Comment on 2 North American 4 you has been created
person420@lemmynsfw.com 1 day agoI always laugh when I hear this. You don’t have to imagine Italian food without tomatoes, you could just go to Italy. This whole idea that Italian food uses lots of tomato sauce, or tomatoes in general is a very italian-american thing. There’s tons of Italian food, I might even say the majority of, that doesn’t use tomatoes. It’s really only southern Italy that uses tomatoes. That’s why it became so popular. During the migration to America, it was mostly southern Italians (Sicily, Calabria).
Like this meme, the idea that Italians use tomatoes in everything is mostly an American thing.
chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Pasta dishes containing tomatoes are eaten in every region of Italy. The two most recognizable Italian dishes in the world are easily spaghetti marinara and pizza Margherita. Northern Italian food, with its cured meats, hard cheeses, risottos, and stews are far less well known and recognizable as Italian cuisine (not to mention distinct from French, Swiss, and Alpine German cuisine) to anyone outside of Europe, not just Americans.
person420@lemmynsfw.com 23 hours ago
Traditionally spaghetti is a side dish and while true can be served with a tomato sauce, it’s nothing like you see in italian-american dishes, and more commonly used with lighter sauces.
And a margherita pizza, while very much a thing was really only invented at the end of the 19th century and is just one of many styles of neopolitan pizza.
My point isn’t that they don’t use tomatoes in Italy, it’s that this idea that Italian food = heavy tomato sauce is more of an American thing.
Go to Italy and ask for spaghetti and meatballs and see how many restaurants actually have that on the menu.
chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world 22 hours ago
That wasn’t my original claim. I said it would be impossible to imagine Italian food (as a whole unit) without tomatoes.
You can say a similar thing about Indian food and hot peppers. Yes, there are loads of Indian dishes and staples that don’t have any hot peppers in them but when you ask a random person to think of Indian food they’ll almost certainly be thinking of dishes with mild chilis at the very least.
As a side note, you’ve also confirmed my observation that Italian food is the most heavily-gatekeeped cuisine on the planet, and Italian-American the most disdained.