OT - Nagging doubts re tomato soup - was, Re: SC - American sugar consumption

[ruadh]

Sugar to take the bitters off Tomatoes, yup done that.
But trying to eat Manhattan style Clam Chow'dah, well all I can think of
"There's something injured in there. And the fix is .... to stop digging the
clams out of the East River...." [ that line came from a 'folk song' group
called Schooner Fair, Portsmouth, Maine] . To me its just Tomato/Veggie soup
with Clams, can't be called Chow'dah ... can't stand a spoon *up* in it.
Ru


> I have a bit of a phobia with tomato soups and sauces being
> misrepresented as being, by default, Italian preparations. This isn't to
> say they can't be, or that the combination of tomato and basil
> necessarily is, but there seems to be this compulsion to add things like
> garlic and/or basil to any tomato product, and I'm morally opposed to
> any assumption that this is a necessary thing. My problem, not anybody
> else's. However, as a true New York food fan, I mourn the
> near-extinction of real New York Chowder, so horribly misrepresented in
> commercial settings, often because of scads of oregano, basil, garlic,
> and other non-essentials, including, in extreme cases, pasta. Bleah. Of
> course, the fact that Manhattan Chowder appears to be derived from
> Montauk Chowder, which is in turn derived from Block Island Chowder,
> which is a perfectly legitimate example of a New England Chowder
> containing tomatoes. It makes me giggle, is all, when I hear New
> Englanders pontificating about authenticity and some imaginary Chowder
> Rheinheitsgebot.