Just a comment about this “chopped liver” thing. Yes, I said that I enjoyed various liver patés from duck, goose, and chicken and couldn’t imagine eating beef liver as a meal. But “chopped liver” is a whole other thing. I remember visiting an upscale grocery around Easter one time which I think coincided with the Jewish Passover, and their deli counter had chopped liver for a very limited time from one of the most famous and authentic restaurants in Montreal. I bought some just to try, and basically I inhaled the whole thing and rushed back the next day to get a large vat of this delicious delicacy. Authentic Jewish-style chopped liver is truly fantastic stuff!
Didn’t you just buy a house? That’s all you’re going to be able to afford for dinner for some time…! 
Still see liver in plenty of “family” restaurants (which are basically slightly fancier diners). I’ve never had it, don’t intend to order a meal just to find out possibly I don’t like it, but it’s out there if you’re eating places other than fancy shmancy, ethnic, and/or chain restaurants.
(and mushrooms taste like they’re grown on the devil’s taint, yuck.)
Favorite growing up along with creamed chipped beef on toast.
We do fondue for News Year Eve en famile - usually Digby’s ToastySpoo [cream cheese, brie with the rind cut off and butter, melted into fondue with a dash of nutmeg and cayenne] hot pot [chicken broth heated to under boiling] and chocolate for dessert. Dipping goodies include precooked pearled onions, precooked baby potatoes, precooked brocolli and cauliflower florettes, precooked asparagus, and thin sliced beef, chicken, raw shrimp and tofu cubes [the pre fried kind you normally just pop in hot oil and serve as an appetizer, but they stay together better than ‘raw tofu’] sour dough bread cubes, and the dessert dippies typically are cubes of pound cake, hothouse strawberries, mandarin orange slices and tiny marzipan cubes. Any meat and veggie leftovers are frequently dumped willy nilly into the broth and turned into soup.
I cook hasenpfeffer [you can also pickle chicken instead, tastes pretty much just like it.] and sauerbraten frequently enough, but we have a long tradition of German cooking in my family. I also cut my own spaetzel when in the mood for egg noodles.
I have shared my recipe for braised heart enough times online, but it is simple and a serious comfort food for me. Red wine, onions, garlic, herbs, heart. Bake sealed in a casserole dish for a few hours til tender. Nom with crusty bread and a salad.
I tend to have oatmeal, but do like farina enough to have it a few times a month instead of oatmeal.
Love them, make them.
Love and make deviled ham when I get a ham - old school food preservation - potted meats - cook all the water out of the meat, seal under a layer of fat to keep air outand you are golden keeping it at 40F for months at a time. Nothing quite like a sandwich of deviled ham, paper thin sliced red onion on rye - hellish evil breath afterwards, but runs a second to braunschweiger, onion on rye for me.
Yup, made it this past Thanksgiving =) It hits the rotation at least once a month in cold weather. Normally I make the Durgin Park recipe, but this year I made the one from Jas Townsend & Son’s youtube channel. Molded rather than blorped out with a spoon, and I served it with the 17h century version of brandied hard sauce instead of ice cream. Most nummy.
I make a version I learned decades ago - thin slice the beef, thin slice onion, layer beef, onions and sprinkle with fresh ground pepper. Drizzle on some vodka, set aside to ‘marinade’ overnight in the fridge [or on the backporch if it is winter out] Dollop butter into a heavy skillet, dump the meat and onions into a bowl without any vodka drippings and swish around with some flour. Drop into the hot skillet and fry up til pretty much finished cooking. While that is going on, cook your choice of starch [I was given the options of boiled potatoes, buckwheat kasha or noodles] and when it is just about done, dump over your serving bowl of starch. Sour cream is served on the side. Mushrooms are normally done with it, but as I am deathly allergic I leave them out =)
The restaurant I ate at just yesterday evening has liver and onions on the menu. In fact, that’s what my BIL had, and a cousin. (There were twenty three of us in all) And the cafe I like to eat breakfast at has liver and onions on the menu. I don’t think it’s quite as rare as people think.
This thread is great! I’m getting ideas for all sorts of dishes I’d forgotten about. Will have fun trying them out.
I definitely remember shrimp cocktails as being a ‘you’re at a nice restaurant’ signal. I can’t think of too many that I grew up with in the 80s that you don’t see any more - they may not present as high-end, but they’re still eaten.
One ‘not a dish’ that I remember is that ordinary American Chinese food was considered an exotic thing when I was growing up, it was something we were encouraged to go try as an experience, and a history class of mine did a field trip to eat at a Chinese restaurant one time. Now pretty much everyone considers Chinese take-out something about as common as McDonalds.
I think it’s because gelatin was an exotic thing that you’d only see at high-end special occasions, then with home refrigeration and mass production it became something anyone could do. There was a combination of showing off by making an exotic food with the idea that if it’s from a high-end place, it must be really good. And then once you start having a lot of people making gelatin dishes, it just kind of takes on a life of its own until people come to their senses.
I was born in the 1970s and missed the craze, but growing up there were still a lot of ‘fruit cocktail floating in jello’ dishes around that you basically don’t see today.
I do. I take the easy way out and use Manwich sauce, but I like the result.
And all the gelatin. I’m old enough to remember when my Mom would make aspic, and it sure didn’t appeal to us kids. Thankfully, Mom eventually tired of making it, and I haven’t seen it anywhere since.
Around Binghamton, NY, they marinate the stuff in what’s apparently bottled Italian dressing, skewer and GRILL them, and serve them in frankfurter rolls. “Spiedies,” they call 'em. I’ve never had one, but the idea fascinates me.
Of course, I was also fascinated by the equally obscure “New York System” hot dog of Rhode Island until I tried them near South Kingstown and they tasted like dog food.
I had spiedies when I was up in Binghamton a couple months ago. The marinade is pretty similar to Italian dressing, but a bit stronger. I have some marinade at home and I can check, but you’ve got the right idea. Originally, they were lamb, but now it’s almost all exclusively chicken or pork. They just taste like vinegary kebabs. They even sell them as a pizza topping out there.
Still at two places in Disneyland. Tasty, but too much for me, now.
My entry is Jello Salads. I mean, real lettuce type salads in Jello. However, the fruit salad in jello is also going away.
I’ll order it, but I have to admit I have never hear of that or anything like that, and I was around back them and had (more than) my share of such cooking at potlucks, etc.
Yep. Especially that last. Some sort of chicken in gravy/sauce would be common also.
The fruit cup and salad could be combined into Jello salad.
she makes them and the husband eats them… some good and some bad and lots inedible…
there’s dinner is served 1972 which cooked a whole recipe card collection from 1972 …now she just cooks any recipe she comes across …
My mom made casseroles all the time I loved them (1940s-50s) Scalloped potatoes.
Pies from scratch. Rhubarb, or green-tomato, from the kitchen garden.
actually those are pretty bogus articles. Neither my parent or I saw any of those dishes at any time, outside of a magazine ad- where we’d make fun of them. Other than Perfection Salad and other Jello salads that is, since Moms back then would put anything in Jello.
See there’s a huge difference between “recipes some food company put in a magazine” vs “Foods Your Grandparents Ate”. I can look today and see equally crazy recipes in magazines, and know the chances of ever seeing them (let alone eating them) is minuscule.
Before the advent of powdered gelatin mixes making aspic, especially one refined enough to sustain fruit and other delicate flavors rather than whatever critter it was made from, was a long, labor-intensive process only professional and upper-class kitchens with professional cooks had access to. Then you get commercially made, highly refined gelatin mixes - and suddenly even the poor could eat like the rich!
Can’t help but think that was a factor.
Some street carts in NYC do kebabs that are also yanked off skewers and into a hot dog roll and doused with hot sauce; haven’t had one in years but I remember them as being pretty good. Probably a downstate variant on a classic spiedie.
If you don’t mind checking the label on your marinade I’d love to know what’s in it besides oil, vinegar, garlic, and oregano. The Wiki article on spiedies hints at all sorts of mysterious, top-secret Binghamton-area concoctions.
We had city chicken for dinner two nights ago. Alternating chunks of pork and veal on a skewer, fried then baked to finish. Excellent with a little applesauce, or alternately marinated then grilled.
According to Leonard Wibberly, long pig is a favorite of Omo Lau or Omo Levi (I forget which), especially when the US VP visits.