Served with Campbell’s jalapeno soup and some pork vindaloo (mildly spicey)!
We got obese as a nation on crap like this??
I think if you make it yourself, for home consumption, it’s OK; it’s just the “house version.” We all have “Aunt Sally’s Chop Suey” or “Grandma’s Irish Stew” traditions that have absolutely nothing to do with anything authentic but if you changed anything the family would start a riot, and you might have your own thing that you make that you just have a name for.
If you call it stroganoff but use ground beef to get the kids to eat it, it’s stroganoff, dammit. But if you go to Casa de la Pricey and order stroganoff at $34.95, it better not be ground beef, and it better not be the “chef’s interpretation,” and it better not be “deconstructed” stroganoff or any other perversions unless it’s thoroughly explained in the menu and you’re willing to go along with it. That’s the way I think about it.
Incorrect. The original Caeser Cardini recipe didn’t include anchovies (or, IIRC mustard) and had lemon juice and shaved parmesean cheese. I prefer the version with anchovies, but the flavor for them came from the worchestershire sauce in the original version. Heh–this is a reverse case where the bastardization is an improvement! 
Hell, I’d be happy to find a Caesar’s salad nearby that didn’t use ICEBERG lettuce.
Remarkable… From looking over that link, it looks like they actually do get it completely right, right down to the Amoroso’s rolls (though it must be very expensive to ship them all the way out to California). Props to them!
And what’s this about developing a non-spicy jalapeno? Jalapenos are already non-spicy. A habañero is a spicy pepper. A Thai chili is a spicy pepper. I’d even accept a Cayenne as a hot pepper. But a jalapeno is a medium pepper, at most.
And they STILL tried to dull it down!! How argh-inducing is that?!?!?
I bet someone is going to try to dull the flavor of freakin’ rice cakes: their blandness is overpowering! :rolleyes:
A-MEN!
I’ll admit it, I do like to buy a bottle of Newman’s Own Creamy Caesar and throw it on some romaine at home. But I once had a real, honest Caesar salad, made tableside, and now… well, I just deal. But it bothers me.
That seems unlikely. Kraft’s version, just to pick what seemed like the most obvious example, is made with egg and anchovy, although admittedly the anchovy is a very small amount.
What about cross-cultural hybrids like Korean Tacos? Are they rant-worthy or just delicious?
Eggwhite omelets. I don’t know what the hell that is, but it’s not an omelet.
Chicken with Poulet Sauce. I don’t even know where to start with that one.
Tossed Salad with Crudites. No shit?
Sorry, pet peeve. No enye in habanero, either spelled or pronounced. But there is one in jalapeño, if you feel you must throw the diacritic in.
That actually stemmed from “What, Firefox’s spellchecker doesn’t recognize ‘habanero’? Maybe it actually expects the tilde over the n? No, that doesn’t work, either. Any suggestions? No? Aw, heck, I’ll just leave it like that”.
I’m OK with that, because the word “taco” is a general word like “sandwich”. Much like a “sandwich” is something served between two pieces of bread, a “taco” is something served in a tortilla. What it’s filled with isn’t the issue.
And deliciousness has nothing to do with it. I’ve had some kick-ass yummy pasta with cream sauce, peas, and bacon and I’d eat it again happily. Just don’t call it Carbonara, because it’s not.
I’ve read this four or five times trying to understand the logic behind it. I think it’s beyond me.
It’s along the lines of “If we had some ham, we could have ham and eggs. If we had eggs.”
Some sources maintain that the original Caesar used romano, not parmesan.
Also, my recipes call for either prepared Dijon mustard or crushed mustard seed. My bottle of All Natural Since 1924 Cardini’s Original Caesar Dressing (for quickies) contains mustard seed.
I object to the suggestion that distinctive, useful and time-honored expressions like “all y’all” are equivalent to crappy cheap manglings of classic recipes.
That is not to say that recipes should never be adapted. If Cardini’s first salad used romano instead of parmesan (because that’s what he had; the genesis of the salad was the kitchen being out of a lot of stuff), the classic recipe is still the parmesan one, because it’s better and that was established early on. Similarly, my Niçoise salad is slightly different from Julia Child’s, which is different again from the salads she was first introduced to in the Riviera. But the culinary principles are the same throughout; a Frenchman of 1950 would recognize my iteration for what it was.
The key is understanding the principles which make the dish itself in the first place.
Hmm. I’d actually put it the other way round. If you make egg noodles with hamburger and cream sauce for the kids, don’t call it Stroganoff, because it isn’t, and you’re not doing them a favor by teaching them that it is.
On the other hand, if I go to a name restaurant, I want and expect a chef’s own interpretation of the dishes he serves; if the particular chef isn’t doing anything distinctive, why go to an expensive restaurant at all? Of course, as I say, if it’s a traditional dish, the interpretation must be in accord with the principles which make the dish what it is.
And wouldn’t it be “an habanero,” with the H silent?
Yes, I’m sure you object. If someone didn’t object then the prescriptivist/descriptivist argument I said I like watching wouldn’t be happening. Some people feel just as strongly that “all y’all” (or hundreds of other manglings) is just as abominable as poi made from yams.
But on the other hand, if it gets to be that 85% of the time Caesar salad is served it uses cabbage instead of romaine then to some degree it really is only of academic interest what “Caesar salad” used to mean.
I’m in the mix too. It isn’t uncommon to order X in a restaurant and then afterward say “that was pretty good. It was awful if you’re going to call it X, but it was still pretty good.”
I just find the fuzziness of where to draw the lines on acceptable deviation and the role of originalism to be interesting to watch.
If you’re pronouncing it the Spanish way, I guess so. But in English the “h” is aspirated, so “a habanero pepper.”
Sorry for belaboring a tangential point, but my argument is that “all y’all” is not a mangling. It’s a contracted phrase, within a dialect of English. There’s no mistake in it. People who think there is have a small understanding of a great language.
Think of a recipe as being like a musical composition. Preparing the dish on a given occasion is playing a version of the tune. If the tune itself is a great one, different people (if themselves capable) at different times should be able to produce countless variations on the music as written–sometimes even including whole new elements–without damaging the basis for its appeal.
But someone who had failed to grasp (or didn’t care) why the original was so good, and how that happened, might end up with something just superficially similar–possibly good in its own right, but failing to produce the effect of the original.
That effect was the reason for the recipe being remembered and named in the first place.
And did you think that was okay? To be served reasonably edible food that wasn’t what you ordered?
I mean, there were probably several restaurants you could have gone to. At each, there were several dishes you might have ordered (had you been in the mood for them) and been physically and sensually satisfied with. But you chose this… and they brought you that.