Last night, I watched Chinese Cooking Demystified’s most recent video where they trace the history of mapo tofu to the best of their abilities. It was a fascinating watch where they had a particular recipe incarnation that defied their old definition of proper mapo tofu. At the end of the video they note how it’s transformed over the years noting that there’s an obsession these days for an authentic way of preparing dishes often using this point as a reason to criticize a dish. They aren’t against criticizing a dish, but call for specific ciriticisms such as flavor balance or shape which is important in Chinese cuisine.
So I went looking though some critiques looking for something about how cream makes it too heavy or hides the flavor of this ingredient or that. What I found was something more exciting. This academic did a quick historical gloss of carbonara and found that several iterations of early carbonara included cream and other taboo ingredients like butter. It wasn’t standardized into its canonical form until the 1990s.
Growing up in a traditional household, my parents never worked from recipes, but regularly made delicious dishes beloved by their friends and family members alike. Technique, ingredients, and interests ruled the day. Knowing how to bring out the flavors of the ingredients you had on hand to match each other made delicious food. And the lanes for dishes were much wider because the ingredient lists weren’t as rigid. Obviously, a biriyani without rice be confusing if you dared serve it. But do you need kokum or can you use lemon juice? Is a carbonara still a carbonara with cream, with bacon instead of guancole, vegetarian? I don’t know. Maybe I care less about the words coming out of my mouth than the food going in it.
Nothing I hate more than food snobs, put whatever you want in your food
Brb, making a PB&J Pizza
That sounds fucking delicious.
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Italians demand our respect for their culinary traditions when Carbonara is literally a
19th20th century invention. Ridiculous! Next time I’m having pasta, I’m putting ketchup on it to intentionally dishonor them20th, not 19th. The first mention of the dish by that name is from just after WWII.
Good catch, I tend to get those mixed up. Will fix
No worries, 's all good. :)
Give it some fancy name and call it a new dish.
Something like “Maccaronara al Heinzorino”
That’s the thing, of it’s a new recipe with a new name it’s not sacrilege. It’s like those “Spanish omelette” or paellas I see on the net. If you want to fuck around with omelettes do it but don’t put our name on it, if you want to play around with rice feel free but don’t call it paella!
Next time I see an omelette with fish being called Spanish omelette imma throw hands. We do have a variation with fish but it’s a different dish!
I have some terrible news for you.
People will continue to do that. It happens all over the world, one group calling something they’ve invented a “Spanish” this or “American” that.
I’ve seen “American Pizza” served in Japan with hot dogs and corn and a bbq sauce. I’ve seen “Korean beef” as basically a spicy alternative to Mongolian beef. None of these dishes originate in the country they’re named for, and the people from those countries would probably recoil at the thought of all of them.
It’s just a thing people do, have always done, and will continue to do.
Enjoy your Naporitan!
I’d eat that honestly
Fuck the original recipe. I’ve never had better Alfredo or Carbonara than cooking the sauce myself using garlic, heavy cream, parmesan, and a bit of cornstarch slurry to help keep it from breaking.
Either that or we can give the cream version a different name and acknowledge it as a better dish than traditional Alfredo.
Huh. It’s never occurred to me to put cream in carbonara, always just thinking of it as the bacon and eggs pasta, don’t think I’d like it literally creamy; but I will put a pat of butter in cacio e pepe, to help it emulsify, and was just reading about how that is some sort of heresy too.
At least he didn’t suggest that health insurance should use a deny, delay, and defend strategy for insurance claim payments
That’s how I make it.
/has no Italian friends
Gets me every time
For me its the “different recipe, nothing to do with macaroni cheese”.
Important to point out that he isn’t saying that she is wrong for doing that, it’s just a different recipe, don’t call it British Mac&cheese!
Call me a sinner but I love cream in my carbonara. Im ok with it having another name tho, that way people wouldnt get angry
Only jackass’ high on their own farts gets pissed about someone else adding variation to a dish
Same goes with pineapple on pizza.
No, cream on Hawaiian pizza is terrible.
Idk. Usually when I order pizza I swap tomato sauce for white sauce. But I don’t remember if I did it with a Hawaiian pizza. I’ll have to try and let you know.
It’s excellent on an artichoke pizza though.
Creamonara
Who is Ara and why are you creaming her?
She’s into it.
The people of Cremona are eying you suspiciously.
Sinner.
I mean, that’s just alfredo with bacon at that point.
Original Alfredo also does not have cream. It’s butter and parmigiano
Original Alfredo is pretty much an American invention. There is a restaurant in Rome that makes “pasta al burro e parmigiano” but that’s pretty much it. Americans took the dish, put cream and shit in it and gave it that name. They can keep it imo.
In Italy pasta Alfredo is more of a meme than anything else, and “pasta al burro” is made pretty much only when you are sick.
I don’t add cream, but I make ‘alfredo’ as a milk sauce from butter, flour, lots of parm, and milk.
But I also add milk to my espresso, even if I do use an Italian Moka pot. They have a warrent for my arrest as we speak, lol.
So you just make pasta with bechamel and parmigiano and drink caffè macchiato. You’re fine, really.
Aside from the fact that, imo, there are better sauces for your pasta, you are not doing anything egregious, plus you can call Alfredo whatever you want. Nobody knows what it means anyway.
PS: coffee made with a moka pot in Italy is just called coffee. Espresso is made with an espresso machine that works at high pressure.
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i first read this comic as saying “ice cream in carbonara” and thought the injuries were justified. but after rereading it i’m not so sure anymore
Cream or better crème fraîche makes a very good sauce when you melt it onto the carbonara IMO.
HAHA wow Italian food joke holy fuck this is cringy shit
Not as cringe as someone who likes pineapple on pizza.
Yeah…that’s disgusting
I thought for sure panel 3 would involve more violence.
Italians and food are the worst. Let people enjoy what they want and stop acting like you’re top shit.
I get especially annoyed when people act like because their great great grandparents on one side of their tree were Italian that they have some innate knowledge of pasta and sauce.
Like even if nonna learned from her nonna and you learned from her, theres still a non zero chance that great great nonna was a SHIT COOK.
You can enjoy what you want, just don’t name it as something already stablished. Of ypu say you are doing a beef BBQ and suddenly you bring chicken saying “yeah we do beef with chicken in this house” is as stupid as someone adding extra ingredients into a dish and not changing the name.
Dishes evolve, the name stays.
It’s not NoCheeseanara but you’ve put cheese in it, so your analogy is bad. If you said you were going to do a bbq and bought chicken Instead of beef that would be fine.
I like my steak well done. This is the best when you do it with some A5 Wagyu.
You know, that would be pretty bomb, what with the extra crispy crust it would form.
I’m not even joking. I mean, a little, but it’s also true.
This is why French food is superior. They aren’t afraid to experiment.
Turns out you can add butter to anything.
Or add anything to butter.
And then deep-fry it.
Abel Gonzales Jr., also known as “Fried Jesus”, of Dallas, Texas, invented deep-fried butter
That is the most American sentence I will read all year.
Minnesota had deep fried ranch at the state fair last year.
