"Hey! We have something like that": Part 1

Not sure this will be the format for all my blogs, but thought I would start with something fun. Comparing foods found in Asian cultures with food from around the world. In this iteration we are looking at the dangerously delicious, salty, crunchy,spicy, and beautiful: Samosa (A recipe can be found here). According to Wikipedia Samosas originated in the Middle East and arrived in India alongside the spread of Islam around the 7th-8th century. Cookbooks written in Arabic containing a samosa recipe can be found from the 10th century to present. Samosas can be baked or more often fried, they can be filled with meat, but most always contain potato,onion, carrots, peas and spices.
We are comparing the Samosa with a food that is more familiar to the Island of Britain, than the former crown jewel of the English Empire. The Pasty has been found in French cookbooks dating back to the early thirteenth century. The flaky buttery crust often holds many of the same ingridients a samosa would, while greatly differing in the amount of spice. Much like the Samosa, the Pasty is often filled with a meat, potato, onions, and some spices, however a pasty is always baked while Samosas can be fried or baked.

The verdict: The Samosa wins, easily, not even close. The why:  A samosa has way more going on than pasty in terms of flavor, texture, spice level. An understandable comparison is asking if someone would like, a brand new white Honda accord or a brand new white mustang. 

Honorary mention: Empandas, the Latin American equivalent to the pasty and Samosa. Often much more meat based, and more reliant on sauce. However they are my favorite food, and the likely answer to the question of the meaning of life, the universe and everything.

Read next time when we compare Japanese fried chicken (Karaage) with American southern fried chicken...

Comments

  1. Madeleine FitzgeraldJanuary 16, 2020 at 9:20 PM

    Excellent! Check out http://languageoffood.blogspot.com/2009/11/ceviche-and-fish-chips.html

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The two pandemics: COVID 19 and Bigotry (Part 2 of 2)

In the first part of this I discussed how worrying it is to see events of racism and bigotry in the Bay Area. Now I first want to talk about this worrying trend across the nation, as there have been some terrible occurrences. Then Id like to highlight a short piece written by Congresswoman Grace Meng, Bel Leong-Hong the Chairwoman of the AAPI caucus for the Democratic Party, and Seema Nanda the Chief Executive Officer of the Democratic Party. The occurrences of violence and hate perpetrated against Asian Americans across the nation has been on rise. While no official study has been conducted, San Francisco State published that they had found a 50% increase in articles related to incidents of racism aimed at Asian Americans. During this time one would hope that American leaders would step up, and protect their citizens, and fellow Americans. So I felt it right, that this letter called out a clear and flagrant moral failing of these leaders. By moral failings Im alluding to obvious rac...
Read more

Hey! We have something like that: Part 2

Image
In the last version of this we compared the Franco-Cornish pasty and with India's beloved samosa, with the samosa being the clear winner. Mainly due to the fact that the two foods are so similar, and samosas are just better seasoned/ spiced. This time, we have a much harder comparison: Fried Chicken. This time the comparison involves three different versions, (Modern) Korean fried Chicken, Japanese fried chicken, and Southern-American fried chicken. In truth, almost every culture on earth has a version of a fried chicken, as it just seems that all of our ancestors simply saw a chicken and had the same thought, "well that looks like food." This was written with the understanding that within each of the cultures mentioned there are a wide variety of methods and recipes that fry chicken. Japanese fried chicken (Karaage style) Karaage is actually a style of cooking meat and vegetables, the process involves lightly coating small pieces of the meat or fish with flour and ...
Read more

The two pandemics: COVID-19 and Bigotry (Part 1 of 2)

Over the course of the past month in this country, awareness around the COVID 19 pandemic has grown, unfortunately so has the misinformation and bigotry around the virus. The people bearing the brunt of the wholly ignorant racism, bigotry, and hate has been the Asian American community. This rise is shameful behavior was covered by the Huffington post in a recent  article . The most shocking part to the participants of our class, is the sad truth, these incidents are taking place in the Bay Area. The article cites one story that took place on a BART train. An older Filipino couple were riding back to their home in Hayward, from their remittance business in San Francisco, when they began to be showered with insults. “All of a sudden another passenger yelled at them, telling them to go back to their country,” their daughter told the reporter that “The person called my Filipino mother a ‘Chinese Coronavirus bitch’ and that both of my parents are ‘bearers of the virus.’” Lets get ...
Read more