SC - OOP-belgian fries
Marilyn Traber
margali at 99main.com
Tue Jan 19 10:46:50 PST 1999
I ran across this in one of my news clippers and found it
interesting, albeit out of peroid.
My next question-did they make fries out of turnips or some
other starch [other than fried dough] in period?
margali
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Pride Urged for Belgium's Fries
By ROBERT WIELAARD=
Associated Press Writer=
ANTWERP, Belgium (AP) _ When the news broke a few
years back,
Belgium was abuzz. Giuseppe Bonsignore of Herstal, an
otherwise
forgettable town in eastern Belgium, won a patent for
six-sided
French fries.
His fries were healthier than four-sided ones,
government
research found.
Alas, the health-in-fries crusade fizzled fast,
which says much
about tinkering with Belgium's favorite food.
Belgians eat fries with a passion. In homes,
restaurants and
roadside shacks that French-speakers call ``baraques a
frites'' and
Dutch-speakers refer to as ``frietkoten.''
``Talk about Belgium, and you talk about fries,''
says Paul
Ilegems, an Antwerp art academy teacher who has explored,
exposed
and explained the Belgian love of fries in three books and
a
traveling art show.
His not wholly tongue-in-cheek campaign aims to
make fries a
national symbol and a source of national pride, which is a
tall
order.
``Belgians are ashamed of their fries culture
because it figures
in Belgian jokes in France and Holland,'' Ilegems said.
Belgians get their fry-fix at shacks or
hole-in-the-wall
eateries that challenge your senses. Often converted
campers, buses
or plywood shacks, these eyesores are sometimes dressed up
as Swiss
chalets, Venetian palazzos or upscale, diner-style snack
bars.
A basic order costs $2 to $3 a portion and comes
with a dusting
of salt. There are also toppings that include landslides of
mayonnaise and Mexicano, Gypsy, Americaine, Andalousian,
Tomagrec
and other sauces with names as mysterious as their
ingredients.
Belgium's grease emporiums feature chaotic
styles, unusual
hours, and a bucking of a low-fat health ethic that screams
anti-uniformity.
Such is the anarchy, there is not even an agreed
spelling. Dutch
speakers call fries ``Frit,'' ``Friet,'' ``Frieten,''
``Fritten''
or ``Patat.'' French speakers call the fried potato sticks
``frites,'' ``pommes frites'' or ``patates frites.''
Ilegems' first two books _ ``The Fries Shack
Culture'' and ``The
Belgian Fries Book'' _ dissect Belgium's fries history in
deadpan
prose.
They contain photos of campy shacks, routes
featuring
top-scoring fries, a glossary of shack types and fry tales,
including the Brussels soccer stadium vendor who issued a
free
condom with every order in 1994.
Ilegems' third book, ``The Definitive Belgian
Fries Book,'' is
still awaiting a publisher. It explains how Belgium's fries
culture
is a metaphor for this country of 10 million. Ilegems sees
Belgium
as one unorganized, rickety shack, stapled together on a
slow
Saturday.
Ilegems' art collection includes models of fries
forks,
paintings featuring a fries theme and a lard sculpture in
the shape
of a bag of fries.
Lucien Decrayer, leader of the 7,000-member
Belgian Fryers
Federation, estimates there are 3,500 shacks in Belgium,
down from
4,500 in the mid-1980s.
``The number drops because local governments
clamp down on
shacks on health and aesthetics grounds,'' he said. His
group
campaigns to keep health and quality standards high among
its
members.
============================================================================
To be removed from the SCA-Cooks mailing list, please send a message to
Majordomo at Ansteorra.ORG with the message body of "unsubscribe SCA-Cooks".
============================================================================
More information about the Sca-cooks
mailing list