Man, people miss out on so much good eating because of preconceptions and gatekeeping.
Berries go with almost anything. And yeah, technically strawberries aren’t berries. But the point is that pretty much every berry is a blend of acidic tartness, sweetness, and complex flavors. There’s no world in which berries make something bad.
Any fruit has the potential to go with any standard food. Meats, pastas, breads, even veggies. It’s a matter of balancing the specific fruit with the other ingredients.
That’s why pineapple on pizza works. Tangy, sweet, and with that hard to describe tropical fruitiness. It brings out the sweetness of a good tomato sauce while cutting through the fattiness of toppings and any oils.
Pork chops and applesauce baby, it’s a classic for reason. Pork stuffed with apples; and other things, orange chicken or duck, blackberry glazed venison roast (seriously, you want to try it), apricot beef (or lamb), curried goat with prunes (or apricot, or peaches even), roasted brussels sprouts with apples and cranberries.
It’s all about the balancing with other things.
The Polish strawberry pasta? It’s balanced out with sour cream that mutes the sweetness some, and works as a bridge with the pasta.
I know I’m talking into a void here, what with this being a meme, but I’m always so amazed that people will dismiss a food combination without trying it, or sometimes without even trying to imagine the possibilities.
Syntax error: Unmatched parentheses on paragraph 5
The classic pitfall of the ADHD parentheses in a parentheses info dump
Nice catch, thanks :)
I blame Alton Brown.
Hear me out.
Alton Brown is undoubtedly a legendary figure and he did a lot of good for the modern state of culinary entertainment. His scientific, experimental approach was authoritative. He came up with what was scientifically the best way to do a thing, demonstrated why, and did it in a very entertaining way.
But with that, came scores of fans who saw “this is the best way to do a thing” and interpreted that as “this is the only way to do a thing, fuck you you’re doing it wrong.”
Alton wasn’t doing what other TV chefs were doing. Emeril and Julia presented really good recipes, they’d add some flare and say hey, this is how we do it around here. Bourdain explored the world and showed off a lot of great ways to cook. He was reluctant to criticize and clearly just loved the food.
But Alton Brown, for all the good he did, opened up authority to fans who didn’t know shit about fuck. He spoke with confidence about how his method was the right method.
Right about the time the Internet was coming in to it’s own and arguing about nonsense online became a hobby a person could have.
Now, there’s a culture of being right about cooking online. People who log in every day just to bitch about how somebody else cooked something.
Obviously it’s not exclusively Alton’s fault, and Alton is as open to new and interesting ways to cook things as Bourdain was, a fact you’ll discover if he ever happens to visit your home town and read what he says about the food there on his Facebook page.
But there is a through line there, and it starts at Good Eats.
You know, I agree, especially about Alton not being the cause as much as it is the viewers looking for am excuse to feel holier-than-thou about something.
You’re dead right that people took his work way too far and assumed that because he was breaking things down into the underlying food science and methodology that the exact preparations he used were default the best, period.
He wasn’t prone to that himself, though he did go hard against myths.
He’s a terrific food educator. One of the best in television history imo. But you’re also dead right about the entertainment side screwing things up. His on screen persona, combined with the structure of good eats as a show made it too easy for food snobs to glom onto the wrong parts
I think you said it better than I did. Dude just wanted to educate and people just can’t let something be good. It has to be correct.
I still can’t get over the militant grilled cheese vs melt arguments that were common online a year ago.
If food tastes good, who cares what the hell it’s called or how “authentic” it is. No food is authentic from the get-go; someone tries something new one day, other people like it, and it catches on and becomes a thing. If it’s not your thing, or if you think it could be done better with x, y, and z, that’s fine, everyone has personal tastes and you don’t have to like everything.
9/11 also did a number on food shows
I don’t know if I agree with that. I think Alton was vastly more New Guard, Question Tradition than many of the other notable celebrity chefs and cooks during his come up. If you want to talk about people enforcing tradition, let’s take a look at Giada DeLaurentis, or hell even Rachel Ray whenever it comes to anything with Sicilian origin.
I think the Old Guard mentality is vastly more rigid about these sort of traditions and giving people a critical understanding of the processes behind cooking doesn’t, at least to me, imply any kind of singular authoritarian approach to cuisine.
edit: typos and cleaning up for clarity
Also Brown definitely wouldn’t have been the first to enforce faux tradition.
That shit has existed forever and the more meaningless, the more militant.
Ketchup on hotdogs. Folded pizza. Seafood with red wine.
All said with more authority yet far less evidence than anything Alton Brown ever said.
Ok now I’m hungry and I want to try Polish strawberry pasta.
I haven’t had access to good, fresh strawberries since I heard about it, but even grocery store ones were yummy. Maybe not the best thing ever, I would prefer a strawberry shortcake pretty much every time. But it’s essentially the same flavors (excepting the sour cream); the textures are what makes it a new experience.
It worked really well, maybe fifteen, twenty minutes of work total. I kept things kinda medium chunky. Used a potato masher for maybe ten mashes. Tried it both warm and chilled. The taste was more strawberry forward warm, but it was overall better chilled since the sauce hits the tongue different. It kinda rolls across, deploying the strawberry in layers with the sour cream more. Made for better mouth feel and general taste, at the expense of that vibrant strawberry kick.
I get people wanting to defend the “traditional” preparation of a food, because otherwise you get into weird philosophical “burrito of Theseus” issues, but… You can just slap “non-traditional” on it and then carry on and enjoy the food. If you feel really strongly or it’s really out there, call it a fucked up ____ inspired whatever.
One of the best pizzas I ever had was at a pizza place near me that has a “trust us” pizza, where you don’t know what it is, but it’s new and definitely worth the cost (they’re not giving you a plain cheese pizza). It was like a strawberry and anduille pizza with a seasoned sweet white sauce. It was weirdly good.
Seems dangerous to let people order a dish without knowing what’s in it. Lots of people are allergic to strawberries and might not otherwise expect that to be on a pizza if not disclosed up front.
They do ask you to let them know if you have any allergies, and they do tell you what everything is when they give it to you. You’re not at risk for eating something you can’t. You’d have to not tell them when they ask, and then ignore them when they told you the ingredients.
That sounds ok, then, if they actually ask you your allergies up front. If they only told you when serving, I’d still be a bit upset if I ended up paying for a dish I couldn’t eat. Better than dying of anaphylaxis either way, though.
Totally. And the staff is also pretty reasonable about how it’s ultimately just a fun way to get food you might not have thought of.
I usually tell them I hate sour cream and they’ll let me know if I should get something else, which is technically against the “rules”, but it’s also just pizza that I’m paying for and not a national secret or anything.
Man, I would love a place like that.
Hawaiian pizza was invented by a Greek man running an Italian pizzeria in Toronto inspired by the sweet and sour flavors of Chinese cuisine
Pineapple on Pizza isn’t bad and you’re being whiners
sɹǝuᴉɥʍ ƃuᴉǝq ǝɹ,noʎ puɐ pɐq ʇ,usᴉ ɐzzᴉԀ uo ǝlddɐǝuᴉԀ
Correct
I really can’t stand traditionalists. You don’t want pineapple on pizza? Don’t have it. And don’t worry about what other people like to eat.
I was born in Central America and growing up eating pupusas (which are amazing) we used to have bean, cheese and pork. Any time I would ask “why can’t pupusas have chicken or fish?” The answer would be “cause that’s not traditional”. Now the new generation makes them with fish, shrimp, chicken, veggies, etc. And it’s so yummy. Keep your traditions and classic recipes, but don’t try to stifle my culinary creativity cause of your stupid hangups
Dude, pupusas are soooooo good.
I’m Canadian and didn’t get to try them until I was in my 20s thanks to my friend.
How have I never thought of a cornmeal meat pie?
My wife is going to hate me because I’m about to blow up our kitchen again.
Lets not forget pizzas with bananas
Italians need to realize that they don’t own the concept of putting toppings on a round piece of bread. And tomatoes aren’t even native to Italy so that throws a wrench into their ability to complain.
Also tomatoes are fruits so suck it Italy
I’ll give them that one because they taste like they should be vegetables but science says otherwise.
Otoh the fruit/veggie dinstinction is from culinary tradition and has nothing to do with botanical sciences.
I don’t particularly mind the culinary fruit/vegetable definition, but feel like sweet fruits/savory fruits/vegetables would have been clearer.
Durian would’ve been a fruitable :p
That’s interesting.
It’s like how peanuts are legumes and not nuts. But I feel like that makes sense because of the pods.
Yeah and they grow in the ground too.
A distinction that I find more entertaining than the fruit/veggie one is the berry category.
- blueberry: not a berry
- blackberry: nuh-uh
- Strawberry: you’re an accessory fruit
- banana: yup, totally a berry
- watermelon: go for it
That’s nuts
Who makes these rules? They’re so unintuitive.
These rules are made by botanists.
A berry is a fleshy fruit without a pit produced by a single flower containing a single ovary.
This definition is different from the colloquial culinary one which refers to anything small, growing on a small plant or bush and without a pit.
put literally anything on a pizza and watch me continue to live my life unencumbered. Italians are too wrapped up in a national identity of tut-tutting other countries that change their precious recipes.
As a wise man recently said:
🎵 (Don’t) Give a fuck about tradition, stop impressin’ the dead 🎵
Tradition is just peer pressure from the dead
The entire country of Brazil:
Nothing is sacred in Brazilian culinary.
Pineapple is probably one of the tamest pizza toppings in my region, which ironically has one of the largest Italian populations.
I live pineapple on pizza.
There is one issue with how pineapple is frequently used on pizza, and that is heat retention. When pizza has large chunks of pineapple they tend to stay hotter a lit longer than the rest of the slice, so even after the sauce has cooled to less than magma temps, the large pibeapple chunks are atill able to melt rocks.
The solution is smaller pineapple chunks of course, and that is even better with ham since it ends up more evenly distributed on the slice in addition to improved temperature consistency.
Square-Cube Law strikes again
Yep, and smaller chunks are less likely to leave soggy sections from the juice leaking out.
Oooh, it has been a while since I started avoiding large chunks and forgot that one.
Sweden:
I would say everywhere in Brazil except São Paulo, lots of traditional Italian pizza restaurants here. I was actually shocked when I went to Rio and people were adding ketchup to pizza
I was actually shocked when I went to Rio and people were adding ketchup to pizza
That is shocking, BBQ sauce or sweet chilli sauce works much, much better.
Japan putting ketchup on spaghetti: “Hold my sake.”
Meanwhile, Korea is doing crimes by adding corn and/or potatoes on their pizza.
Japan doesn’t do potatoes but corn on pizza is popular. I’m willing to tolerate a lot of different toppings but for some reason corn just seems wrong to me
My local pizza place (in Japan) puts corn on pineapple pizza.
I might be a degenerate that enjoys pineapple on pizza, but corn is a strong no
What other condiment can you put on there? Mayonaisse?
Frenchies are doing it as well
I mean, I’ve seen plenty of Brazilians doing that for years, too.
What? Putting ketchup on spaghetti is 100% normal everywhere…
Absolutely not. Granted, my country is right next to Italy, but I’ve only ever heard about spaghetti with ketchup on the internet, from people from other countries.
Interesting…it is extremely normal in all the Scandinavian countries, and I’ve encountered it a lot in Germany and Netherlands as well. I never thought it was considered strange. I ate it a lot as a kid 30 years ago.
Funnily I also haven’t heard much good about Scandinavian cuisine
Would’ve expected more from Germany though. On the other hand, they do eat Schnitzel mit Tunke…
Schnitzel is a Swiss thing that the Germans adopted (and did not improve).
Funnily I also haven’t heard much good about Scandinavian cuisine
Some very famous Michelin restaurants in Europe are based on Scandinavian cuisine…Noma and The alchemist come to mind
I grew up with a lot of Italian cooking and when I first went to Japan I saw a small pile of spaghetti in one of the bento lunch boxes covered with what I thought was marinara sauce. When I ate it and it turned out to be ketchup I almost spit it on the floor in shock.
Fruit goes on cooked flour.
It’s been like that for centuries.
Cake. Danish. Fruitcake. Pizza. Filled doughnuts. Kolacky. Raisin bread. Banana bread…
Ya know when ya put Danish I thought you were calling the Danes gay and just kinda accepted it.
Those danish fruitcakes are delicious, even if a little salty afterwards
Not sopping wet flour
You don’t boil any of those
Fruit-filled pierogi, checkmate
I was going to put that in the list but felt it was long enough already, but it does fill the fruit dumpling gap.
NGL, that sounds pretty good, actually. What baffles me is that pasta was the go-to here instead.
My polish grandmother used to make us pasta with applesauce. Surprisingly tasty.
I’m terms of pizza, here in Sweden we have the kebab pizza and the banana-curry pizza. The latter one was slightly disappointing in how ok it was.
Döner Pizza is one of Germany’s most popular Pizzas. Next to Spaghetti Bolognese Pizza.
I find kebab pizza to taste more like kebab than pizza, but in a bad way, like it overpowers the rest of the pizza.
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I love strawberries, that sounds awful, and next strawberry season I would love to try it. Could I have a recipe?
There are tons of recipes for fruit pierogi if you google em, they usually include the recipe for the pasta as well. They’re little dumplings, basically ravioli. My fiance is polish and I make them for him on occasion with twarog and blueberries, (a simple milk cheese that’s really easy to make -you can skip the cheese and serve them with cream which is great too) boil them, then fry them in butter and sprinkle them with powdered sugar.
Need to polish them tastes
Ooh, that actually doesn’t sound bad… Slightly tart sweet with the salty tang of the sauce, maybe with a kick of spice from jalapenos… I’ll have to give that a try sometime
ETA: I missed that it said “pasta” rather than “pizza”, but my comment stands
