SC - Questions on Sekainjabin

[david friedman]

Melusine L Swepston wrote:

> >After travelling as much as I have, I have come to the conclusion that
> Chili is basically a geography thingy. No matter who I've talked to, nor
> where I've gone, the RIGHT AND CORRECT recipe\ingredients are right where
> you're at at any given moment.
> >
> >Micaylah
> 
> I think that's true of most recipes - chili, spaghetti, meatloaf,
> whatever.
> 
> Melusine

Certainly one could make such an argument.  On the other hand, so could
the little old Swedish ladies in Dubuque, happily turning out their
sauerkraut blintz egg rolls, and it would be as questionable. Or as
acceptable, as per your own opinions on the subject.

One could also argue, by the same logic, that the Instant Trifle you
used to be able to buy in Britain, land of trifle, with its compressed
sponge-cake wafer (you add water and watch it puff up, just like a real
sponge) and its canned fruit goo, and the powdered custard mix that you
add water to and don't even cook, is right and correct for the factory
location with its indigenous local supply of polysorbate 80, growing
wild by the roadsides, as it were. 

Under normal circumstances, though, I agree with Micaylah in that
geography is an important factor. I'm more inclined to have faith in a
version of a dish that is reasonably close to the epicenter of the
region where it was created. I'm sorry, he's a creative man, but I have
to assume that the cooks that invented pizza, wherever and whenever that
may have occurred, (let's say Naples ~c. 1750, for argument's sake, and
a common response to the when and where question) know an enormous lot
more about pizza than Wolfgang Puck, Austrian by birth (I think),
Californian by vocation, and with a tendency to put smoked duck breast
julienne and kiwi fruit slices on pizza, to the point where its
originators would no longer recognize it and it loses all sense of
kinship with the street food of the urban lower classes, ever did or
ever will. It basically no longer does what pizza is supposed to do on
any level at all (except inasmuch as it is _sometimes_ round), but it
surely is Mr. Puck's right to use a name that isn't copyrighted. It is
right and correct for him.  

Adamantius
"And it is my further opinion that Carthage should be destroyed."
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com
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