Going Native

It has been noted by many participants that the CC's posts have a strong region-inflected Italian, Indian, Thai bias.

It's not that surprising. These are the cuisines which the CC understands at a "native" level. The grammar of the conception of the dish is completely transparent to the CC's "mental taste buds" to the point where not only does a recipe translates into a "mental taste" instantaneously but the underlying logic of how to conceptualize a meal has a clearly delineated grammatical structure.

To use an art metaphor, while Indian recipes have the texture and taste of oil paints, Thai recipes are much more akin to water colors in their limpidity and transparency.

(If you have no clue what that last statement meant, you really need to re-examine your understanding of these cuisines!)

Even invoking such a metaphor means that you must first understand the underlying structure (or grammar) by which such recipes are constructed. Needless to say, these structures are accidents of geography and history but isn't that the very definition of "culture"?