Adobo Pomodoro Recipe
I hate pasta. I love chow mein. Explain that.
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Why do you like Italian food? More importantly, why do people (who aren’t even of Italian heritage) feel the need to so fiercely defend Italian food? Because I know some of you are starting to boil just reading this. This wouldn’t be my first time on the receiving end of stating out loud that I don’t like Italian food.
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It all started with a silly online poll…
I’m sure you’ve seen them. A photo containing four different cultural foods and you can only keep one: Mexican, Italian, Chinese and Barbecue. My response, “Italian. Duh. Nobody wants 100 different pasta shapes that all taste the same in tomato water.”
The backlash was…intense. I definitely felt the need to windmill punch my way out of the mosh pit. The most common Italian dish those comments were defending? Pizza. Do people really consume pizza that often that they feel the fierce desire to defend its presence? The last time I ate pizza was…last year? It’s not something I consume a lot and that’s because it’s not something I crave. Whether it’s on television or sitting inside of the window at Golden Boy, I always think pizza looks so delicious! So appetizing. And then I eat it and I’m always disappointed. I grew up during the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle era! Pizza Hut, Dominoes and the pizza from the neighborhood pie shop was at every park, skating rink and elementary school celebration. Mami ordered a medium combination pizza from Roma’s every Friday night when I was a kid.
I know Italian food is not only pizza and pasta. Although I do think there’s a lot of pasta. Personally, I think of long braises of wild boar…in tomatoes with a side of pasta. Plump sausages hugged in thick dark red sauce…of tomatoes with a side of pasta. Simple fresh salads of vegetables (tomatoes) dressed in green olive oil…with a side of pasta. Cold cuts and antipasti.
When students would cook staff meal at the on campus restaurant we were required to work in, the staff meal always consisted of fucking pasta. Every. Single. Staff. Meal. Had. Pasta. Not me. I would make some weird Southeast Asian-esque stir fry and a huge batch of rice in a hotel pan cooked in the oven. I’m a rice girly. And I’ve always wondered why more people don’t eat and make rice.
Italian food is a simple food. I love simple foods! Because of its simplicity it’s generally quick to cook and most dishes require little to no manipulation. I also find it to be bland, boring and repetitive. An entire cuisine dependent on a new world fruit (berry) brought to Italy in the 1500s; endemic to South America, Mexico, and Central America. What would the Italians do if they couldn’t incorporate tomatoes into their dishes? Hell, even early polenta was said to have been made from “cooked ground spelt, the version people know and love today has its roots across the Atlantic Ocean, in the Americas.” When did polenta become corn? When Jackass McGillicuddy Colombo brought maize back to Italy with him.
Do you defend, cook and consume Mexican cuisine as fiercely and readily as Italian? Because it’s looking like all Italian ingredients are from Mexico and the areas surrounding it.