[Sca-cooks] Yankees, Hash, and Beets, was and still is: Winter comfort food...
Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius
adamantius.magister at verizon.net
Tue Dec 6 14:22:35 PST 2005
On Dec 6, 2005, at 4:17 PM, Jeff Gedney wrote:
> Heck, I aint no "down-eastah"... I'm just from a long
> line of "Connecticut Swamp yankees".
>
> You wanna discuss chowdah, do that...
> Just dont pass off that watery tomato and clam soup as
> chowdah.... them's fighting words!
>
> Chowdah is white as snow, thick as perdition, and tasty
> as sin. Anything else is just soup.
>
> And if it dont start with rendering fatback it dont
> count.
>
> But that is my humble, yankee-fied, opinion.
> Yours may vary (if it does, though, I'll ignore it ;) )
I have, literally, seen chowder with tomatoes thrown away amid
charges of heresy. And while I usually hate the standard "Manhattan"
chowder, that's because it's so often made badly, and, Heaven help
us, is largely maligned because it's easier to make _and put in cans_
than the alleged New England variety.
However, if we're going to talk stylistic legitimacy, chowder
containing tomatoes A) comes originally from New England and could
very easily be argued to have migrated from places like Newport to
Block Island to Montauk to Manhattan, and B) is about as old in
written recipe form as the white stuff.
I can see people from Maine getting all worked up about this, but the
concept that one style is more legitimate than the other is clearly
the result of revisionist history. If you put a nice bowl of creamy
"New England" clam or fish chowder in front of an early 19th century
sea captain, he might eat it and like it, but he probably wouldn't
say it was like mother used to make. And he might even add a jot of
tomato ketchup to it.
Personal preference is another matter entirely -- I won't argue
articles of faith ;-).
Adamantius, currently with a pot of each type on the stove -- don't
ask...
"S'ils n'ont pas de pain, vous fait-on dire, qu'ils mangent de la
brioche!" / "If there's no bread to be had, one has to say, let them
eat cake!"
-- attributed to an unnamed noblewoman by Jean-Jacques Rousseau,
"Confessions", 1782
"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?"
-- Susan Sheybani, assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry
Holt, 07/29/04
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