[Sca-cooks] Numbers, pates, and spreads...

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

Philippa Alderton <phlip_u at yahoo.com> wrote:
>Aside from my personal irritation about the incredible
>amounts of sugar and salt that are used to imitate and
>substitute for real flavor, modern folks insist on
>renaming things in order to sell them to an ignorant
>public.

We are certainly in agreement on these points.

>For example, bean curd has become Tofu...

But it *was* originally Tofu. It only became "bean curd", a term i
stopped using in the late 1960s, to sell it to English-speaking
non-Asians in America. I'm glad it is being called by its true name
now. Of course, tofu is its Japanese name, it is tahu in at least one
form of Chinese, dofu in another, tauhu in Bahasa Indonesia, etc.,
all originally from the Chinese.

>squid is now calimari, as we've been mentioning...

But squid *is* calimari in Italian. And most of the places i've seen
it called this are Italian restaurants and oceanside communities with
large populations of Italians that have calimari festivals. The Thai
restaurants i've been in call it by the Thai name for squid (which
i'm forgetting at the moment), etc. Frankly, i rarely see a
restaurant that isn't Thai or Italian selling squid by any name...
and those batter-dipped, deep fried, rubbery rings don't even qualify
as food, as far as i'm concerned, whereas the Thai squid i've eaten
has been delicious and tender.

>liverwurst is now pate'...

Here i vehemently disagree with you. I've never seen liverwurst
called pate'. They are two different food products, although both
made with liver. Liverwurst is Germanic and pate is French and as far
as i'm concerned both are chopped liver...

Seriously, though, liverwurst and pate' are rather different in terms
of finished product in my experience, eating liverwurst as a kid in
the Chicago area, which had and may still have significant Central
European populations, and pate' as a kid at my parents' dinner
parties, in France, and occasionally these days at home or at a
party. The meat is processed differently (liverwurst while fine has
more texture than pate' which is superfine, as it were), the livers
used are different (pork vs. goose), the seasonings are different,
etc.

>and the margarine folks have given up on trying
>to pretend margarine is healthier than butter since
>it's not an animal fat (it's not- saturated fat is
>saturated fat regardless of place of origin, and
>butter is said by some to be healthier than the
>chemical concoctions called margarine), so now they're
>adding water, to "prove" that their product is
>healthier by weight than the other product. I suppose
>they're correct, but if I want water, I'll turn on the
>tap.

I agree with you here. If i want to reduce my consumption of
cholesterol or saturated fats i can do a couple things. I can cook
with a good vegetable oil, rather than hydrogenated fats. I can
"dress"many vegetables with olive oil rather than butter - it really
helps to get a good quality fuity olive oil rather than the cheap
yellow stuff. For a flavorful butter-like "spread", i have at times
mixed butter with lecithin and a good quality vegetable oil.

Anahita
who uses tofu to mean tofu, squid to mean squid, liverwurst to mean
liverwurst, and pate' to mean pate'