To be fair and very unusually humble on my part, I should say Italian and Chinese learn from each other in cooking. Thanks to Marco Polo.
We respect each others' cookings. The world would be a better one if the world leaders do the same.
The common food between the two countries:
Dumplings (many varieties and I had a banquet of dumplings once in Western China), Peking ravioli, pot stick (very good and is smaller than Peking ravioli in Boston area) similar to Italian ravioli.
Scallion pan cake to pizza.
Noodle to spaghetti.
Tomato sauce is obviously introduced to China with the direct translation in sound in Chinese.
A very unknown fact. Ice cream was invented in Yuan Dynasty. Marco Polo bought it back to Italy, and in turn spread to the rest of the world. Who is more important: the inventor or the one who makes the rest of the world know about it? Same as the concept of zero invented by India and spread to the world.
Chinese cooking is very regionally diverse (it is a large country after all). I'm less adventurous than my son who eats chicken feet. The best, healthy, and low priced Chinese food is from Vancouver and Toronto.
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Cerenity said:
ReplyDeleteThere is a story among chinese about the origins of pizza. the story says that after marco polo visited china, he tried to replicate the steamed chinese buns (with filling inside) but couldnt get it to stick together. while cooking, the bun came apart and it became pizza =P
(for the record, pizza's history pre-dates marco polo. its just a joke!)
David said:
ReplyDeleteC: I am Italian. Many years ago someone introduced me to these little Chinese dumplings. They are a dough product, with meat stuffed inside, and you put a soy/pepper sauce on them. Being 63 years old, I am having a major brain freeze in terms of what the hell you call them, but they are fantastic and when I see them on a menu, I never fail to order them.
Here's the point. These things are Chinese raviolis. The Italians didn't invent ravioli. The Chinese did! And except for the sauce, I like the Chinese version better.
Being Genovese, Marco Polo spoke a very unique Italian dialect. If you spoke Italian to him, he would probably look at you and be thinking, what is that person saying. I speak both versions and the Genovese dialect is the speech of the Genovese sailor.
The joke goes: Marco Polo had just landed with his men in China. They walked for a bit and then saw a village at the bottom of a hill. Marco told his men to stay where they were and he would go into the village alone. He came back 1/2 an hour later and as he was walking up the hill, he said to his men, in Genovese, "It looks like it wants to rain this afternoon." His men looked at one another and then one of them said, "Can you believe it? This guys been in this country for 1/2 an hour and he already speaks their language."