Favorite ethnic/regional cuisine not your own

[JAZ]

It occurred to me tonight when I was making enchiladas with leftover duck breast that I could eat Mexican/Mexican inspired food four or five times a week and be perfectly happy. Yet, I was raised with pretty traditional "American" cuisine, so that's not my culinary background at all. Sure, we had "Mexican" (i.e., Mexican-American) food when I was growing up, but we also had lots of American versions of German, Italian and Chinese food. Yet those didn't stick with me the way "Mexican" did.

So it got me wondering if other people have grown to have favorite ethnic or regional cuisines that they weren't raised with. Is there a cuisine not your own that you love and could happily eat all the time?

[heidih]

Vietnamese and Thai. Never had it growing up. As soon as I had my first taste of home cooked Vietnamese I was hooked. It was a dip in seasoned water, cook your own and wrap in rice paper meal that included the fried spring rolls. The nuoc mam cham dipping sauce was a revelation. The Hot sour salty sweet speaks to me more than my native Austrian cuisine. Along those lines the Thai fit right in.

[C. sapidus]

Indian, Thai, Vietnamese, Mexican, I could be happy with any and all. None were much in evidence at home (except for an occasional curried something), but the DC burbs had an abundance of good, cheap international restaurants but a bicycle ride away.

[Dakki]

Southern USA. Fried chicken, ribs, pulled pork, leafy green stuff fried in bacon drippings. You know it's good.

(My "native" cuisine is Mexican.)

[Pierogi]

I'm with Mr. Sapidus...Indian probably first by a hair, then Southeast Asian, well, actually ALL Asian and Mexican. Throw real Italian into the mix too, not just Italian-American.

Even though I grew up mostly in Southern California, by breeding, birth and culinary tastes, we were Midwest farmers all the way. Italian was spaghetti and meatballs with Ragu sauce and green can cheese. Chinese was "pepper steak" with soy sauce, flank steak and bell peppers. On Minute rice. No Mexican, it was far too scary, I didn't taste an avocado until I was about 18, and it was an epiphany.

Once I got old enough to start going out on my own, and got exposed to co-workers, friends, fellow students, etc. of different cultures, my mind was blown and my palate eternally grateful. I probably do one of each cuisine a week, along with the good old, solid American classics.

Isn't it fabulous to have a choice?

[thirtyoneknots]

Louisiana Creole/Cajun but since I'm from Houston and my mother's family is from Deep East Texas this may be a little too close to home to qualify. It is almost certainly my favorite to cook, all the way down to making the specialty charcuterie required, and it hits all the comfort food buttons in a way that few other things do. And as an added bonus, Creole cusine incorporates many elements of classical French cuisine as well, probably my very close second favorite.

[Pierogi]

Louisiana Creole/Cajun but since I'm from Houston and my mother's family is from Deep East Texas this may be a little too close to home to qualify. It is almost certainly my favorite to cook, all the way down to making the specialty charcuterie required, and it hits all the comfort food buttons in a way that few other things do. And as an added bonus, Creole cusine incorporates many elements of classical French cuisine as well, probably my very close second favorite.

Oh holy cats ! How can I have forgotten Cajun/Creole???? Yeah, add that in too. Just made some killer jambalaya this week. And that certainly was never a cuisine that entered into Chez Pierogi when I was a kid.

[robirdstx]

Tex-Mex for me. I've always liked tamales, enchiladas and tacos but the real love started with my first fajitas when we moved down to Austin from Kansas City in the mid-80s.

[DickL]

I'm with Pierogi-- it's great to have a choice. I like Indian, Mexican, Italian, Chinese, SE Asian, and others, and wouldn't like being confined to one. My wife and I are planning a trip to India this year; on previous month+ trips to India the food has not become boring, or a chore, or whatever. We can do Italian for about two weeks before it gets old, but Indian is easily good for a month or more. If I had to choose one, it would be hard to choose between Indian and Chinese. And growing up in solidly midwestern downstate Illinois with a mother of German extraction, none of those was what I grew up with. (Perhaps that's why I like them. {G})

[ChrisTaylor]

Bistro-style French cooking. As in coq au vin, duck a l'orange, beef bourguignon and steak au poivre. Rack of lamb. All of this done the old way, with everything loaded up with good butter and the cooking liquids and sauces thickened with starch. Bacon in damn near everything. Rooster in the coq au vin--none of this half-arsed business using a young roasting chicken. Desserts such as baked apple tart, lemon tart and clafoutis. I'm super excited about going to France and hitting up all these flash restaurants in Paris, but I'm just as excited about visiting old-fashioned bistros and the like.

Honourable mentions to ...

• Proper Mexican (as in, not the Americanised/Australianised stuff, which I hate)
  
• Italian
  
• Indian
  
• Sichuan
  
• Ethiopian
  
• Spanish
  
• Good quality, as opposed to mediocre shit (see: food court sushi), Japanese
  
• Creole/Cajun
  

[Anna N]

Thai, Vietnamese, Japanese not necessarily in that order. But I am also a great fan of Danish food!

[Kent Wang]

Arg, hard to choose between Thai and Japanese. Japanese would probably be the healthiest.

I think a lot depends on the quantity and quality of the cuisine that you have experienced. I think if I lived in Vietnam or Mexico for a year I'd learn to love it more. You also learn about the great regional variation within those countries.

[Chris Amirault]

Usually when I leave a place after a trip I'm glad to be back where I have more variety. When I left two weeks in Thailand -- mostly in Chiang Mai -- I felt precisely the opposite. I could live there, eat eight meals a day, and eternally ecstatic.

[Doodad]

Ethiopian. Thai second, but I can replicate Thai pretty well. Ethiopian I get so close, but never really nail it. And my injera bread is way off the mark. And I just love having a plate and napkin that are edible.

[BarbaraY]

How can I choose? My mom was a pretty bad cook but she did learn some Mexican recipe from our neighbors and Italian from other neighbors so I grew up knowing these foods.

A little later we got a Chinese restaurant in a nearby town and I fell in love with that.

Asian of all kinds is my go to choice. Japanese, Chinese, Thai, and Indian are all favorites but I think Thai has an edge. I didn't come to it until late in life because I had heard and read so many snide comments about fish sauce and shrimp paste that it sounded very distasteful.

A friend in the Bay Area took me to a Thai restaurant for the first time and it was a revelation. When I got home I dug out all my foodie magazines that had Thai recipes and cooked it for the whole week. Couldn't get enough. It was good even though I had to sub a lot of stuff like lemon zest for lemon grass, etc.

A first, a Thai restaurant in our little town and I can hardly wait to try it.

[Shelby]

Italian and then Japanese.

[MikeHartnett]

Vietnamese and Thai, definitely.

[Darienne]

My cookbooks tell the tale: Mexican, Indian, Sichuan, Middle Eastern.

Pulled pork gets a entry of its own. Never had it before last summer.

Have had Thai only twice and Japanese only once. And Vietnamese never. I've never had Ethiopian food, but I suspect that I would love it.

I like Mexican best; DH likes Sichuan best.

[Doodad]

Darienne, find a cookbook or pull a recipe up online. Etiopian is awesome, best beef stew (of any others) hands down in my opinion. It is all based around berbere sauce. And it is served on a large piece of a spongy bread called injera. Smaller flats of injera are how you pick up the food to eat with your hands.

Ok, now I am hungry.

Edited January 29, 2011 by Doodad (log)

[Darienne]

Darienne, find a cookbook or pull a recipe up online. Etiopian is awesome, best beef stew (of any others) hands down in my opinion. It is all based around berbere sauce. And it is served on a large piece of a spongy bread called injera. Smaller flats of injera are how you pick up the food to eat with your hands.

Ok, now I am hungry.

Will do. I mean it. I have Classic Vegetarian Cooking from the Middle East & North Africa by Habeeb Salloum. It no doubt has some Ethiopian recipes in it...but no meat. And exactly two bread recipes.

Thanks, Doodad.

ps. I think you should PM me some specific sites to go to. Wouldn't want me to pick the wrong recipe, would you?

pps. Do you use Teff in your injera?

Edited January 29, 2011 by Darienne (log)

[OnigiriFB]

Thai by birth but I eat mostly japanese. Then thai then vietnamese as their is a big vienamese pop here. Then indian and korean and chinese.

[Doodad]

I don't use teff and that may be one of the problems I don't know. It is basically unleavened bread with soda water to make the bubbles. Mine tend to come out more like crepes or something. In the restaurants it is more like a spongy flatbread with a texture sort of like chinese steam bun.

I use some cookbooks, but let me see what I can find online. The two main dishes are doro wat and yebeg wat.

[Katie Meadow]

Didn't this topic used to be called: If you were on a desert island and you could only have one type of food what would it be?

Most people used to say Italian, right? Perhaps we now just think of Italian American food as American food--spaghetti and meatballs, pizza, etc. If you look at the variety of real Italian food, much of it isn't a pantry staple or a household word. So, do we not even think of Italian food as ethnic? Interesting.

That said, I would probably choose Vietnamese or Thai. I would have to think long and hard if I had to choose between them. It strikes me that if you had access to any Thai ingredients you wanted you could make almost any Viet dish. You think? Is the reverse true?

[haresfur]

It occurred to me tonight when I was making enchiladas with leftover duck breast that I could eat Mexican/Mexican inspired food four or five times a week and be perfectly happy.

A friend said, "I could eat Chinese food every day... wait, over a billion people do!"

I think of Mexican or Mexican-inspired and Italian as pretty mainstream in the US.

Ethiopian. Thai second, but I can replicate Thai pretty well. Ethiopian I get so close, but never really nail it. And my injera bread is way off the mark. And I just love having a plate and napkin that are edible.

Ethiopian was my first thought, but perhaps it is because I don't get it very often. Certainly a favourite but there are others I don't think I'd tire of, too. Mostly rice or pasta based, since I'm not big on potatoes. We picked up a cookbook years back at The Red Sea in Washington DC but kind of dropped trying to use it. Need to revisit that.

This topic reminded me of a Thai/Chi/Mex restaurant in the 'burb I used to live in that was run by a Central American family with a Thai wife. Miss that place.

[andiesenji]

Mexican, first by a long way. Then it would be North African.