- A loaf of American meat.
Right now, Questionland user Emily is studying in Sweden, and she needed help thinking of some traditional American dishes for an upcoming International food festival.
“It’s kind of tricky seeing as a lot of our food originally comes from somewhere else,” she says. “I was thinking about using ‘New World’ foodstuff (ie tomatoes, potatoes, corn, etc), and maybe a few other fun desserts or snacks (like s’mores or chocolate chip cookies). Any suggestions?”
Fnarf came through with a slew of tasty options:
Meatloaf. Fried Chicken. Mashed potatoes, or baked Russets (they will only be familiar with waxy red or yellow potatoes). Macaroni and cheese. Pot roast. Baked Pacific salmon (Swedish salmon is a different fish, Salmo vs. Oncorhynchus). Clam chowder. Boston baked beans. Crab cakes. Watermelon. Corn on the cob — most Europeans regard this as bizarre, an animal feed. Pemmican or jerky. Blueberry or huckleberry pie.
You could do a whole Southern or Creole menu. Gumbo, jambalaya, red beans and rice, dirty rice, fried okra. Texas-style chili. Smoked pork butt. Burritos!
Emily loved his suggestions, so she gave him a Questionland mushroom—and his answer has been chosen as the Answer of the Week! Both Emily and Fnarf get a $25 gift certificate to Pagliacci Pizza (of course Emily will have to wait until she comes home to use it). Congrats to both of you!
And now I’m hungry.
How about pumpkin pie? My ex taught for a year in France and one of his co-workers decided to make a traditional American thanksgiving dinner. She roasted a turkey, made mashed potatoes and stuffing and also pumpkin pie.
To make the pie she peeled and sliced the pumpkin and layered it as you would an apple pie. He said it tasted good, but the texture was of course all wrong. 🙂
Burritos?
yay for free food when I get back to Seattle!
also @1: I considered pumpkin pie, but I can only make what is available for purchase here in Sweden, and for the past 3 months, I have not been able to find canned pumpkin ANYWHERE. I chose Fnarf’s response because there were some options that were possible for me to make in Sweden, though of course, I cannot do the Salmon or russet potatoes, that is unless I meet some rich people that can ship me all that food.
Well done, Fnarf. Serve ’em all, and the Swedes will wonder why just 30% of us are obese.
WHOA! My life has meaning now! My hard work pays off! Finally, after ten thousand answers, I get my pizza! I’m validated! Thank you, thank you, America!
Actually I think I need psychological help, but still, pizza.
Also, anything turkey (they’re indigenous to North America), southern or Texas style BBQ (ok, probably not that practical), and despite its origins, I’ve never had a good hamburger overseas.
The real bummer with this sort of task though is—no matter what sort of cuisine you’re representing—if you’re not already good at preparing it, it’s probably not going to be the best representation.
@2, burritos, as they are found in the US, are Mexican-American, specifically San Franciscan, not Mexican. Few Mexicans have ever seen one. They think they’re kind of gross, actually, packing everything all together in a giant packet like that.
Also, I took two Swedes to a Mexican restaurant in my neighborhood a few weeks ago. One had already been there and loved it—it’s the most bland, family-oriented place in the neighborhood, people mostly go for margarita pitchers—and lamented how incredibly spicy it is, while the other waved her hand to her mouth in non-stop agreement. It was adorable.
@ 7, gotcha. I knew that American burritos probably were nothing like Mexican ones, but I was under the impression that they sold them on the street like hot dogs there.
Luckily I love to cook, so this should be no problem for me. I don’t think I will attempt soul food though, because I was born and raised in the northwest, so that wouldn’t work too well. I refuse to make burgers because there is a McDonald’s down the street and the weather has been really nice here, so everyone has already been BBQing burgers for the past 3 weeks.
I will include: some spicy food, peanutbutter, and s’mores because I asked around and nobody has ever heard of them.
Am I the only one who saw the picture of the meat loaf and said to themselves, “Hmm, that looks kinda good..”
What? Apple pie needs more love. It technically came to us–like most dishes–but we made it OURS.
Serve it hardcore New England style: piping hot with a good chunk of sharp white cheddar cheese on top.
@9 – for what it’s worth, in some of the smaller-but-tourist-friendly-villages I’ve been (surf towns like Salulita), there’s little outdoor burrito shacks. They’re fantastic, especially if you know what the local fish is and stick to that, but different, and probably as much a product of tourists from California as anything. I doubt many of them stay open during the off-season.
CHICKEN POT PIE.
@10 – didn’t mean to insult your kitchen prowess. As someone that grew up in a house with revolving exchange students, I had to learn that just because I hated some of the shit those German and Japanese students made as guests, really probably just meant they couldn’t cook. Then again, I had the palette of a child with two mid-western parents, so I probably wasn’t the best judge at the time anyhow.
Spray cheese in a can. I have described this to many foreigners, and most make me take them into a supermarket to prove to them it exists. So far, none would agree to actually try it. Europeans consider it a true culinary horror.
@16 – Be sure to let them know about Badder Blaster at your earliest convenience.
Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on white bread are still unbelievably popular all over. BBQ, too.
Chocolate chip cookies are a true American invention and are NOT like Scandie cookies….
According to Wikipedia, the history of the burrito is a lot longer than the San Francisco variety that is the most common today. Tortilla wrapped beans eaten by hand apparently go back to the pre-Colombian Aztecs in Mexico and Pueblo peoples in northern Mexico and the American Southwest.
The modern burrito’s origins are unclear but might be mining food of the Southwest/North Mexico. The first documented commercial sale of burritos was in Los Angeles, though there’s oral history supporting burritos earlier in Ciudad Juarez. So I don’t think you can claim them as primarily American or Mexican.
What a fun question… and answers. We had a French exchange student when I was a teenager. I remember (1) he thought corn on the cob was for pigs and (2) he was disgusted by peanut butter. Eventually, my sneaky mother made her special chocolate/peanut butter cookies, without telling him there was peanut butter in them… he was like “these are amazing!” and was then forced to acknowledge the awesomeness of peanut butter.
@13, I’ll bet they weren’t half the size of an Mission-style monster, either. Did they have both rice and beans? Mexicans think that’s kind of weird, but as you say, Americans have brought things back down. I haven’t been to Sayulita, but I’ve had roast chicken off the street in nearby Rincon de Guayabitos/La Peñita.
@9, Mexico has an incredible variety of street foods, but tacos and tamales are the prevalent ones. Many different kinds of them; but then, pretty much anything becomes a taco if you put a small corn tortilla around it, to hold it by. My favorite is birria, young goat stew.
@21-you’re right, they weren’t the monsters I’m used to here, and they were vegetables and meet, cooked, served hot and cut in half in a basket. Fantastic, really, but yeah, quite different. And I’ve seen the same thing from street vendors: tacos, tamales, and unexpectedly, hot dogs. When the kids are getting out of school, those bags of fried things or candy, too.
Fuck I’m hungry.
Is there any place outside of America where monster-size is the norm? No wonder we’re fat.
My European friends also thought peanut butter was gross so I’m guessing PB&J is probably a primarily American thing.
@23 Today I was informed by an Aussie that their obesity rate is climbing rapidly and is currently comparable to US obesity rates, though this was just in a conversation, so I’m not sure where she heard this.
There are monster sized portions in Sweden, but I think they stay thin through physical activity.
@22, you mean chicharones, pork rinds? Mmm. Also, carts with fifty kinds of frutos secos, i.e., nuts, plain, roasted, and candied. And big gourds filled with tuba, fermented palm juice (actually a Filipino treat), or coolers full of tejuino (corn drink). So many good things, I wish I was there now instead of looking at a row of boring overpriced restaurants.
@16: Spray cheese in a can?? Dude, I can see your country from my window and somehow I have never heard of this. What the heck do you spray it on? How does this work?
Speaking of San Francisco inventions: Fortune cookies.
Irena – Easy Cheese. I had never heard of it either, until I went to college… One of my friends then introduced me to Easy Cheese and Triskets, which briefly became a regular snack food, until I realized, hey, this is effing disgusting.
@ 29, I thought you were talking about Cheez Whiz.
@30 – Coke vs. Pepsi, my friend. Matter of preference, but essentially the same (vile) product.
I think Cheez Whiz is in a jar, and Easy Cheese is in a spray can, no? Come to think of it, I’m not sure I’ve ever had Cheez Whiz…
@26 – Yes to everything you said, except the juice, I’ve either never noticed it or never known what it was.
@32 – I believe you’re correct about the spray can, which reminds me of another American food variant: The Cheese Steak.
@33, I loves me some cheesesteak. Better not be any spray cheese on there, though; cheesesteaks have triangles of sliced American-style “provolone” melted in.
Too bad you cannot score some pacific salmon. I enjoy the alder plank salmon.
How about the Hangtown Fry. It is a omlette variant that was invented during the gold rush. It has bacon and oysters. Some add peppers and onions. Granted the omlette is not American but this variant uniquely is.
Fnarf is right, the Burrito is not Mexican. It comes from the Chicano farmworker. There are no American Burritos or Mexican Burritos, just Burritos and their origin is Chicano; however an argument can be made that it is Mexican since the Californios who invented the Burrito were Mexican first and became North Americans after the Guadalupe-Hidalgo treaty. But for now it is North American since the Burrito came of age in the grape fields of California.
For American food, take any other cuisine in the world, simplify it drastically and add 130% more simple carbohydrates and animal fat, and serve it with extra cheese.
@38,
And bacon!
BEBOPAREBOPA RHUBARB PIE!
Pemmican FTW!!!
Deep-fried Twinkies.
Just kidding. Where does broccoli with cheese sauce come from?
How about Hawaiian-style smoked pulled pork sandwiches?
I recall reading somewhere that the brownie is unique–there’s nothing that resembles it in any other world cuisine. . .
Scrapple, Kentucky brown, sweet potatoes, pastrami hero, sloppy joes, baked Alaska, waldorf salad -eek! some of those sound gross!
I’ve had many Thanksgivings in other countries and Gumbo is always a hit. Of course, I am Cajun so I do know how to make it, but any real Cajun cooking website will have a great recipe (try the Parishes named Avoyelles, Lafayette, Acadiana, Evangeline). Look for a chicken and sausage gumbo recipe, though, because it’s hard to get the right seafood, file (sassafras leaves) and okra in Europe. Roast turkey is always a hit, as is baked macaroni and cheese and stuffing is uniquely U.S. and easy to find the ingredients. Brownies or lemon meringue pie are always well-received deserts.
Unfresh corn on the cob is not so great. So I pretty much only eat corn on the cob in August.
So I would never introduce corn on the cob in Sweden.
@45 kladdkaka (cloud cake) is a Swedish dessert that tastes very similar to brownies. Also, even if brownies are American, they are actually quite common over here.
I couldn’t do corn on the cob even if I wanted to. I’m pretty much limited to what I can purchase here in Sweden for under 500SEK
@3, you don’t have to use canned pumpkin. You just peel and cook the pumpkin and add spices in a food processor. I’m sure you could find an easy enough recipe on foodnetwork.com. Anything NOT from Sandra Lee should be good.