National characteristics, religion, geographic location, culture and historical factors have influenced the cuisine of nations for thousands of years. Dishes have evolved over the centuries, some have disappeared, others have remained unchanged for millennia, and now we sometimes cook food according to the recipes of great-grandmothers.
East is a delicate matter
There are generally accepted rules for eating, such as a knife in the right hand, a fork in the left, accepted all over the world. But many peoples, even civilized Europeans or Asians, have traditions that can be surprising.
In the East, sticks are a table attribute, mandatory for the traditional meal, they appeared in the III (according to some sources in the V) millennium.
There is a beautiful legend about how they appeared. The concubine of the Chinese ruler was obliged to taste his food. One day the beauty was late and, in order not to burn herself, took out hot meat from the cauldron with her jade hairpin. The ruler liked the idea, he ordered the use of female jewelry for eating. So the sticks spread throughout Southeast Asia, and along with them there were rules that should be strictly followed.
Sticks should not be stuck vertically into food. This is done only during the funeral ceremony. At a regular meal, this will be considered a sign of disrespect.
You cannot knock them on the table or dishes to attract attention, squeeze in a fist (others will perceive this as aggression), it is considered offensive to point them at a person.
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The ideal behavior is to take food from the common plate with the back side (thick end) of the cutlery, put the food on your plate and, turning the chopsticks over, start the meal.
The emperors used silverware for fear of poisoning. It was believed that silver darkens by reacting with various poisons, including arsenic. (it has been proven that silver does not react to poisons).
Studies show that eating with chopsticks is good for your health - 40,000 important points on the hand are massaged. As a result, children develop earlier.
Features of etiquette
What is the norm in one country may be considered disrespectful or even offensive in another.
In India and some parts of Africa, you should never eat or even touch a plate with your left hand. This does not apply to "lefties" - he cannot do all this with his right hand.
If a person is visiting a Bedouin, they will certainly be treated to famous coffee. In order to show the hospitable host that he is drunk, you need to shake the empty cup, or at least shake it from side to side.
In Italy, the chef will be offended if the client asks to add more cheese to the dish. The cook is considered to be a professional, and therefore cannot be mistaken with the amount of ingredients.
In this country, it is considered strange if a visitor in a cafe orders a cappuccino in the afternoon. This is not accepted by Italians, if they see a tourist with cappuccino in the afternoon, they will consider him ill-mannered.
In Brazil, steakhouse tables contain chips, green on one side and red on the other. The waiter, if he sees the green side of the chip, will bring new dishes to the guest, even if he does not ask. In these establishments, there is a rule - if a person is full - the chip should be turned red side up.
Unappetizing dishes
The native cuisine is close to a person, tasty and understandable. But going to other parts of the world, not necessarily to the African savannah or the Amazon jungle, you can meet with strange taste preferences.
There are lovers of French or Swiss blue cheese, which has a peculiar taste and rich smell.
And Italians love cheese in which live larvae crawl! For ripening, the product is specially left in the open air. The smell attracts flies, they lay eggs in it, and the "kids" emerging from the eggs begin to eat the cheese, accelerating decay. Yummy kasu marzu is called. Its production and legal sale are prohibited in the European Union, they are traded on the black market.
People eat cheese with live larvae, which swarm in the cheese and can even fly into the eye, because they jump to a height of 15 cm. Once in the human stomach, they begin to bite from the inside (who ate whom, I wonder?). You can get rid of the larvae by freezing, but in Sardinia it is believed that the real kazoo marzu is only with live insects.
Fish Yin Yang, it is fried in oil as a whole, except for the head - it remains on the surface. It’s hard to believe, but even after deep-fried cooking, it remains alive and must be eaten during this time. It's time for the “greens” to intervene - even though it is a fish, it is still barbaric.
Fragrant eggs "pidan" - they are cooked in a mixture consisting of rice husks, clay, quicklime, salt. Eggs are placed in the ground for up to 2-3 months. The smell, when taken out, spreads throughout the area, enthralling the locals. The yolk becomes almost black and the white turns orange.
Among the Eskimos of Greenland, a festive dish is called kiwiak. Made from sea gulls and auk. Without cleaning them from feathers, they are folded into a whole seal skin (up to 500 birds can be placed), released from it, watered with a layer of bacon and buried in the ground. A press is placed on top of the "pan". The dish is cooked from 3 to 18 months, during which time the meat is fermented. This is considered a delicacy by the local people, the skin is unsealed on big holidays - for a wedding or birthday.
Drunken shrimp. To prepare this delicacy, live shrimps are sent for aging in strong alcohol, which does not kill it, but poison it. They are eaten alive, starting from the head. As a bonus, parasites enter the human body along with seafood.
The brain of a living monkey. This delicacy is not only criticized by eco-advocates. These are no longer living larvae, but mammals - monkeys, almost our relatives. They are soldered during the week so that they do not resist and do not die prematurely from pain shock. The restaurant attendant then cuts the poor animal's skull and removes the top layer in front of the customers. They gouge out the brain of a monkey while still living with a special spoon and eat it. Comments are superfluous.
The Masai tribe has a tradition that terrifies people, it is better not to read the impressionable. When a person dies, his corpse is placed in a special ritual place, the throat is cut and water is poured into it.
Other members of the tribe press on the stomach of the deceased so that the remains of food with blood come out of it through the anus. The worst thing is that from what came out of the anus of the corpse they prepare food for the mourning ceremony, which is eaten by all the villagers. This is how they protect themselves from evil spirits.
How many people - so many traditions. Some are unpleasant, others are strange, sometimes violent. The latter should probably be abandoned, they are too barbaric for modern man.