Ethnic Food Abuse

Cafe Society
1

My Aunt is a wonderful woman of Norwegian decent. Every once in a while we would end up at their place over the holidays. Normally when we stayed, she would feed us non stop from the time we got there, until we left. The holidays were extra special, because not only would she make the regular food, but also various Norwegian foods too. There were the cookies shaped like a cup cake paper, and other things I don’t remember names to. And there was lefsa.

Lefsa (Google’s first hit ), is a type of Norwegian potato flat bread, it looks kind of like a tortilla. As I understand it from my Aunt, you spread butter on it, then sprinkle sugar, roll it up and eat.

My Father, not content with this, and having a long history of tweeking my Aunt (going all the way back to when Dad was headed to the Marines, and his older brothers took him out the night before his train trip drinking, and ended with my Aunt throwing the full beer bottles against a brick wall). He took the lefsa, spread peanut butter, rolled and ate. My Aunt bit her tongue. However, she really laid into him when he grabbed the pumpkin pie and spread it on the lefsa (rolled and ate).

I don’t know if tacos are classified as ethnic or not, but for the longest time, when I made tacos for me, they consisted of browned hamburger (salt and pepper, nothing else), on a store bought corn tortilla with shredded sharp cheddar cheese and . . .

wait for it . . .

ketchup

Biscuits and gravy probably isn’t ethinic, but my mother has endured 40 years of teasing from my father’s family because of how she eats them. And since I consider it abuse, I’ll include it here. Typically biscuits and sausage gravy are eaten by splitting the biscuit and covering with the gravy. If you want you can eat the biscuits with butter and jelly. Mom manages to do both at the same time. Split the biscuit, put butter, then jelly, and top off with sausage gravy.

Too keep in the spirit of Cafe Society, here are the recipes, they’re not good recipes, but they are recipes none the less:

Abused Lefsa
1 Slice of lefsa
1 Tbs Peanut Butter

Spread peanut butter on lefsa. Roll. Eat. Alternately, substitute 1 small slice of pumpkin pie (discard crust) for the peanut butter. Spread pumpkin pie on lefsa. Roll. Eat.

Abused Tacos
1 lb Ground Beef
8 oz Sharp Cheddar Cheese (shredded)
1 pkg Corn Tortillas
Ketchup

In heavy skillet, brown the ground beef, salt and pepper to taste. Drain (or not, I don’t care). Take ground beef, place inside tortilla. Top with cheddar cheese, and ketchup. Serves 4.

Abused Biscuits and Gravy

Make biscuits and gravy as normal. Serve by splitting biscuit, and on each half place butter, then jelly. Top with gravy.

Take care,

GES

2

I love biscuits and gravy, but with jelly?! :eek: Ewwwwww!!! I’ve seen people eat biscuits and fried eggs topped with gravy–I thought that was strange, but that’s way better than biscuits and gravy and jelly.

I’ve never had lefsa, but it sounds good. Even with peanut butter.

3

[Boldness added.]
Apparently, lefsa recipes vary according to family. My mother is of 100% Norwegian descent and neither she nor anyone else in her family would ever think of adding sugar to a perfectly good piece of lefsa. To them, the sugar alone would qualify as “ethnic food abuse.” (As for me, I don’t mind it but I prefer lefsa with butter only.)

BTW, did your Aunt ever serve lutefisk? That alone qualifies as “ethnic food abuse.”

4

What about the fermented shark stuff…the can is supposed to be swollen and look like it is ready to explode :eek:

or the fermented duck[?] embryos that they do something obscene with in the phillipines :eek:

5

Sandbakkels. My god those are good - nothing more than sugar cookies with almond extract - but such a PITA to make. Tell your aunt to guard her tins with her life because they don’t make them like that anymore. :frowning:

6

You’re talking about balut, but it’s not fermented, just fertilized and boiled after the embryo develops.

I was in an (unfortunately online) relationship with a Pinay a couple years ago and she described some of her country’s delicacies, including balut, *isaw *(grilled chicken intestines), and other various dishes. It’s been about two years now and I still get a little green thinking about it and am in no rush to try Filipino cuisine any time soon.

7

Hm. My grandparents had some extraordinarily wierd mutations. Chili with macaroni and green beens. Pizza made with ground hamburger and no cheese. I’m probably blocking out memories of other things they served me.

You’d think the pizza thing was because one of the two was lactose intolerant, but no it was because my grandfather was batshit crazy. He was convinced the mafia owned the cheese companies. :slight_smile:

8

Despite the fact that I’ve moved to a place where decent Asian ingredients are available, I confess that my mom’s stirfry recipe is still my favorite: chicken breasts, onion, garlic, carrots, celery & regular ol’ green cabbage, with soy sauce to taste.

A rough paraphrase from How to Talk Minnesotan:

The Minnesotan taco, pronounced tack-o, consists of a tortilla, pronounced tortil-la, folded in half and filled with cooked ground beef mixed with ketchup. If desired, folded, buttered white bread may be substituted for the tortil-la and pickled herring may be used for the filling.

9

There is the Swedish dish Surstromming, which is very similar.

I’m really tempted to buy and try some. Seriously.

10

Before I got to Sydney a couple of months ago I’d accompany my dad from HK to Shenzhen, Zhuhai or Zhongshan on his business trips. There was this place in Zhongshan where you could get stewed dog in black bean sauce, and damn was it good. Everytime we had a chance we’d buy a potful to take back (they actually give you the fricking tin pot there).

Our housekeeper threw out the sauce by accident once, and the meat, having sat overnight, was a little dry - so I rummaged through the fridge for condiments, and finally settled upon mustard. And ketchup. Then I went downstairs for buns, and yes, made a Real Hot Dog.

It wasn’t very good, but I think it’s an excellent example of ethnic food abuse.

(And animal abuse, but there are plenty of dogs in the world.)

11

As my wife (born in Cleveland but ethnically Japanese) continues to point out to me, you can’t use canned tuna fish in sashimi.

12

It’s not ethnic food abuse. It’s Fusion Cuisine!

13

Thanks. I don’t have to go to Calculus now because I just died. Both from laughter, embarrassment for laughing so loud in a computer lab, and from shock at that being mentioned, period. To you, I leave my goldfish. His name is Marco and his bowl needs cleaned.

14

My boss, from Bangladesh, won’t eat canned tuna until it has been re-cooked. That’s sort of reverse ethnic food abuse.

15

One of my friends has a traditional family recipe for goulash that contains huge quantities of ketchup. It’s pretty gross. Oh, and no paprika.

It would never have occurred to me to roll op a piece of pumpkin pie in anything else before eating it. Weird.

16

Fusion ANYTHING.
Grr. :mad:

17

I used to make a tasty jambalaya in college; I’ll give you the recipe:
Saute 1 onion, 2 sticks celery, and one bell pepper (all diced) in olive oil. Add salt, oregano, black pepper, basil, parsley, and something hot (tabasco, jalapeno, or whatever you have). Add one large can diced tomatoes, one can’s worth of water, and 2 cups uncooked rice. Stir well. Add 1 stalk broccoli and 1 pound diced tofu. Cover and cook, stirring occasionally, until rice is done.

I also occasionally make a very tasty spinach, mushroom, and tempeh quiche.

The Cajuns and the French are even now conspiring for vengeance.

Daniel

18

I shocked my ex-in-laws as well as others on this board with my revelation that I use cottage cheese instead of ricotta in my lasagna because IT TASTES BETTER.

Ricotta has a strong flavor and pasty texture that tends to overwhelm the lasagna. With the light taste and firmer texture of cottage, you get a more well balanced product.

By the way, I have made my famous lasagna with cottage, ricotta and a mixture of the both and everyone who has tried both versions agrees with me that the cottage is better.

Oh and as for the OP, my current in-laws live in WV and when they eat biscuits and gravy, they don’t slice the biscuit, they just put the gravy on top sometimes with crumbled up pieces of bacon.

19

Background: we lived in Switzerland for a while and really came to enjoy a good fondue.

Abuse: My parents, to whom anything is better if spiced up, make cheese fondue but stir in a whole can of El Pato sauce. El Pato is a relatively mild (to us – I know some Midwesterners and Europeans that it would kill) Mexican tomato sauce. It’s not habaneros, but it does have some chilis blended into it. For me, this absolutely ruins the fondue. It probably tastes fine, but it’s just not fondue anymore. Some tastes are supposed to be subtle.

20

I would say any Englishman would keel over if he saw you use fine English preserves to make a PB&J sandwich. (actually he’s probably keel over if you told him you wanted to eat a PB&J sandwich.)

My fromer SO taugt me to eat sushi so I ate it the way he did…with a little lemon juice along with the soy sauce and wasabi. I gather this is abuse judgig by the eye rolling if not outright laughter we’re gotten from Asian waiters when we ask for lemon. For gods sake it’s not like we asked for ketchup (or told them to take it back and cook it a little longer :D)