Bucatini:
Bucatini is a type of pasta which has become one of the most famous parts of Italian cuisine. Many know bucatini, especially in its variant all’amatriciana. The long pasta with holes inside arose from a need to favor proper cooking. For medieval pasta makers, lacking an efficient drying system, cooking pasta could take up ages, with results that were not always worth the wait. Hence the idea of a pasta which could be cooked quickly from the inside out. The homeland of bucatini is Sicily, but it’s spread throughout the kingdoms of Naples, so much so that even today in many southern kitchens you can still find countless recipes containing bucatini. It is known that luck of this type of pasta was the amatriciana sauce that enhances its ability to retain the source, for a truly inimitable result. Even today, bucatini is still an icon of Italian cuisine, as well as one of the most well known types of pasta that’s cooked in the U.S., where it’s cooked with ketchup and chunkier sauces.
Ube:
In recent years ube has gained quite a lot of traction in the states, especially in Seattle WA. Ube is a vibrant purple yam, a staple in Filipino cuisine. It’s part of many cultural dishes such as ube halaya, a rich purple jam made from mashed ube.. Ube became a mainstream sensation in the 2000s and 2010s through Filipino American entrepreneurs introducing dessert recipes like ube pancakes and ice cream leading to widespread social media fame.
Matcha:
Matcha’s origins can be traced back to China during the Tang and Song dynasties (7th-13th century), where tea leaves were steamed, dried, and ground into a powder, which was subsequently mixed for drinking. Soon after, in the 12th century, Buddhist monks carried this tea preparation method to Japan, where it became integrated with meditation due to its calming effects. Over time, Japan perfected cultivation and mixing techniques, developing the shaded-growing process that gives matcha its vibrant color and rich flavor. Today, matcha is still deeply rooted in many Japanese tea cultures and traditional tea ceremonies. In the US, matcha has gone through “Americanization,” evolving from a ceremonial tea into a far more customizable, commercial drink. While it first was popularized in the US during the early 2000s due primarily to fitness gurus, the past several years have seen a new surge in popularity driven by social media trends. Cafes across the US began developing more sweetened matcha lattes, iced drinks, flavored syrups, dairy alternatives, and ready to drink cans have made matcha more tailored to American tastes. This modern adaptation has abandoned the primary meaning and cultural significance of matcha, becoming instead a more commercialized drink such as coffee or other types of tea.
