Food in whose name the worst atrocities have been committed

Chinese is def right up there with pizza in my book, and prob ahead of Mexican. Cause even bad, Americanized Mexican can be good in a drunk-at-3am sort of way. Bad Americanized Chinese is so prevalent that people say "oh Chinese? nah not a fan" without ever having had good, more authentic Chinese. There's one place nearby that has good shit in addition to the kung paos and general tso stuff, and taking people there is always a revelation to them.

i mean, i knew that there were different kinds of salsa for different dishes, but i thought even mexicans had their own chip dipping salsa.

They do. Don't know if I'd trust the NYT for Mexican cuisine info.

xp yeah I was thinking of types of food that leave room for specification, and it's in the specification where things go wrongly: like taking pizza and adding lettuce and hollandaise sauce, e.g. The idea of pizza opened up great possibilities for good but also for ill.

pizza is probably the answer. i would also say "seafood" or any "ethnic" recipe originating from the back of a box or can of goods.

ok eggs on pizza in general, but quail eggs stands as a particular example.

creme fraiche is p good on any type of ground beef dish, partic on the 2nd day.

Part of these discussions here stems from our categorical thinking. Flatbread is ubiquitous. Pizza is Italian, though there are American versions of pizza that many Americans think of as normative. Even if you include them all, does a thai chicken pizza really count as a pizza or should it be considered either 'bad' or other? Beans and meat is hardly limited to America, but if I make a boar ragu w/cannelini beans, take a wand mixer to it, add creme fraiche and hives, should I even bother calling it chili, even if I add some traditional chili spices?

starting now anyone who uses the word "authentic" on this thread is getting a suggest ban from me

i dunno but i would eat yr boar chilli and to hell with the doubters.

if you call your wild boar ragu, it's a ragu
if you call your wild boar chili, it's chili

going with nachos on this one.

xxp thread police severely underworked imo

authentic authentic authentic authentic authentic authentic authentic authentic

Fish and dairy isn't always wrong. If you are making fish pie with smoked haddock you have to prep the haddock by poaching in milk. My mom makes an awesome artery-clogger of a dip featuring crabmeat, shrimp and Philadelphia cream cheese baked into a hollowed-out round loaf.

I will also nominate bad British greasy spoon breakfasts for this - so much angst could be avoided by keeping the bacon frying that little bit longer.

If you are making fish pie with smoked haddock you have to prep the haddock by poaching in milk.

^^^The problem here is that you are making something called "fish pie"

Flatbread is ubiquitous but I've not seen anyone putting pineapple or bbq sauce on lahmacun, for instance.

cause lahmacun isn't American?

more examples of fish and dairy: shrimp in primavera or alfredo pasta. most Indian curries made in the US/UK have some cream in them. and a slice of cheese on a filet-o-fish!

Fish and dairy isn't always wrong.

Oh, I agree! There are plenty of recipes with milk or cream and I don't mind those if they don't hide or denature the taste of the fish.

No results found for "hawaiian lahmacun".

thank goodness though perhaps this is a business opportunity as well

Just on the pizza front, I rather foolishly, weakly, idiotically fell into a pizza place in Venice - I was tired and hungry and knew it was a mistake, so I kind of got what I deserved -

What I got was a massive crisp with a frisbie of cheese on top which, where it hadn't hardened, had formed into globules of grease. I don't know what vintage the wine was but it made the top of my head tingle and made everything else seem very far away but very loud. I was lucky though. A young French couple next to me ordered calzoni and she a cheese pizza. I was on the verge of warning her, as I remembered the 'quattra formaggia' pizzas inexplicably for sale in English supermarkets. (Would you like a cheese, cheese, cheese and cheese pizza plz? No, not today thank u.'). What he actually got was a tinned tomato and cancer pizza. It swam gently in some red slime and had a massive black buboe coming out of the top of it.

It looked so bad we all started laughing when the waiter put it down in front of him. None of us finished these things, and we all went to a wine bar and ate little bits of sea food on polenta which was lovely and what we should have done in the first place.

how 'bout all the strange flavors of ice cream out there?

can't believe no one thought to respond to lj and answer the thread qn at the same time with this - List your culinary disasters.

In Madrid two nights ago I had a tapa consisting of shrimp cooked in a curry sauce, wrapped in pasta, and then served in a queso fresco sauce. It was good! That's kind of a fish + cheese deal.

Actually tapas are ripe for the kind of abuse I'm talking about, though "tapas" doesn't single out a single type of food so it doesn't really work.

Fish pie is amazing - smoked haddock, cod, (sometimes) salmon sand shrimp in a stock and cream sauce, mashed potato top with a dusting of parmesan so it goes crunchy on top in the oven. Like this:

http://www.hannafords-online.co.uk/images/F0329%20Fish%20Pie%20-%20Multi%20Portion.JPG

starting now anyone who uses the word "authentic" on this thread is getting a suggest ban from me

I tend to start with hyper traditional recipes, ingredients and approach with new cuisines and then when I'm pretty comofrtable with how they belong in their native habitat, then I'll adventure. I'm not a horrible stickler about this and there are the ironies of having, say, had American style tacos years in advance of going to Mexico or pizza before I went to Italy. It's not authenticity for its own sake that I seek, its context with a healthy respect for the people, the environment, the products, the cuisine that first gave birth to a foodstuff - a kind of terroir approach, but again, I try not to be a dick about it.

on man -vs- food last night the dude ate a hamburger that was: huge hamburger + cheese + eggs + five pieces of bacon and the bun was actually two grilled cheese sandwiches. american extreme eating gotta be on the list of worst atrocities.

Actually, hamburgers are a candidate for this thread. My mother made apple hamburgers for us when I was a child. I wept.

was with that burger until the grilled cheese atrocity

Just on the pizza front, I rather foolishly, weakly, idiotically fell into a pizza place in Venice

Big mistake. Venetian food is so far off from pizza regione like Naples or Lazio. I used to get pizza in Milan and it was awful.

I had a tapa consisting of shrimp cooked in a curry sauce, wrapped in pasta, and then served in a queso fresco sauce.

I can see how this might work if the curry wasn't too strong. Also, the stronger the fish taste, the better it can blend with heartier flavors.

That whole show "Man v. Food" just disgusts me. The restaurants he goes to are usually alright, and sometimes really good, but his whole death-by-foodgasm approach to eating is really gross.

And is it just me or does his weight yo-yo from hefty to downright fat?

The curry wasn't strong, and neither was the queso fresco sauce. It was quite good. xp

Euler, I can totally see that being tasty. Just curious, how was the shrimp cooked? If they grilled it first, I think it might give it additional taste.

Big mistake

Oh yes, absolutely. As I say, I knew that at the time. Sheer stupidity.

On the dairy + fish equation, as well as fish pie, you got seafood lasagne (wonderful), some versions of kedgeree are faily dairy intensive, there's fish florentine, and a very nice crab meat and cream pasta sauce.

And bisques and chowders, etc., it's just strong cheese that overwhelms the fish that I really object to.

It wasn't grilled as far as I can tell; my guess is it was steamed.

can't believe no one thought to respond to lj and answer the thread qn at the same time with this

yah I haven't referenced that at all on this thread

never knew that getting a pizza in italy could be such a terrible, craven error of judgement :/

starting now anyone who uses the word "authentic" on this thread is getting a suggest ban from me

― max, Thursday, March 25, 2010 12:45 PM (24 minutes ago) Bookmark

<3 u max

xp fairly sure that's why jj wanted to threadban you tbh

fish tacos exception to dairy/fish rule btw

Also putting bacon with scallops. Maybe a little, but scallops are pretty subtle and if you want to hide their taste, I think you're kind of disrespecting them or you're trying to hide fishy fish.

love these faux men-of-the-people who get their panties in a twist whenever authenticity is mentioned w/r/t food. fight the good fight, gentlemen.

Maybe my real answer should be: all the sweets that have been messed up with corn syrup.

good one

there are a lot of folks out there fuckin around a little too much w/ bagels imo. Pizza still owns this tho.

what about just "salad". at some point "salad" started to mean "anything you can fit into a bowl".

yesssss^^^

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_yJDiDVtrcO0/Somj6ASmlLI/AAAAAAAAAI8/HtdFpf7rX5c/s400/bbq+salad+w+cilantro+ranch+dressing

yeah but i don't think there was any kind of grand salad tradition that was being violated

like if you go to an old person steakhouse the salad they give you is a total drag

I think there are a lot of foods where they throw a lot of one of the essential flavors at you, salt or fat or sweet, to the detriment of an interesting mix of flavors that reflect the ingredients. It's sort of the McDonaldsification of food; if you throw enough fat and salt at most things, they'll be satisfying going down, but underneath that is the fact that the tastes are generally pedestrian or bland and they're exploiting our basest eating predilections and also exploiting a really shitty food production model.

as soon as ranch dressing, grilled chicken, and cheddar cheese entered the picture, something was totally violated! we're talking about a best case scenario salad by the way, not some iceberg lettuce one cherry tomato b.s.

bread