Spiritual/Political/Philosophical Blog on the Nature of Truth and Falsehood and Heaven
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| Sunny Days in Heaven Spiritual/Political/Philosophical Blog on the Nature of Truth and Falsehood and Heaven |
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Thursday, December 04, 2003 American Food One thing I like about being an American is that I have no qualms about trying things from around the world, and then making them American. When I was in Italy once, my wife and I stayed in prima classa hotel (first class) in Ancona. They offered a "Continental breakfast" which consisted of a tiny, dry croissant, some jelly and toast. I noticed that foreign food there was either lousy or non-existent. It's as if Italians didn't want to eat the good food of the French and vice versa, whereas I could get the best of everything in America from every country. Same in Greece and Crete where we lived for three months. You couldn't get good foreign food. They mangled the idea of hamburger and fries (though the gyros were great). Same with pizza, English breakfasts, and so forth. For some reason these cultures resisted assimilating good things from elsewhere. (Yes, I know McDonald's and Pizza Hut are there in the major cities, but the people didn't learn how to cook good hamburgers and pizzas, eat good croissants, and so forth.) The insularity surprised me since it's not like they don't have much contact with foreign culture. It's all right there around them. Anyway, I say this because a few years ago I discovered the Vietnamese staple called pho. (It's pronounced - fuh, but I'm not going to say that; so I call it what it looks like and now a lot of Vietnamese do too.) Some people reduce this dish to the banal - beef noodle soup. That's like saying Marilyn Monroe was a blonde. Pho is a stock made from beef bones boiled for hours with a number of spices like ginger, anise, and so forth. It is served with rice noodles nesting in the bottom of a big bowl. Paper thin onion slices float on the broth. It can come with varieties of thin sliced beef, raw or cooked, or with sausage or meatballs; and many other variations. A dish is brought with herbs, bean sprouts, lime wedges, sliced jalapenos, thai basil. You add what you like and eat it, drink it, season it, and love it. It is delicious (and incredibly cheap - $2.50 -$4.50 a bowl depending on size. But my favorite Pho shop went out of business, so I have been reduced to creating my own concoction I call phony pho which only takes an hour to make, is based on chicken stock with hot Italian sausage slices added among a number of aromatic and peppery things. I made it tonight and it was simply delicious. It's not pho, but for what it is, it is great. It is now part of my repertoire along with a few Indian dishes, Italian, Mexican, Thai, and a whole variety of mongrel recipes and ideas I've picked up. All because I'm an American in a country where we search out the best anyone has to offer, and freely adopting it if it's good. posted by Mark Butterworth | 1:45 AM | |
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