valeryworldblog

As I like to say often, I know that I am boring, food is culture and eating the typical dishes of another territory we can understand a lot of the history and cultural identity of a people if we really enjoy it carefully.

Food at the bottom fully represents the habits of a people and can make us understand a lot because it reflects what in ancient times were the most commonly used foods to ensure at least a minimum intake of nutrients, we can imagine what life was like for the ancestors who lived in the territory and could not supply themselves with everything like today, they had to take what they cultivated and produced and turn it into food. Of course once there were those who suffered from serious deficiencies and this because so many healthy foods were out of reach, too difficult to take from one place to another or too expensive, and even those who were richer had to give up many things that we take for granted today.

Those who lived on the sea were subject to scurvy due to the lack of vitamin C, those who lived in the mountains faced other serious deficiencies and this can make us imagine that behind what seems like a typical dish like many others there is a story, exchanges and wars with other peoples for ingredients, shortages and famines that in the past have caused damage and losses among the population, sweets that were prepared for the first time for a royal ceremony or by mistake, by accident.

By eating a typical dish we immerse ourselves in history and, although we often do not think about it, we are tasting all the history, all the attempts to survive that a people has made, all the tradition and customs that have been settled over time and have formed the cultural identity that still resists today.

Let’s ask ourselves why those ingredients were used and where they come from, there will be explanations that would never come to mind. And now I leave you a link that you will find interesting, we talk about spicy foods, but try to ask why in that area you eat spicy, what prompted its inhabitants to choose some ingredients instead of others, you can make small jewels of cultural.

Try these dishes, or write me if you have already tried some, I’ll wait in the comments.