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[–] 31 points 3 months ago (6 children)

Nah, you don't eat mashed taters with thin crisps (corn or otherwise). You could, but typically people don't.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago* (3 children)

    And you don't boil avocados for guac

    Edit: or add citrus to mash. I was going to say you can't add dairy to guac, but guac and sour cream go very well together. Def no butter or milk though shudder

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    You know, some citrus to a baked tater would be awesome probably. Would need to be lime, I think.

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  • [–] 23 points 3 months ago

    More like guac is American hummus, considering chickpeas are one of the oldest domesticated plants we know of.

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  • [–] 18 points 3 months ago* (1 child)

    Guacamole isn't eaten on its own or with some form of gravy. Mashed potatoes are. One can argue about open face sandwich vs. burrito and the addition of each to their respective cuisine but that's a hard sell.

    FWIW, Avocado toast doesn't factor into the discussion any more then a baked potato would imo.

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  • [–] 11 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (10 children)

    Pizza is just an open-face sandwich. Like a chili melt. Same thing.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago*

    Pizza purists are so funny. Like oh, your culture/city/country has a monopoly on putting random stuff on top of flat bread while it's baking? Get real. Probably the first loaf of flatbread ever made, the person eating it was like "This would be better with some sauce and stuff on top while it's baked."

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago (5 children)
  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago (4 children)

    What do you mean? It's dough with stuff on top.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (3 children)

    Cats and dogs both have 4 legs and a tail. Are they the same thing?

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago (2 children)
  • [–] -1 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    What other things do you get confused about?

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago

    I could ask you the same question. Those are all technically pizzas. They are cooked dough with toppings on it, usually pizza sauce and cheese.

    I don't understand your confusion with the subject. Especially with comparing mammals to mammals. We are all incredibly similar with a few genetic differences. Just like a generic oven baked pizza or a tortilla pizza. They're different, but also the same.

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  • [–] 6 points 3 months ago

    I mean, im of the 'poptart is basically a dessert calzone' persuasion, so... yeah, sure why not.

    There are differences, but basically yes.

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  • [–] 7 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    Mushy peas are just British guacamole

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  • [–] 6 points 3 months ago

    It's times like this that I worry about legalizing weed

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  • [–] 10 points 3 months ago (4 children)

    Do people eat whole bowls of guacamole? Just like spoonfuls into your mouth?

    As one of the 7 people who dislikes avocados - that seems horrifying.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 months ago

    No because avocado is a berry but potato is a tuber

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  • [–] 5 points 3 months ago

    There was a can of refried beans that proudly stated “Mexican mashed potatoes”

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  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago

    mashed avocados

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  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago

    Bonus points for having O'Brian in there.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago

    In the soup, salad, or sandwich alignment it would be soup and so would guacamole.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    Hard to say if it's Irish. It could be. But:

    First printed recipe: English author Hannah Glasse published the earliest known recipe for modern mashed potatoes in her 1747 book, The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy.

    The recipe: She instructed cooks to boil and peel potatoes, then vigorously mash them with butter, salt, and milk.

    Obviously Britain and Ireland are very close to one another, and someone being English doesn't mean they don't have Irish parentage or tutelage or friends. (Even in those days.)

    Britain + Ireland are also called "The British isles," so unfortunately for the Irish, even if we disambiguate to include the possibility of it being an Irish creation, it will still be called a "British" dish - which merely makes it look like it's English again, to most people.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

    Potatoes in Ireland being a result of the Colombian exchange, this is one of those scenarios where you might be able to find an equivalent South American dish from before Ireland had potatoes(wild to think about, right?). The Inca grew potatoes with corn and eggplant for their farming, and it's hard to imagine they ate them raw.

    Some googling shows things that all appear to be fusion cuisine, but then any use of tomatoes or potatoes in Europe is fusion cuisine anyway :P

    Edit: lmao this entire discussion is hashed out further down anyway, love it

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago

    It really doesn't get much better than that. You can substitute milk for cream, and also force it through a sieve to get extra creamy mash, and add a bit of garlic, but well done mash is so simple and good

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago

    Melt a big knob of butter in the middle of all of them and inject it my veins. drool

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago

    Instead of garnishing with pico you garnish with bacon bits.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago (28 children)

    Seeing that both vegetables were part of the Columbian exchange and therefore have no pre 1500 European roots it's improper to call any potato preparation 'Irish'.

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  • [–] 17 points 3 months ago (16 children)

    What and marinara sauce isn't Italian? Mapo tofu isn't chinese? Modern sushi isn't japananese?

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  • [–] 7 points 3 months ago (9 children)

    Italian cuisine is particularly enjoyable for this. The carbonara sauce was an improvisation by an American army cook, and one of the first recipes had it made with cream.

    And part off modern sushi is Norwegian, as they had an excess of salmon they kind of imposed the idea to use it on sushi, which worked.

    Chilly peppers in Indian cuisine where introduced by the Portugese

    Cuisine is one of the most fusion sensitive bits of culture out there and most claims of originality are bogus in a way.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago (8 children)

    I don't think a dish has to be 100% original from the domestication of the species of the ingredients all the way to the invention of the dish. I would say it's valid to claim a variation of a dish with just one tiny tweak. Norwegians can't claim the entirety of sushi but they are totally valid in claiming specifically salmon sushi. The French can't claim to have invented neither wheat, flour, bread, the baking of bread in ovens or any of the other steps it took in-between, but they can claim the baguette specifically as a French bread.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago (7 children)

    I don't think any food type can be claimed by a nation, that idea is very novel. You talk about bread and I think about the quintessential Italian ciabatta bread, which was invented in the 1990's.

    But I do really enjoy experiencing different cultures. I don't subscribe to the idea of ownership of any of it by any country or culture. That is all.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago (2 children)
  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (3 children)

    The idea of a national culture having some claim on a food type is novel? I’d say the concept is pretty common and widespread.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    Yes it's quite novel. Most national identities and stereotypes are from the latter half of the nineteenth century. Read Eric Hobsbawns 'the invention of tradition'' for example.

    The Italian cuisine and it's staples are very much a construction from the post war period, look at the history of the spaghetti carbonara, which was wiped up by an American army cook, but was later elevated to an supposedly 'ancient' recipe.

    But before the era of nationalism most people didn't think in terms of nations and national stereotypes.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago

    Ok “nationalism” sure. But you can’t argue that cultural associations didn’t exist. This is why we had trade routes. And agriculture influenced by regional geography, climate, etc.

    You point out very carefully selected specific examples like carbonara. This is like the exception that proves the rule.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    This reminds me of working in a brewery/restaurant kitchen in the middle of a rich Midwestern suburb (read: white as white gets), we wanted to do teriyaki wings. Instead of letting us make our own sauce, our idiot manager brought in a premade sauce made by a Chinese company in "the Korean style". So it was a Chinese-made Korean-style Japanese-American sauce. Fucking what? Especially silly considering real teriyaki sauce is just four very easily attainable ingredients in more-or-less equal parts.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (2 children)

    I wish to know this four ingredient teriyaki recipe.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

    Ginger, garlic, soysauce, brown sugar.

    You flavor a neutral oil with the ginger and garlic (don't burn), add the brown sugar, a bit of soysauce, caramelize, add water, mirin or cooking wine slowly until desired thickness. You can do cornstarch slurry to dilute the flavor while maintaining the thickness.

    You can toast some sesame at the start for that flavor.

    The caramelized sugar may solidify if the liquid is too cold, redissolve it by increasing heat and/or liquid.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago

    Soy sauce, sugar, sake, and mirin.. Garlic, ginger, chili, etc are all excellent additions, but aren't necessary traditional. But as is kind of the main theme of this comment section's discussion, nothing's really "traditional" until thousands of people have done it thousands of different ways and enough time passes to be able to put it into some kind of historical and often geographic context. That is to say, I'm just a white guy on the Internet who's done a fairly shallow amount of research into this subject, so definitely don't take my word as teriyaki gospel.

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  • [–] 9 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    So nothing can be described as Irish if it didn't exist since the beginning of the earth on the land we could later call Ireland? Or where is the cutoff, the year 1400?

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  • [–] 6 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

    I'm just disputing the started fact that mashed potato is an Irish invention. There's plenty of Irish things after that date, but that's because people didn't really think about 'national' things untill the late 19th century, take the Scottish tartan, fi (which was popularized by an English textile merchant btw).

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  • [–] 5 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    With that logic any Mexican dish that contains cumin, cilantro, wheat or any dairy product including cheese is not real Mexican.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago

    You say that like it's a bad thing. Cuisine is particularly evolutionary.

    The question 'what is Mexican' is particularly dark in this context as the conquistadors managed to wipe it so much of it's people and culture.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

    I only agree with this line of reasoning because you would have to conclude that there is nothing quintessentially US American with everything coming either from Native American culture (which they reject) or immigrant culture.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (4 children)

    You think cultures can't change? Ireland was colonized by Britain. They forced them to grow potatoes. You don't think that influenced Irish culture?

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (3 children)

    I do think cultures can change. I only don't think foodstuffs become a national thing that way. Like I said as a response in this thread that certainly the original population and culture of the Aztecs was almost completely destroyed.

    The idea that the portal became Irish because it was forced upon them by the English is a bit ironic, with a whiff of Stockholm syndrome, at least for me.

    The appropriation of certain dishes as national is, in itself, a rather novel idea.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (2 children)

    the Aztecs was almost completely destroyed.

    How is this even relevant? I really don't see any connection.

    The idea that the portal became Irish because it was forced upon them by the English is a bit ironic, with a whiff of Stockholm syndrome, at least for me.

    How so? The potato was force upon them, not mashed potatoes specifically. It would be totally understandable if the Irish would choose to get rid of everything that has anything to do with the British. This happens to a degree that the language Gaelic is revitalized. But it's not up to me as a foreigner who never set foot on Ireland to expect that from them. Potato is an important food item all over Europe. "The idea that the portal became Irish because it was forced upon them by the English" is just an observation. You can't dispute observations because they are "a bit ironic". That's not how history works.

    The appropriation of certain dishes as national is, in itself, a rather novel idea.

    How is this even an argument for your side? Nations are a social construct developed long after Columbus. By saying, anything that came after the 1400s can't be part of a national identity, you are implying that nations exist since for ever.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    I think that we do not disagree in most points.

    My argument is in line with 'the invention of tradition' of Eric Hobsbawn and 'imagined communities' by Benedict Anderson in that most 'national identity and tradition' is an actively put forward construct that is really not as ancient as it purports.

    The ownership of national dishes is what I argue against, the one in this thread that elicited my response was that of mashed potatoes being an Irish dish. If you read correctly it's my interlocutor that made the point about the British repression forcing the potato on the Irish, and the argument of that being the National dish is even more silly to me.

    So no disagreement in that matter, I would say.

    The Aztec argument is about what is fundamentally Mexican and the tragedy of that civilization being wiped out. This is another example that traditionalism about culture is a rather silly position to hold in an argument.

    But if you re read the thread I think you'll find that

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago

    I think you misunderstood the meme and worded your first comment poorly.

    The meme is saying that the equivalent of guacamole on the island of Ireland is mashed potatoes. It doesn't say the Irish invented it, it doesn't really focus on national identity. I mean on Ireland is the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. Different nations and the meme just says Irish.

    And instead of saying "there is no such thing as Irish", you said "potatoes aren't Irish enough because they came too late", implying that there is such a thing as Irish culture but potatoes don't qualify.

    If you read correctly it's my interlocutor that made the point about the British repression forcing the potato on the Irish, and the argument of that being the National dish is even more silly to me.

    The interlocutor was me and all I'm saying is that the British Empire forced potatoes on the Irish and because of that, potatoes were so wide spread in Ireland that they quality as a national dish. How is that silly? I still don't follow. Imagine having to grow potatoes and then trying out a variety of dishes. Silly.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago

    As long as they are both chunky, I'll allow it.

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  • [–] 0 points 3 months ago

    No, since Potatoes are Peruvian, not Irish

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