What, you don’t want seconds? I spent hours cooking this for you. Don’t you like my cooking? Go on, have some more.
My family is Polish.
My recs?
Zurek or bialy barszcz (white borscht) is one of my favorite soups. It’s a sour soup made by fermenting rye (like a very watery sourdough starter) and you can add meat (usually in the form of white unsmoked Polish sausage, or smoked Polish sausage/ribs to it), as well as potatoes and often hard-boiled eggs. Love this.
Barszcz (red borscht). This is different than other styles. It is a clear, red beet soup, almost like a consumme. It may have grated beets in it. It is also often served sour, as the beets are allowed to ferment for awhile in a jar, so they have a natural pickly sourness to them. On the same you will often get a croquette with minced beef in it. Or it can be served with tortellini-like pasta called uszka. They may be meat or mushroom filled (there are both vegetarian and beef-stock based versions of borscht available.) Kind of like a Polish tortellini al brodo.
Placek po wegiersku (Pancake Hunagrian style). I’ve lived in Hungary for over five years, and never actually seen this there, but the Polish dish is a potato pancake served with a stew version of Hungarian goulash (what the Hungarians would call pörkölt) over it. Great comfort food.
Golabki: Stuffed cabbage rolls. They are most typically stuffed with ground beef and/or pork with rice, but lots of variations exist. My mother makes a barley and wild mushroom version for vegetarian holy days (Christmas Eve.) They are served with either a sour cream sauce, a mushroom sauce, a tomato sauce, their own juices, or some combination thereof.
Pierogi: I assume most people know what this is. Basically Polish ravioli. My favorite are Ruskie Pierogi (“Ruthenian pierogi”) which are stuffed with potatoes and fresh cheese (like a ricotta or cottage cheese type thing.) They can additionally be fried in bacon, but I just like them plain and boiled, served with sour cream on the side.
Now, Hungary is not my nationality, but I’ve spent a number of years there (as I noted above.) For that I would say:
Gulyasleves: The soupy form of goulash.
Langos: A savory elephant ear. It’s deep fried potato dough served with at least garlic water and salt, but often also sour cream, cheese, and other toppings like ham.
Paprikas csirke: Chicken Papriksh. A simple meal of stewed/braised chicken in a sour cream, onion, and paprika sauce, usually served with noodles called galuska or nokedli on the side (spaetzle, for the people who know German food.)
Töltött karalabé: Stuffed kohlrabi. It’s kohlrabi hollowed out, stuffed with a meat and rice mixture, served in a sour cream sauce. Perhaps my favorite Hungarian comfort food.
**Ranger Jeff, **may I get a side of matzoh crumbled into coffee? It reminds me of my grandpapa from the old country.
This is followed by Alka Seltzer for dessert and the “organ recital”. (Oy, my heart! Oy, my liver! Oy, my gallstones!)
While the Dutch engaged in colonialism so they’d finally have a cuisine (there’s a reason there’s an Indonesian restaurant in every town), there are some foods I miss:
Krentebollen with Dutch creamy butter, ontbijtkoek, fries with any kind of sauce (beyond mayo, there’s peanut sauce, curry ketchup and a particularly disturbing blend appropriately called “war”) and God help me, frikandellen.
Chicken soup with kreplach.
Hand-made gefilte fish. Chopped, not ground. With carrot slices and beet horseradish.
A mile-thick pastrami sandwich on seeded rye with mustard.
Dill pickles.
A nice piece of marble Halvah.
Dr. Brown’s Cel-Ray soda.
Russian drink: kvass. Love it, hard to get the genuine hard-hitting kind in the US, even in the Russian stores.
German (mom’s side): pork schnitzel with a wedge of lemon and buttered new potatoes
Tennessee (dad’s side): fried catfish with white beans, cole slaw, and hush puppies
A Moreton Bay bug or two for entree. (Yes, I know that “entree” means something different in the US.)
Roast lamb, roast potatoes and peas or green beans for the main course, and a good Hunter Valley shiraz to go with it.
A slice of pavlova for dessert, even if the Kiwis also claim it as theirs.
My kishkes! I’m going to plotz from such gas!
Well as an American, I’ll go with Philly Cheesesteak and Pumpkin Pie. The former requires godawful American cheese substitutes to be done right. The latter, for no particular reason, doesn’t seem to exist outside the US despite being excellent.
As someone who lived in Japan for seven years, I’ll nominate Okonomiyaki and Sukiyaki.
Last time I went to a Japanese restaurant with colleagues, the 2 Japanese among us (me + a visitor who’d been in the US for a few weeks) both ordered a katsudon. It may not seem Japanese (or exotic in any way), but it’s a comfort food for anyone who grew up in Japan.
If you want something more exotic, I’d recommend some of these appetizers:
Shirasu (dried baby anchovies, often served with grated radish)
Yama-kake maguro (raw tuna topped with grated mountain yam), if you don’t mind slimy texture in food
Sunomono (usually seaweed & cucumbers marinated in vinegar)
Agedashi tofu (fried tofu served in hot broth)
If it’s a Christian holiday: Chinese.
My people invented the Reuben, so, yeah.
Bohemian: eat the goulash and dumplings.
Swiss: cheese. Lots of cheese. My grandparents were cheese makers. Eat the cheese.
Dominican Republic, Don’t get the Mondongo. It is made of fecal matter from some ruminant animal.
American Midwest: many choices, all of them Bisquick.
Fried poke chop, collard greens, baked sweet potato, fried corn, fried okra, sliced tomatoes, cornbread and sweet ice tea.
Poutine.
I had some in Utrecht. Pretty good, if I do say so. I also had smoked herring at the Zuider Zee Museum in Enkhuizen- that was very good as well, and our one-year old son totally loved it as well. I never did get pancakes, but I did eat some frikandel, bitterballen and kroketten, as well as what seemed like my weight in frites/frieten in the Netherlands and Belgium.
If you were to come to the US, I don’t know that I can point at any one dish as “American” except maybe a good hamburger, and even that’s something that’s more or less a global food nowadays. If you were to order several things, I’d say that a good plate of cheese enchiladas with chili gravy, rice and beans for Tex-Mex, a good bowl of seafood gumbo for Cajun, and maybe a New England Boiled Dinner would be a good start.
If you’re talking more local (i.e. Texas), I’d say that the big 3 dishes are: Tex-Mex (the enchiladas above), smoked brisket & sausage (with beans and potato salad), and chicken fried steak (with mashed potatoes and green beans).