Is it Possible to Replicate Regional Dishes Successfully at Home?

Question

When we travel we have food experiences. In fact, to my mind, it's one of the main reasons for traveling. But can those experiences be recreated successfully when we get back home or should they be left as memories?

I remember making a trip to Southern France when I was in my twenties. Sitting in a restaurant with friends at lunch on a hot day, looking over the Mediterranean, watching the boats drift across the water, I ordered my first Salad Niçoise. It was stunning and yet apparently so simple. And thinking about that plate now, in wintery England, takes me back to the experience, the people I was with and even part of the conversation we had.

Returning I decided I could replicate the food and by extension the experience. The result was a poor 3rd and even though I've tried the same thing with other dishes since, I always seem to miss the mark.

Is it the ingredients: tuna, olives, basil, tomatoes, extra virgin olive oil, lemons, anchovies being all so quintessentially Mediterranean, that can't be bought at the quality necessary? Or that the locals know how to make it correctly? Or is it something more ephemeral, something we can't touch, that means it’s a vain pursuit akin to chasing rainbows? 

I was wonder what everyone thought. Have you tried it?

Answer

No, I don't think so. Partially the ingredients but also the effect of memory on your taste buds. But certainly worthwhile to try!

I still think about several meals I had in Spain on a long trip I took with a college friend whose mother was from Barcelona. Two in particular: At a rural country inn not far from the Costa Brava town we were staying in (my first but certainly not last eating rabbit) and a seafood restaurant not far from Algeciras before we took the ferry to Morocco. Unforgettable calamari, roasted fish, and fries.

Answer

If you are a decent cook or better I believe you can reproduce those memorable dishes. Perhaps the only factor you cannot replicate is the actual place or atmosphere...

Answer

In 2021 there's practically no ingredient that isn't available to us, generally of the same quality as you'll find in its country of origin (we actually have much broader selections of some products than your typical European local market), so scratch that off your list. Technique/skillset is variable but it's the overall experience that really can't be replicated.

Simple example, when we travel abroad we mostly stay in apartments. In Paris (and elsewhere) I love being able to walk down the street, pick up pastries/baguette and coffee and fresh fruit from the various stalls and bring them back to the apartment just as everyone is waking up. On one trip the produce guy was just putting out a box of saturn peaches, his first of the season, and I picked up several to take back. It smelled like perfume (in a good way) and was the peachiest peach I'd ever tasted. I've probably had dozens since then that can't compare. I'm sure they were identical but the magic of the moment was missing.

Answer

Can we replicate these at home? Yes and no. 

No because indeed, local ingredients cannot always be bought at the necessary quality. Yes a tomato is a tomato, but there is a difference between one that has been cultivated in the earth's soil with 10 hours sunshine a day versus one grown in a greenhouse using artificial light. Even Italian vegetables brought over to my country, 1200 kilometres away, are usually subpar once in my kitchen because of the transport time. Same for Asian produce: we can get most anything here but it's not as fresh and full tasting as when I go to Asia myself. 

Your other point also stands. Locals usually have a better understanding of their dishes, based on practice and history. This is exacerbated by us, discerning food tourists, making an effort to find the best restaurants. So the bar is already set high. 

But yes, there have been instances where I could better a foreign dish at home. Finding great ingredients and practicing a dish over and over helps. For me somehow that has been the case with French and some Spanish dishes.

Answer

Food memories are sometimes are difficult to replicate since we eat for pleasure - the moment was captured with friends, sunshine and ambience. Trying to replicate that with the dish is a challenge. However, if you're craving that dish, I believe we can get 80% to the mark with cooked dishes. The Salad Nicoise is very dependent upon the local ingredients... so I estimate 60%. I guess I'm saying it can be tough.

Answer

Replicate exactly ? No. Close yes.

Too many factors such as local ingredients, water etc make it virtually impossible.

Answer

Replicating food memories is tricky, because it's so tied up with emotions.

In this day and age, ingredients can be procured - at a price, but still. Maybe tomatoes you'd have to wait till peak season for the right flavor.

However recovering that feeling, that's the issue.

Same reason why I may make certain family dishes better than my parents did, but I still want the thing I remember - not the food, or the flavor, but everything my brain associates with the experience of eating that then, there, with them.

Answer

I think a lot of people have touched on this, but I will reiterate - yes and no. A lot is tied up in the sense memory to which the food/ingredient/recipe is related. I can grill a very tasty whole sardine - it will never be as good as the ones I had in Portugal. My cullen skink game is strong; it will never be the same as my great aunt's in Edinburgh. Even my fish tacos will never quite be the ones I get in San Diego. But, you can try, and get close, and then share that food with others, so as to pass on what you've discovered.

Answer

There is something called Pride of Place which makes it difficult (though not impossible) to recreate an experience. That as it should be.

Answer

To answer the OP, yes, I think it's very possible to successfully replicate dishes at home that you've experienced while travelling. There are constraints, however. For example, I do not have the cooking skill to try to replicate a dish cooked by a professional chef, so don't aspire to do so. 

Ingredients are another example. The OP contrasts eating a salad in the south of France on a summer's day, with trying to replicate it on our cold, damp island off the coast of northern Europe, in winter. The simple contrast between the availability of tomatoes means the task is all but doomed to failure. In the original version, these were probably tomatoes grown within a relatively small number of kilometres from where they were eaten. Whereas, the tomatoes that will be eaten in the UK (for most of the year, not just in winter) will have been trucked from southern Spain, where they were grown as part of the region's "plasticultura", picked so that they will still be good on the supermarket shelves for days after their arrival. In similar vein, I have never tasted a red pepper in the UK that comes anywhere close in flavour to those on sale in the weekly market at Pollensa, Northern Mallorca. 

But it's certainly possible to take those two ingredients, add them to others and successfully recreate dishes that I've eaten in Mallorca, whether tumbet or frit de matances. The cooking of the ingredients blurs the lines.

Answer

We've traveled to 4 continents during our 50 years of marriage and I have to say you probably can't recreate either the dish or the essence that makes it memorable. That's part of the joy of traveling, experiencing meals you can't make or replicate at home. 

Partly it's due to the freshness of the ingredients and partly because the experience is ephemeral, as you suggest. I brought home a recipe for carrot dill soup from Murphy's Pub in central Ireland but I haven't been able to produce anything as wonderful as I experienced on that cold windy day.

Enjoy the memories even if you can't reproduce the experience.

Answer

Everyone,

Something interesting just came out of mine and ferret's spat.

Do you think it could also be partly about an original experience? Whether that's an ingredient you've not had, an ingredient combination you didn't know would work, a cooking method new to you, or the physical place: a cliff overlooking an azure sea on an idyllic day, or a moment shared with a loved one?

That you can, by definition, only have once? So, no amount of replication will work?

Answer

Thank you for a very interesting and enlightening discussion thread!

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Is it Possible to Replicate Regional Dishes Successfully at Home?

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