A while back I had Cannelloni for the first time in my life, I saw it in the ready foods section and thought I would try it out.
Big disappointment, it tasted exactly like lasagna, I could just as well have bought that.
I think I have figured Italian food out, they only have one dish but they serve it a little bit differently and give it a new name.
Ground meat with tomato sauce between pasta sheets and some cheese sprinkled on top = lasagna
Ground meat with tomato sauce between rolled up pasta sheets and some cheese sprinkled on top = cannelloni
Ground meat with tomato sauce in a heap of shredded pasta sheets with some cheese sprinkled on top = spaghetti
Ground meat with tomato sauce on a flat piece of almost pasta and some cheese sprinkled on top = Pizza
and so on.
I'm not trying any more versions of Italian food ever again.
Don't do that, Arrie, or you'll be missing out on some of the best tasting dishes you can eat...
I consider Italian cuisine as the best tasting food in the world.
Second best (for me) is Middle Eastern cuisine.
On the other side of the scale, the absolute worst has got to be English cuisine. I remember, when I was in the UK for studies, how I was horrified to be served grilled pork steak covered in some sweet jam, I think it was pineapple jam or something like that. The mixing of super sweet foods with normally salty stuff, like meat, is utterly disgusting to me. I had to endure it for 11 years...
Now I never said anything about the taste, I said it was a disappointment, the disappointment was that it tasted like lasagna, not that it tasted bad, it didn't it was actually quite good.
Pork steak and jam actually sounds good, never had it but I will try it when I get to England, I haven't been there since I was 13 and I didn't particularly like it, I got the impression of old dirty and worn down. I was in London for a week with my parents, so maybe the countryside was beautiful, I don't know. As a grown up I have come to realize that maybe one week in London 46 years ago isn't much to judge a whole country on. And also, as I have watched programs from England, like that guy and his wife from Faulty towers who travel the canals, I have come to slowly change my view, it kind of looks good and pleasing to my eyes now.So I will at some point take a trip to England for a week or so, maybe a pilgrimage (by car) to Walsingham, just for fun, I'm not religious, but it sounded like a fun place to visit in a book I read.