On my last trip across the Atlantic – they served me Creamy Italian Salad Dressing to top my salad. I’ve never seen such a thing in Italy.
Italian eating is all about fresh, clean minimalism. So what the heck is this Creamy Italian Salad Dressing?
Italians don’t have five (or more) choices of salad dressing. They simply put olive oil, vinegar, salt, maybe pepper out on the table. (If you’re lucky, you might get a balsamic vinegar!) It’s not pre-mixed nor filled with preservatives to give it a 10 year shelf life. It’s clean and simple. The dressing should emphasize and enhance the flavors and freshness of the salad, not cover it up.
From Wikipedia… Italian dressing is a vinaigrette-type of salad dressing in United States and Canadian cuisine…
North American-style Italian dressing is not used in Italy, where salad is normally dressed with olive oil, vinegar or lemon juice, salt, and sometimes balsamic vinegar at the table, and not with a pre-mixed vinaigrette…
A variety of Italian dressing, known as creamy Italian, consists of the same ingredients, but with milk products and stabilizers added to make the salad dressing creamy.
Yum! Take a bastardized good idea and add milk products and stabilizers! Viva americana!
Why do Americans create these flavors that take over what they should be enhancing. Is our vegetable supply so bad that we need to hide it (maybe!). WhyAmericans need to label and market what isn’t real. Do the marketeers think we are really so ignorant to believe that if we buy / eat what THEY call Italian, we’ll be just like the italians? I don’t think so. Why don’t they call it Pre-formulated Sweetened Americanized Italian Dressing? Ok, from a marketing perspective that’s not so good. At least Ranch could have been invented or consumed on a ranch.
So, when you want to be an Eataliano – you’ve got to live it for real. Not what the American Marketing Corp wants you to believe it is.
Now that that’s out – let’s talk about Russian dressing! Or, NOT!
Now and again I like to look up recipes from other nations and cultures, I’ve always wondered what American “Italian mozarella” is like. It looks nothing like the real italian thing…. italian mozzarella is impossible to grate, whereas many American recipes use grated mozzarella cheese.
Americans often buy pre-grated cheese
. Even in solid form, american mozarella is much drier. It’s not ever fresh. It also has more preservatives, and less flavor. It has a shelf life of ‘nearly forever’ to meet the Americans need to buy once every 6 months.
You got me interested so I went an looked at the grated cheese that we’re eating. Now I’m sorry. Wood pulp, and other additives. See Story about shredded cheese
Like him or not, he’s got a valid point – Donald Trump says “Make America GRATE again!“
so, I have 5 comments here…
==you say “Pre-formulated Sweetened Americanized Italian Dressing” but you are still using the word Italian… kind of counter productive
==Creamy = Americans love anything creamy! you should know that. It sells product. ha.
==we could make a whole discussion about “American Cheese”; what is that?! and Hersey’s Chocolate. FAKE FOOD. Americans love it; no European will eat it.
==names / ingredients == I saw on my cereal box this morning “Special K, Fruit &Yogurt, Naturally Flavored with Other Natural Flavors” — what?!?!
==wood pulp: there was a big controversy on this about 5+ years ago (& I NOW read those particular labels)! == “The percentage total of the ingredient cellulose in some cheeses attracted the attention and ire of the Food and Drug Administration.” They said there was no health risk, but it needed to be labelled better. Some companies were fined.====Some cheeses had around 8% of the cellulose=It was proven that there was no actual wood, wood pulp, or anything people would recognize as wood-related in its raw state in the cheese//Kraft had 3.8 percent cellulose.
………enjoy……..
It is interesting – ‘food cultures’. Then you throw the business and politics in. In the US we believe in brands, but it seems in italy – those aren’t as important as reputation. Thus things like DOC / DOCG as certifications of a product really being what it proclaims to be. Kraft Parmesan vs Parmesan in the EU. Legally, in the EU – Parmesan can only be from Bologna, Mantua, Modena, or Parma. But US law doesn’t extend, so who cares what it’s made from, looks like, tastes like, contains. Let’s call it Parmesan. Yuck! I’ve got a nice hunk that I brought over! If there’s any left by the end of this come on over the hill for a glass of wine, and we’ll break it out!