Lobster, caviar, mussels, oysters, sushi, ribs, fondue, raclette... They all started as poor people's dishes
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Puttanesca was invented by prostitutes. It's a sort of stew/ragout with seafood anchovies and olives, served on spaghetti
Checks out, "pasta alla puttanesca" literally translates to "whore-style pasta"
Why not whore-ish
According to a websearch that's an oft repeated but dubious origin story
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghetti_alla_puttanesca#Etymology
Foods that are for poor people in their country of origin suddenly spike in price when served in richer countries. Banh mi is like a dollar in Saigon but almost 9 in the US.
I mean big mac is $9 in the US lol, sandwiches just dont get much cheaper than that here nowadays π
It's because of the labor and cost of goods.
Ingredients to make banh mi are very cheap but workers in the US are paid more for transportation, making the food and the business operating(lights, has, etc) so now the price rise to fit the cost.
Also some items are priced higher to cover more expensive ingredients. Let's say you are doing beef banh mi, that's usually scrap beef from something, let's say some sirloin scraps, your steak on the menu should probably be like $40 but if you sell a ton of banh mi you can cut that price down to like $30-$35.
does that has a name? or can we call it food gentrification?
Itβs also partially just the truth of supply chains. Iβm from the US, but live in Germany and the peaches here are simply always going to be more expensive for a worse peach (Iβm sure somewhere in Italy or Spain can produce good peaches, but I havenβt had them yet).
Though it was weird that bahn exists in the US when we have sub places in the US. Never ordered a bahn mi when pho is on the menu, but they look like small subs
Yeah it's basically a sub with thai spices and sauces instead of mustard ketchup etc -- there's lots of places that are only bahn mi and nothing else, it's getting quite popular.
Then the rich people appropriate the dishes of the workers and make them unaffordable. The wealthy produce very little of their own cuisine just as they produce very little of their own labor.
Oxtails have entered the chat.
Tbh that's exactly what I was thinking of as well, for generations it has been a stable of minority communities and workers but is slowly being turned fancy. I don't want expensive oxtail, I want real authentic oxtail from a local Dominican restaurant.
I seriously miss oxtail. You can barely find it at any price anymore.
Hopefully we poors will create a new dish out of them.
For tea, that is Genmaicha, which is a green tea with roasted rice added in as a filler. Tastes delicious and is pretty cheap!
"This food tastes like garbage!"
"What did you expect? Rich people eat the garbage parts of the food."
"Well I ate garbage yesterday and it didn't cost me $300! Good day, sir!"
On a related note, Ethiopians make some delicious food. Everyone should at least try doro wat sometime.
Peasant food is the best food. Rich people's food is stupid with all those little portions, and foam.
Hypothesis - rich people's food tastes good when made from top quality ingredients by top quality chefs using top quality equipment. Of course, virtually any kind of food will taste better under these conditions - but for rich people's food these are mandatory conditions for it to be palatable.
This improves its wealth signaling qualities. If you serve pizza to your guests of course it'd taste good - no surprise there. It's pizza. But if you serve caviar and it tastes good - it means you have the means to procure high quality caviar.
According to this hypothesis, when the lower (or even middle) classes get the chance to try these foods, it's usually the cheaper kind. Because who would waste good caviar on you? And because taste degrades so steeply with price, we think the type of food itself tastes bad - simply because we are not tasting the same grade the rich eat.
Poor people's food, of course, is the exact opposite. It's design to taste good even with cheaper ingredients, common equipment, and lower cooking skills (I'm not saying poor people are bad cooks - but you can't compare one's expertise with one chore among many to the top experts that money can buy)
Or... rich people only like expensive food because it is expensive, not because it tastes good.
They want to flaunt their wealth when having visitors, so they only buy the rarest of ingredients and demand a lot of work to put into it in order to call them delicacies.
If the ingredients really would be of high quality, they wouldn't need a lot of preparation. The ingredients would speak for themselves.
Price is considered in their taste.
Because who would waste good caviar on you?
My mom would.
Expensive meals have the value mostly in more presentation for less amount.
who would waste good caviar on you? And because taste degrades so steeply with price
I'm not sure caviar is the best example here. A lot of people just don't like fish eggs, which is fine. But tons of other people eat fish eggs that aren't caviar, like salmon eggs, which are a common sushi ingredient and relatively cheap. Fish eggs definitely don't need to be sturgeon caviar to taste good, even if most people don't like them in general.
But unless you're in Japan, you're probably a somewhat rich westerner if you're eating any kind of fish eggs regularly, so maybe rich people just tend to have more access to things that would expand their palates.
All the poor people couldn't afford cooks; the cooks were their neighbours too.
it happens the other way round.
Spices? meat?
Poor people get to eat diluted wheat porridge and be happy about it.
Wait until you hear about Pinsa
They just made up an "ancient" Roman version of pizza??
Looks awesome but Its hard for me to find 3 types of wheat. is there a way to make it with normal wheat.
Clever recipes have been my recent go to a lot lately.
I am starting to think the concepts of Asia being some socialist utopia comes partially from them having more simple cheap and mass made food items designed to feed lots of people for less resources. Food came first, governing style after.
There are concepts of Asia being a socialist utopia?
Mmm I mean there us a lot of myth of it, even Mahayana Buddhism is built on the idea of everyone together.
But my point is specifically that the food somewhat feeds the myth from a staple grain allowing for more available calories while developing. And their dishes center around using small amounts for large portions with simple fillers.
It makes it feel like you could feed the poor. Better than corn starving them anyways if you know anything about Pellagra.
You think they invented that food culture to fit the society? Asian food culture evolved over centuries, it wasn't "designed." Rice was an established staple crop in Asia long before they were discussing modern governmental philosophies. It happens to fit your description of cheap and plentiful food, but it wasn't "designed" to be that, it evolved to be that.
Right...
Obviously it was bred over generations but that is somewhat by design even slow and not always straight forward. And the methods of preparation have changed to allow for it to be used in lots of ways. My point was that the food shaped the culture because of its usefulness and let it be less restrictive. Why does it feel like everyone read this backwards?
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