[Sca-cooks] Re: foods not eaten...or shouldn't be

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Sep 10, 2005, at 8:13 AM, Alexa wrote:

> Born in Tx, mom from Missouri, dad from Wisconsin.
> Since I was a small child I remember having this dish
> on the table.  Not one to eat it myself, but now that
> I have children of my own, my 16 yr old loves the
> stuff.  My husband says it's ok, but her much prefers
> the green bean casserole.

My sister came home at one point from a university in Pennsylvania  
and told us of her adventures, having encountered while there,  
bizarre, alien, ethnic, daishiki-wearin', radical, cutting-edge and  
emotionally threatening Amurrican food.

It seems you take blanched or frozen green beans (apparently you can  
even use canned ones, but we thought this was just too way out to  
even consider) and add things like canned cream of mushroom soup  
(gulp!), and top it with canned fried onion crispies (now we're in  
full xenophobe mode, with no turning back). And then you bake it  
("Oooooohhh," sez we, spellbound).

I have to say that the concept of baking a green vegetable, with the  
possible exception of something leafy in a custardy or cheesy  
substrate, like a quiche or torta, still seems quite alien to me,  
unless you're in rural Kentucky or someplace like that and using  
dried green beans, or in France and using flageolets. However...

My point, when I started talking about miniature marshmallows and  
such, was just that one person's weird culinary alien abduction is  
another person's everyday thing (remember, we had been talking of  
squid ink).

On a marginally related note, years later, I spent a fascinating  
evening cooking in the kitchen of an old friend, a Brooklyn-born lady  
of Russian Jewish ancestry who is a well-travelled research chemist,  
married to a Bronx-born research chemist of Russian Jewish ancestry.  
These people are extremely well-travelled (research chemists get  
around!), and a dinner at their home, even an informal, potluck  
affair, invariably includes several courses, a minimum of one wine,  
salad served after the entree, dessert and coffee, followed by  
cheese, fruit, sometimes chocolates. This UUY finds their eating  
habits just a little intimidating, I don't mind admitting, but  
they're warm and lovely people and you go with the flow ;-).

Well, there we were, in Barbara's kitchen, and without too much  
explanation, she and I rolled out some paper-thin, eggy pasta, which  
we cut into noodles and hung up to semi-dry. She then made a lovely,  
velvety bechamel (or it mighta been a fish-stock veloute with cream;  
I forget) sauce, reduced perfectly, then sauteed some sliced  
mushrooms, and some onions, adding them to the sauce with their  
liquid, and reduced again. She boiled, buttered, and reserved the  
noodles. She then produced some leftover grilled tuna from the  
fridge, which she diced with a sharp knife, and began to assemble  
what she referred to as "tuna kugel" with the noodles, the mushroom  
and onion sauce, and the tuna. She topped it, IIRC, with matzoh  
farfeln (essentially, coarse cracker crumbs), and baked it.

It was the best tuna noodle casserole I've ever had, and it  
absolutely caught me off guard. Only when it was on my plate did I  
realize I'd been snookered... ;-)

Adamantius




"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