Srovnání japonské a české kuchyně – anglicky
Comparsion of Japanese and Czech cuisine with the accent on the traditional dishes
In order to compare the Japanese cuisine and the whole food culture with my nation’s I really tried to find any aspects forming at least the slightest connections between them. I almost failed. Similarities I‘ve found seem to be very fabricated. The only reasonable one should be that cuisine was strongly influenced in the past (for Japanese especially by Chinese, i.e. noodles, dumplings, for Czech mostly by Hungarian and German), sometimes to such a degree that it’s origin is even by locals considered as domestic. But in spite of that, it’s able to survive in current globalized cuisine competion, which annihilated for example English traditional food. What is very pleasant for me is, that even with frozen, cooled and in the worst case instant pre-made and half-made food available and non-expensive but rich meals in restaurants and pubs, the home-made food is still frequently prepared, in Czech and at least few dinners during workdays and lunches on weekends are usually cooked at home. What it makes even more difficult is that European food generally is more difficult or at least takes more time to prepare since it’s often baked (Oh, I have to show off that I bought a spacious oven yesterday ^_^ – it wasn‘t so easy, because most of them are tiny and made just for baking fish or toast a bread).
Like a baking festival seem to be Christmas. Even though since it’s religious meaning is weak for lot of people including me, unlike Japanese counterparts do with New Year’s dishes recently, Czech housewifes would rather take a holiday from work, than to buy Christmas sweets. I don’t know any family, that would prepared at least few kinds of pastry by itself, and the term family is quite accurate here, because in most cases the whole family is involved in preparations.
I uncousciously moved my viewpoint to more natural position considering our countries‘ food (I refer to the traditional and the typical at the same time, because the nowadays, contents of many people’s diets are almost independent on their location) seem to be the exact opposites. Where Japanese is considered to be the healthiest worldwide, the Czech one is if not last at least at the bottom of the health chart. Basically if I exaggerate a little, if there isn’t a huge amount of meat and fat in the main dish, it’s not considered as a main course, especially by the male part of population.
As a Japanese side dish nothing else would pop to mind than the rice. In my family, the rice is the least popular. On the other hand potatoes, which are definitely not common here can probably considered as a favourite for us. So… opposite again.
When it comes to vegetables, it’s use in Japan as in the other East Asian countries is quite massive, unlike Czech, where it’s often replaced by… dipping meat sauce or something like that. On the other hand fruit is consumed much more back at home, since it’s prices are way more reasonable and the choice is wider with lot of seasonal variations. On the other hand quality sometimes varies as well, so sometimes it can be for example problem, if you fell in live with one strain of tangerines, to buy them in the same shop again.