredients I’ve listed, and many more that I don’t know about) are not.

    • ReadFanon [any, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
      25·
      8 months ago

      This is a culinary hot-take but my position is that the most well-developed cuisines (I think the term “advanced” carries way too much baggage here due to obvious reasons) are ones that can readily incorporate unfamiliar ingredients and make them into the central part of a dish.

      Indian and Chinese cuisine are two examples where you could throw nearly any ingredient at them and they’d be able to make a dish out of it, at least in my opinion.

  • Maoo [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
    31·
    8 months ago

    Also it’s very entertaining to hear people talk about precious Italian cultural foods that are only 100 years old or so. Tomatoes weren’t really used widely outside of LatAm until the mid-1800s. Bolognese sauce didn’t have tomato until the 20th century. Same story for very popular Indian dishes like dal makhani.

    People pining after the old traditional days of Italian grannies making tomato sauce is actually looking back at a very short history.

  • regul [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
    21·
    8 months ago

    There’s a restaurant in Minneapolis called Owamni that uses only pre-Colombian ingredients native to the Americas. The chef is native.

    Anyway the food is incredible and the concept is incredibly interesting.