Because traditionally they were served "courses". However, it's all biryani in the belly. I think the old ways of serving a main with sides is still a tip to that era when it was plated separately. I'm ok with having it all mixed together so long as the flavors complement. I don't want a steak, cubed, mixed with my veggies and mashed potatoes, all in a bowl. Some things should be separate, some things are ok being together/combined. Western style cooking has been dominated by French Cuisine and traditional Countryside cooking. Only within the last 30-50 years have they started branching out into Asian or South American dishes.
Its way more approachable today than it ever has been with YouTube videos, online blog recipes, availability of supplies.
Huh? They don't complement??
But even if the dinner is squash, you still want to think of different ways to prepare it, don't you?
This is how I, in the US, was fed while growing, and is how I do things to this day. I didn't realize that there was a cultural variation on this (or that my habit wasn't the common case in my own culture!)
Today I learned...
Can you provide some examples? I can't think of any.
It's not Latin/South American, it's not European, it's not Chinese, it's not Japanese, it's not like anywhere I've been in Africa, and it doesn't match my knowledge of India or the Middle East.
Nor can I imagine any country where "dinner is squash" makes much sense. Squash has almost no calories, so it doesn't make a lot of sense to center a meal on.
Cuisines often have occasional meals that are complete enough to be eaten as a single dish -- some kind of protein-mixed-in-with-carbs like lasagna or paella or chicken stroganoff. But these seem to be exceptions in the cuisine, rather than the rule.
Could you elaborate with some specific countries where the one-dish pattern is the norm?
A zucchini boat is basically just zucchini stuffed with meat, cheese, tomato, onions, and spices. That's the whole meal. Stuffed peppers is basically the same thing, but with peppers instead of zucchini.
Some examples of things we'd eat as the entire meal:
* Fatteh/tisi'yeh, a dish made with a layer of bread, then boiled chickpeas, then yoghurt, and topped with some toasted pine nuts, melted ghee, paprika. Sometimes in a restaurant, this is part of a larger spread of food.
* Any variety of kebbeh (there are many). We'd eat this with bread. In a restaurant, kebbeh would not be the singular dish.
* Various things referred "tabakh" (lit. cooking lol) which we'd usually eat with rice or burghal (crushed wheat) cooked with vermicelli noodles. You can then say that's multiple dishes, but it's kind of like bread. Examples: bazala (peas, carrots, maybe potatoes, coriander in a tomato sauce) on rice, fasulya (white beans in a tomato sauce) on rice or burghal, al-asiyeh (potatoes, carrots, corriander stew) on burghal, spanegh (spinach, minced meat, pine nuts) with rice, and many others. Most of this is sometimes cooked with diced lamb of shredded chicken.
* Lahm bi ajeen (minced meat cooked with onions and molasses on dough with pinenuts) would be sufficient a meal, sometimes perhaps with a quick salad. Not a complete meal in a restaurant typically.
* We were more than happy to throw diced lamb (skewered with some onions), kafta, or chicken on the barbecue and eat with bread, maybe a garlic dip for chicken, occasionally with a salad, occasionally throwing some potatoes or similar vegetables on the barbecue. In a restaurant, a barbecue dish would have many sides.
* We'd pan fry some diced lamb in ghee, drizzle some pomegranate molasses and eat with bread.
* Pan fried potatoes with eggs on top, eaten with bread.
* Pasta cooked in yoghurt + coriander and garlic.
* A leafy green like spinach called sili', not sure what it is in english, cooked with black eye beans, then a squeeze of lemon and eaten with bread.
* Foule which is just fava beans stewed, we'd eat with bread. Squeeze of lemon. Maybe some pickles, olives, tomato, and cucumber on the side. In a restaurant, this'd probably be part of a wider breakfast spread.
All this is to say, it was normal to serve food from a single pot or tray and eat with utensils or bread, or from two pots placing rice/burghal on the plate then scooping the "tabakh" on top.
For us bread is very normal throughout the day, it is thin, we'd rip off a bit to grab food, not very heavy. Modern bakeries make bread looking like https://www.yum.com.au/d-lebanese-bread-bag-x-6.html
All said, my parents grew up poor, so that background could reflect our norms. (edit) We also did not grow up around much family, so large gatherings were uncommon for us, which differs from typical Lebanese culture.
I knew a couple from south Lebanon "Si and Sue" Haddad. Si would make me cardamom flavoured coffee and some baklava. Sue made the food eggplant always seemed to be on the go.
Very friendly and a very wide range of food, a great culture to grow up in.
There was literally a 15-year long civil war in Lebanon from mid-70s till 1990
To be clear, I didn't mean that it was literally a single dish, I meant that instead of trying to compliment your meal properly with a matching veggie, because you're only making one thing. As long as it all makes sense together in the bowl/plate/hand, it works.
Which ones? In the US, we are told to eat our veggies because they are good for you. The problem in the US is that something forced women into the workplace and families are resorting to easy processed meals like microwave dinners, fast food, etc.
In college I would buy a bag of pre-cut flash frozen vegetables suitable for a stir fry and just dump that into the wok and throw some sauce & protein.
Abroad where people eat fresh vegetables I had the habbit of ordering food delivery everyday because I'm not going to waste 1 hour of my life every day washing & cutting vegetables and the knife and the cutting board etc.
> Second, European meals tend to focus heavily on a main and some side dishes, but a TON of countries simply do one dish for the whole meal.
A ton of German cuisine, especially historically is either Soup or "Eintopf" (literally one-pot). You might add bread, but the dish stands by itself. Especially in the winter time, this is something people still do a lot. Still looking forward to kale (Grühnkohl, or where I'm from: Braunkohl). I still love stuff like Schmohrkohl and Grühnkohl. Not so much the carrot and potato soup and things like that.
PS: I'd consider "Auflauf" (casserole?) to be a one-pot dish as well.
First, a lot of English-speaking countries place lower importance on veggies. We got calcium from milk and cheese, so we didn't need to learn how to cook well with lots of dark leafy greens, as an example.
Second, European meals tend to focus heavily on a main and some side dishes, but a TON of countries simply do one dish for the whole meal. You're not trying to think of ways to cook squash, because the dinner is squash.
Finally (there are more, but I don't want to get too crazy in the comments), European cooking tends to focus more on using a wide variety of ingredients. In contrast, you'll find a lot of SE Asian cooking uses many of the same ingredients, but they prepare the food in vastly different ways, leading to some completely different dishes. This means that they naturally have a huge repertoire of ways to modify their veggies to fit any meal.
I have no real point, I just never get to talk about this stuff and I find it really interesting. If I was wrong about anything, please correct me below.